Letters Remain

Month: October 2008

  • List of Eponymous Laws and Adages

    We’ve all heard of them: Boyle’s Law, Keynes’ Law, Metcalfe’s and Murphy’s. Wikipedia’s list of eponymous laws is your one-stop resource for those observations and predictions that are named after a person. For others that don’t make the cut, see the ‘adages’ category.

  • American Conservative Intelligentsia Voting Obama

    I’m slowly losing interesting in the U.S. presidential election now that the result seems inevitable (get on with the inauguration already). However, the Obama–McCain dance-off video (via Kottke) combined with a feature in the latest The American Conservative, has temporarily piqued my interest again. In said feature, The Right Choice?, 18 prominent conservatives were asked…

  • How to Win the Man Booker Prize

    Earlier this week I started reading a Man Booker winner for the first time: Vernon God Little. I’ve heard on good authority that it’s a great book and so far it’s living up to its reputation. As chairman of the 2008 Man Booker panel, Michael Portillo has been interviewed by The Economist and reflects on…

  • Charlie Brooker’s American Road Trip

    With a lengthy US road trip in the pipeline (’09 or ’10, hopefully), I was pleased to read Charlie Brooker’s commentary on his recent excursion to “the Kingdom of Road Trips”. My ideal holiday is a road trip. All that variety! And sitting down! It’s like watching television, but better, because every so often you…

  • Eunoia: Beautiful Thinking

    Christian Bok’s Eunoia sounds like an interesting read. The BBC has a review of the book, complete with some (interesting) excerpts: Eunoia is the shortest word in English containing all five vowels – and it means “beautiful thinking”. It is also the title of Canadian poet Christian Bok’s book of fiction in which each chapter…

  • Higher IQ = Longer Life

    According to Lab Notes, new research is suggesting that a higher IQ is an indication that you may live a longer life. A number of recent studies have been finding that people who score lower on intelligence tests (notice how careful I am not to say “smarter people”) tend to die earlier than those who…

  • Sex Map

    Remember xkcd’s map of online communities? Well, Franklin Veaux has gone and done the same… but for sex. I always thought I was pretty well-versed in slang of all types, but the sex map tells a different story. Hopefully this isn’t a sign of ageing. via Rudius

  • 10 Tips for Achieving Intense Productivity

    RSD’s Tyler gives us some tips for achieving periods of intense productivity by avoiding the ‘garbage in, garbage out’ problem (plus some comments): Remove the Internet from your house A bit extreme for me, but limiting its use is undoubtedly a good idea. Remove television from your house I don’t watch ‘broadcast’ TV anyway: it’s…

  • Web App User Flow Library

    In designing any application, creating efficient and easy user flows is crucial to user engagement. Of course, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. Product Planner provides user flows from successful web applications to help others learn from them.

  • Glow in the Dark Animals

    ‘Mr. Green Genes’ is a transgenic cat that glows in the dark. As a huge fan of both cats and science, I think this may be my ideal pet. From the ScienceBlogs Weekly Recap: The cat’s DNA [has been injected] with a gene for green fluorescent protein (GFP), to easily visualize whether the protein was…