Letters Remain

Month: December 2009

  • Writing Tips for Non-Writers

    Multiple Hugo Award-winner and Stargate Universe creative consultant John Scalzi offers ten writing tips for non-professional writers: Speak what you write. Punctuate, damn you. With sentences, shorter is better than longer. Learn to friggin’ spell. Don’t use words you don’t really know. Grammar matters, but not as much as anal grammar Nazis think it does. Front-load your point. Try…

  • Eliciting Quality Feedback

    Feedback is important, there’s no doubt, but obtaining quality feedback that is honest and of use can be difficult. After spending an evening with a person “oblivious to the social dynamics” of a situation, Ben Casnocha provides tips on obtaining honest feedback: For feedback on specifics — such as your participation at a dinner or a…

  • Self-Awareness and the Importance of Feedback

    It comes as no surprise to hear that we are poor at perceiving how others view us and are poor at recognising the true personality traits of those we observe, but it’s the extent to which this is true and methods we can use to overcome these ‘personality blind spots’ that I find interesting. When…

  • Apple’s Strategy of Rejecting ‘Social Media’

    Apple’s ‘rejection’ of the practices pundits “always say you should do to succeed in the Internet economy” isn’t unique, but it does make for interesting reading: Apple doesn’t blog; it doesn’t Tweet; it does little on Facebook; it doesn’t engage with its customer base. It doesn’t ask the “community” for feedback or rapidly iterate based…

  • Anatomy of a Price War

    With the recent Amazon–Walmart price war on books and the 1992 airline industry price war as the backdrop, James Surowiecki takes a look at how price wars start, how they can be avoided, and how to (possibly) win at them. The best way to win a price war, then, is not to play in the…

  • Grammar Precisionists, Rejoice!

    Jason points to a 10-question grammar challenge given to the students of a non-fiction workshop held by David Foster Wallace. It’s not a particularly easy challenge, made worse by the fact that my non-native English speaking girlfriend just beat my score comprehensively (this wasn’t a difficult feat, however). The answers are provided, and I particularly…

  • Environmental Effects of the Shipping Industry

    I don’t usually give much credence to Daily Mail articles—given the paper’s editorial stance and propensity for junk food news—but I made an exception for one penned by Fred Pearce, New Scientist‘s environmental consultant. Still not completely free from sensationalism, Pearce looks at the pollution emitted by the shipping industry, particularly some of the world’s largest…

  • Cultural Differences in Career Change Perceptions

    We all have career transitions throughout our lives—some by choice, some not. By interviewing workers from Austria, Serbia, Spain, China and the U.S., researchers have determined some cultural differences in how people perceive career transitions, and why they occur. Workers in the United States didn’t ever attribute a career transition to an external cause, such as…

  • Bertram Forer Experiments: Your Personalised Generic Profile

    Here is the ‘personalised’ personality profile as used in a 1948 experiment by Bertram Forer: You have a great need for other people to like and admire you. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage. While you have…

  • Applying Knowledge and Not Understanding Ourselves

    One of my favourite reads–the British Psychological Society’s (BPS) Research Digest–has recently published its 150th issue. To observe this occasion, Digest has asked what twenty-three psychologists still don’t understand about themselves. I’ve mentioned a number of the featured psychologists here before,  including Robert Cialdini, Alison Gopnik and Richard Wiseman. As Vaughan notes, many of those contributing to…