Letters Remain

Month: January 2009

  • A Look at our Sense of Touch

    Primal, Acute and Easily Duped: Our Sense of Touch is a recent article from Pulitzer Prize-winning Natalie Angier (author of The Canon: The Beautiful Basics of Science) taking a rudimentary look at the sense of touch and some recent research in the field of haptics. Scientists have determined that the human finger is so sensitive…

  • Search Flickr by Lens, Aperture, Focal Length, More

    Pixel-Peeper lets you search Flickr photos taken with a specific camera or lens (and optionally, a specific ISO, aperture, focal length and/or exposure time). An excellent resource for when you want to check the diversity of—and see some sample images from—that new lens you’re considering. via FlickBits (a huge list of Flickr applications)

  • Workforce Cuts vs. Wage Cuts

    As part of the excellent Lectures on Macroeconomics series, Arnold Kling discusses why companies tend to cuts jobs rather than wages in times of hardship. The core arguments: Cutting wages is not standard practice, therefore: The best workers will leave and seek better opportunities: it’s better to choose which workers to lose. Wage cuts demoralise, harming…

  • Misunderstanding and Rethinking Expertise

    The public’s distrust of scientific experts has been growing in recent years, as is worryingly evident with subjects such as Creationism and particle physics (think: the LHC)—but why is this happening? Harry Collins and Robert Evans, sociologists at my alma mater, Cardiff University, believe it has to do with a “misunderstanding of expertise itself”. They talk…

  • Trends in Counterfeit Currency

    Bruce Schneier comments on the growing prevalence of low-tech currency counterfeiting: “Counterfeits are becoming easier to detect while people are becoming less skilled in detecting it”. Part of the problem, Green said, is that the government has changed the money so much to foil counterfeiting. With all the new bills out there, citizens and even…

  • Corruption in the (Legal) Drug Trade

    Marcia Angell reviews three books for The New York Review of Books and in the process creates an article that acts like an in-depth primer on the whole sordid business of “fraud, undisclosed payments, data burying and off-label promotion that pervades the pharmaceutical industry”. Like David Balan on Overcoming Bias, I felt this was the most damning admission…

  • The Power of Your Smallest Finger

    I completely forgot about this article on the astonishing power of your little finger until David’s post reminded me of its existence (and the most surprising fact therein). So what would you lose if you didn’t have one? “You’d lose 50 percent of your hand strength, easily…” via Seed

  • Short Introduction to Molecular Gastronomy

    A (very) short introduction to molecular gastronomy, by Jonah Lehrer for The Boston Globe. In the graphic four tips are shared which we can all add to our culinary repertoires right away (if you haven’t already): Don’t fret about salting meat For juicy meats, don’t sear: you’re evaporating the juices. Pasta sticking together? Don’t add oil, add…

  • Richard Dawkins and Derren Brown on Psychics

    For the documentary The Enemies of Reason the ‘psychological illusionist’ Derren Brown gets interviewed by Richard Dawkins, and the two discuss psychics and the techniques they use (e.g. Forer—or Barnum—effects). This hour-long ‘uncut’* interview also covers Derren’s fascinating account of moving from faith to scepticism to atheism: definitely worth a watch, even if you already…

  • How to Do What You Love

    Paul Graham, he of Y Combinator fame, offers up some learned and insightful advice on how to do what you love. What you should not do […] is worry about the opinion of anyone beyond your friends. You shouldn’t worry about prestige. Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world. When you can…