Tapping Into the Soul of Nucleic Acid Extraction

Hands, please.  Who hasn’t faced the challenge of marketing automated pipetting systems for liquid handling tasks inside a cell culture bench or fume hood?
Or some such.
Here’s one approach. No more pipetting late at night, indeed.

[via Boing Boing]

Your Prediction: Who Will Be Obama’s Running Mate?

With Sen. Barack Obama preparing to take the stage here in St. Paul in a few hours to end the Bitter 3 A.M. Michiganandflorida stage of the campaign, let’s play pundit.
Who do you think will be Obama’s running mate? 
You may use your answer to deliver:

serious analysis
a whimsical wild guess
or, if you’d prefer, a snarky broadside [...]

A Minute of (Not) Silence: Bo Diddley (1928-2008)

Hey, Senators! VP or Not VP?

That’s the question The Hill newspaper put to just about the entire Senate, one by one. Specifically:
“If you were asked, would you accept an offer to be the VP nominee?” 
So, let’s see. Perfunctory answers from the Minnesota delegation:
Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.)
“No. I’m up for reelection and I’ve got the guy who should be vice president. [...]

Clinton: “Inevitable” to “Independent?”

I wondered when I might see the first reference to it and I saw it this morning.
Polling data from Rassmussen Reports released today:
“… if Clinton does not win the Democratic Party nomination, 29% of Democrats say she should run an Independent campaign for the White House.”
And only 38 percent of Democrats (not just Clinton supporters, mind [...]

Clinton and O’Reilly: Unexpectedly Worthwhile

I’ll admit it. I tuned in for what seemed to be the vast entertainment potential.
But then Sen. Clinton and Bill O’Reilly, the spoilsports, turned in one of the more substantive and useful exchanges of the campaign last night, in my view. A relatively freewheeling, candid, semi-wonky back-and-forth (witness their Percentage-Off on federal income tax rates, of [...]

Obama’s Unused (So Far) Message: “Let’s End It.”

Time’s Mark Halperin (whose “The Page” is one of the more useful and appealing of the major news outlets’ blogs, IMHO) noted yesterday that two Obama staffers left Pennsylvania last night sporting “Stop the Drama, Vote Obama” t-shirts.
Now, I’m not sure to which of the associated election dramas the slogan originally referred, but the obvious [...]

My Ad Friends Send Me Great Links

Like this one.
In a rather unique project, someone has endeavored to purchase, prepare and photograph 100 packaged foods, comparing the product to its packaging photography. If I read the German-language  website correctly, all products were subsequently eaten.

About time we got around to food styling here. Should you wish, you may view all 100 comparisons by [...]

Most Effective Message Point of the Primaries: Clinton’s “35 Years”

Sometimes, after the dust settles on a project, PR people look around and think, “Wow. I thought we were going to be hit a lot harder on [INSERT PERCEIVED WEAKNESS] than we were. But it really didn’t come up much. Cool.”
When the tell-all books get written about the Clinton campaign (and I’m already looking forward to [...]

Bored ‘08

Watching the Obama and Clinton campaigns go more negative, petty and process-focused in daily increments, it occurs to me that the contest has suddenly become something neither campaign will welcome.
Wearisome.
An interesting communications challenge. How do you sustain something resembling supporter enthusiasm when the weeks ahead look to feature snarkiness, procedural battles and exchanges of 53%-47% primary wins leading [...]