There's a principle in physics called the law of conservation of energy which basically says that in an enclosed system, energy can't be destroyed, it can only be transferred. For example, the energy that is expended in rubbing two sticks together isn't lost, it is simply transferred into heat - a different kind of energy - and the amount of heat is proportional to the amount of effort that is put into rubbing the sticks together.

When the producers of neil labute's latest play, "Reasons to Be Pretty," held an open casting call in New York this January looking for "real people, with real bodies ... (no professional models)" to be photographed for the production's advertising campaign, fans of the writer-director-playwright may have had reason to be dubious. The cynical (and perhaps slightly schizoid) stage and screen work of LaBute - critics, though not the box office, took notice of his films In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors - has been characterized as everything from a genius, to pedantic and abrasive, to …

Despite your best intentions, your Google search for sweatshop-free socks spun of organic cotton isn't helping the environment as much as you'd like. That's because a typical Google search generates 7 grams of carbon dioxide, the gas responsible for global warming.

It was only the eighth day of the new year when the first magazine casualty of 2009 was trumpeted to the publishing world. Taking the first bullet? Country Home and its 40-strong staff, announced by Meredith as part of greater company-wide cost-cutting measures. Additional cutbacks were announced in 250 total company layoffs and the relocation of the creative functions of its ReadyMade and Parents.com properties (based in Berkeley, Calif. and New York City, respectively) to Meredith's corporate headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa. According to Meredith, the restructuring will cost $16 million.

You are hungry, so you go to your local grocery store and walk down the snack aisle. There, you find waiting for you hundreds and hundreds of bags filled with artery-clogging chips of every size and color. And then your eyes meet with the Pringles can. Comedian Mitch Hedberg once joked that Pringles meant to go into the tennis ball business, but then a truckload of potatoes showed up instead ("Pringles was a laid-back company"). For decades, the Pringles can alone has set it apart from its salty competitors. And now, those recognizable cans are receiving new life long after …

Until recently, we talked about the distinction between analog and digital as if one was better than the other. Nostalgia for rituals led some to abandon their digital cameras in favor of film and buy albums on vinyl instead of via iTunes. This is changing, though: The generations behind us have never lived in a world without the Internet, so they don't see a distinction between online and offline. Instead of competing, digital and analog channels are beginning to function together seamlessly, complementing and enhancing each other.

Turns out we're not creatures of habit when we watch television shows on the Web. The highest-rated on-air shows don't translate into online popularity, according to Watercooler, which runs the 16 million-strong tvloop.com online community on social networks like Facebook and MySpace.

It might turn out that the most unrealistic and Pollyannish aspect of the fake July 4, 2009, "Iraq War Ends" edition of The New York Times distributed by pranksters last November was that the phony front page contained no display ads. The New York Times had never sullied its front page with display ads, at least not until the fearful economic climate and plummeting ad revenue got the best of them.

Ads can basically pop up anywhere these days - from the newspaper to the phone to the road to the air to the coffee shop. The variety of innovative advertising formats suggests no pre-set limits for imagination. Not so when it comes to underlying strategies; they remain unwaveringly old school. The industry seems to cling to a convention that there are but two distinctive objectives a campaign can pursue: direct response or branding.

Make no mistake: It's clear that a recession, perhaps even a depression, is here. Consumer confidence has plummeted along with the markets. Advertising expenditures are being pulled back. What does this mean for research?