Letters Remain

Month: March 2008

  • 100 Best Last Lines

    The 100 best last lines from novels, as chosen by the American Book Review Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood; and how…

  • The 50 Most Powerful Blogs

    The Observer shows us their top 50 blogs, and the top 5 were: The Huffington Post Boing Boing TechCrunch Kottke Dooce via Kottke

  • The Man in Seat Sixty-One

    The Man in Seat Sixty-One has been one of my favourite travel websites for a few years now – it contains all the information you could ever hope to know about train travel around the world. Along with WikiTravel, this is an indispensable travel website: you’ll never buy an out-of-date travel book again! Many people…

  • The ‘Easy’ Way to Intelligent Asset Allocation

    NPR‘s All Things Considered recently profiled David Swensen and analysed his investing strategy (Swensen is Yale University’s head investor): Yale University recently announced a 23 percent return on its investments, swelling its endowment to a whopping $18 billion. The man behind that investment success is David Swensen, one of the most gifted investors in the…

  • Y Combinator and Starting a Startup

    Y Combinator is a seed-stage startup venture capital firm with a refreshingly novel outlook on venture capitalism. Their Startup Library provides a wonderful selection of links to stories, articles, and many other resources. Be careful; once you start thinking about going ‘startup’ you’re likely not to go back for a long, long time.

  • Official: Money Makes Us Happy, Happiness Makes Us Money

    Newsweek ran an article last year on the link between happiness and money. Here’s an executive summary: Money will make you happier, up to a point. After that, it makes no difference. That point is the wonderfully quantitative ‘point of comfort‘. If you’re happy you’ll typically earn more than those less happy than you. If…

  • Pavlov’s Musical Dog

    Back in early December 2007, I submitted one of my favourite Psychology jokes to Mind Hacks. The comic strip I sent in was duly posted along with some other interesting links: Ivan Pavlov and Brian Wilson – together at last! This rather unlikely combination seemed to spark a bit of interest, so here is a…

  • Heston Blumenthal and Cocktails of the Future

    I’ve mentioned the molecular gastronomist Heston Blumenthal before, but I’ve now been introduced to Eben Freeman, the Blumenthal of cocktails: a molecular mixologist from New York. On the international cocktail circuit, Eben Freeman is a massive celebrity. He is A + list. He is Madonna. He’s the future of cocktails, the future, perhaps, of alcohol…

  • Screenwipe with Bill O’Reilly and Adam Curtis

    I’ve just finished watching S4E3 of Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe with its hilarious commentary on modern news reporting… I didn’t realise how completely insane Bill O’Reilly is! Part two of the episode also shows a short film created by the exceptional Adam Curtis – creator of such incredible documentaries as The Century of the Self and…