Letters Remain

Month: August 2009

  • The Macbeth Effect and Moral Colours

    The Macbeth effect is the tendency for people who have acted or thought in an immoral or unethical manner to want to clean themselves physically as a kind of surrogate for actual moral cleansing. Researchers looking at this effect wondered about other interesting characteristics of moral psychology which led them to devising a test for…

  • Entrepreneurial Reads and Annual Reads

    I’m a real sucker for book lists. Entrepreneurial Reads is a wiki list of suggested reading for entrepreneurs. The list contains books written specifically for entrepreneurs (e.g. The E-Myth Revisited) in addition to much fiction containing entrepreneurial lessons (e.g. The Fountainhead). That link came via What Books Are Worth Reading Once Per Year?–a post by…

  • Kodak and Brand Naming

    While reading about the history of the Eastman Kodak Company (more commonly known just as Kodak) I came across this titbit about the Kodak name which seemed like sound advice for naming a product or brand: The letter “K” had been a favorite of Eastman’s, he is quoted as saying, “it seems a strong, incisive…

  • Computing and the Climate

    In what appears to be a bit of an advertisement for climateprediction.net–a distributed computing project to test the accuracy of various computer models of climate change–The Economist looks at the impact of computing on the environment; specifically carbon dioxide emissions. According to a report published by the Climate Group, a think-tank based in London, computers,…

  • Information Gaps and Knowledge Rewards

    Starting with two great examples of marketing through curiosity (the Hot Wheels mystery car and California Pizza Kitchen’s Don’t Open It thank you card), Stephen Anderson looks at how you can use ‘information gaps’ to drive curiosity and then interaction with your customers. Information can be presented in a manner that is straightforward or curious.…

  • Text as UI (On Twitter)

    Putting me in mind of Dustin Curtis’ multivariate ‘split’ testing to increase click-through rates to his Twitter profile (previously), Jakob Nielsen discusses his iterative design process for a Twitter message advertising his latest usability conference. The message went from, Announcing LAS VEGAS and BERLIN as the venues for our biggest usability conference of the year http://bit.ly/UsabilityWeek…

  • All About Placebo

    Wired has published what must be one of the most comprehensive articles looking at the phenomenon of the placebo effect. From its humble beginnings in WWII with anesthetist Henry Beecher to the placebo’s transition from being treated as a purely psychological trait to a physiological one; there’s some great material here. Two comprehensive analyses of…

  • A Guide to Speed Reading

    The PX Project is a single 3-hour “cognitive experiment” designed to increase your reading speed. Average increases using the technique are apparently in the region of 386%. The technique seems to involve three steps: Minimize the number and duration of fixations per line. Eliminate regression and back-skipping. Use conditioning drills to increase horizontal peripheral vision…

  • Art and the Brain

    Jonah Lehrer, a neuroscientist and writer I’ve mentioned many times, has a wonderful article in Psychology Today that looks at the field of neuroaesthetics and how the brain interprets art. All the adjectives we use to describe art-vague words like “beauty” and “elegance”-should, in theory, have neural correlates. According to these scientists, there is nothing…

  • The Ambiguity of Sex

    I’m not a big follower of athletics, but two news items have somehow made their way to my mental inbox from the IAAF World Athletics Championships in Berlin: how ridiculously fast Usain Bolt is, and the controversy surrounding Caster Semenya. On the latter, Caster is currently undergoing gender verification tests and in the process has…