Letters Remain

Month: April 2009

  • Economics Lectures

    I was introduced to Stephen Kinsella—Junior Lecturer in Economics at Kemmy Business School, University of Limerick—through his beautiful looking economics presentations available on SlideShare. Of course, the problem with (the majority of) beautiful presentations is that they lack context and thus, without a voiceover, end up being a confusing set of beautiful pictures with scant text. Not…

  • The Art of Sand

    I initially passed over this Discover gallery but decided to take a look once @mocost linked to it. Who would have thought that sand had such diversity and beauty? Evidently Gary Greenberg did when he compiled these microscopic photographs of sand for his book, A Grain of Sand. Composed of the remnants of volcanic explosions, eroded mountains, dead…

  • Setting Goals: A Good Idea?

    Could setting goals be detrimental to achieving our targets? Yes, say a number of “management scholars” researching the issue, but only because they may lead to “bursts of intense effort in the short term” or be too narrow and poorly defined. The comprehensive article looking at their work has some interesting anecdotes and some good…

  • Overestimating the Paradox of Choice

    Are we overestimating the reach of the ‘too-much-choice effect’—the phenomenon first noted by Iyengar and Lepper (2000) [pdf] and popularised by Barry Schwartz as the paradox of choice? The theory states that, contrary to traditional economic principles, the more choice consumers have the less satisfied and less likely to decide they are. However, this from the…

  • Writing for a Living

    Award-winning author Colm Tóibín claimed earlier this year that he gains no enjoyment from writing.  The Guardian asked a slew of other authors whether or not they enjoyed writing for a living, and the answers were surprisingly mixed. This from the original interview with Colm Tóibín: I write with a sort of grim determination to deal with things…

  • The Zone of Essential Risk

    ‘The zone of essential risk’ is a term coined by Bob Blakely to describe the problem with rare, medium-sized transactions: If you conduct infrequent transactions which are also small, you’ll never lose much money and it’s not worth it to try to protect yourself – you’ll sometimes get scammed, but you’ll have no trouble affording…

  • Tales of Mere Existence

    My latest obsession, thanks to David, is Tales of Mere Existence: a series of musings on life’s quirks narrated by Levni Yilmaz (of IngredientX) as he doodles on some backlit paper. A couple of favourites: Theories and Observations about Youth and Aging Procrastination

  • Call-To-Action Buttons

    Call-to-action buttons are the buttons that web designers want visitors to click when interacting with their site (Signup, Purchase, Download, etc.). Tips on how to design these abound on the Internet, but David Hamill’s overview on how to design good call-to-action buttons and the difference they can make is one of the best I’ve seen recently.…

  • Creative Capitalism

    ‘Creative capitalism‘ is a term popularised by Bill Gates at the World Economic Forum in Davos, 2008. Here Gates delivered a speech saying that many of the world’s problems are “too big for philanthropy” and that the free-market capitalist system itself would have to solve them. Creative Capitalism: A Conversation has a transcript of Gates’ speech but it…

  • Obsession and Writing on the Web

    At SXSW 2009, John Gruber and Merlin Mann held a panel on “building a blog you can be proud of, trying to improve the quality of your work, reaching the people you admire, and maybe even making a buck”. The talk, available as a 43f Podcast on Mann’s site, is worth your time whether you…