Rocky Balboa, Philadelphia, PA. Creative Commons licensed picture by seng1011 (steve eng) on Flickr. [This post is part of an ongoing series about impact factors] In the world of abused performance metrics, the impact factor is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the (publishing) world. It has been an eventful year in the boxing ring of scientific publishing since the last set of figures were published by Thomson-Reuters.

If you are not interested in Football Science [1,2], look away now. Normal service will be resumed shortly. Professor Gary Lineker has an intriguing idea: “Football is a simple game;

Oracle Inc. Headquarters, Silicon Valley, California. CC-licensed Picture by (nz)dave on Flickr. … if it hasn’t done already In California the streets aren’t paved with Gold, they are paved with Silicon. Many a Californian has made their fame and fortune from Silicon-based commerce. Facebook, Google, Twitter, Oracle, Apple the list goes on and on. Silicon paves the streets of Silicon Valley.

Mr David Rutley MP House of Commons London SW1A 0AA Dear David, The “Geek Manifesto” and the importance of science in politics Please find enclosed a copy of a new book by Mark Henderson, titled “The Geek Manifesto: Why Science Matters”. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.

The Alan Turing statue at Bletchley Park.

It’s Friday, so here’s another one of those cool RSA Animate videos by Cognitive Media. This one is narrated by Microsoftie Manuel Lima and describes how the tree structures that we know and love, such as the infamous tree of life are becoming inadequate for organising knowledge, despite having been useful for thousands of years.

Dear Professor Nurse Fellows of the Wiki Society? To improve public engagement with Science and Scientists, the Royal Society should employ a wikipedian in residence. Here’s why: The Royal Society is a National Academy of Science which represents some of the world’s leading scientists.

Are you a Physicist or a Stamp Collector? Creative commons licensed image via DigitalTribes on Flickr. The Life Scientific is a series of interviews by Jim Al-Khalili of high profile scientists. It’s a bit like Desert Island Discs without the music and with more interesting guests. If you missed them on the radio, you can download the lot as a podcast. Here’s a good example of an interview with John Sulston on the Physics vs.

The British Monarchy are preparing to exploit new advertising opportunities and boost royal revenue during the 2012 Olympics in London. Photo credit: gokart.co.uk. Advertising agencies are everywhere, there is no escaping them. But who’s the daddy of the advertising world? The mother of all ad agencies? According to wikipedia, WPP is the “world’s largest advertising group by revenues”. This is hogwash.

Two hundred light painting by B. Rosen, via  Flickr available by Creative Commons license According to the software which runs this site, this is the 200th post here at O’Really ? To mark the occasion, here are some stats via WordPress with thoughts and general navel-gazing analysis paralysis [1] on web analytics.

“This is how it feels to be City, this is how it feels to be small, this is how it feels when your team wins nothing at all.”  [1,3] If you are not interested in Football Science, look away now.