Letters Remain

Month: March 2010

  • The Blog’s Influence on Writing

    Philip Greenspun on how writing and publishing has evolved since the Internet and, specifically, the blog have become omnipresent in our lives: Suppose that an idea merited 20 pages, no more and no less? A handful of long-copy magazines […] would print 20-page essays, but an author who wished his or her work to be…

  • The CCTV Trade-Off

    That CCTV doesn’t substantially help in reducing crime has been shown beyond reasonable doubt, proposes Bruce Schneier, so now the pressing question is whether or not the benefits security cameras do afford are worthwhile. There are exceptions, of course, and proponents of cameras can always cherry-pick examples to bolster their argument. These success stories are…

  • The Evidence For (and Against) Health Supplements: a Visualisation

    After collating the results of over 1,500 studies and meta-studies (only “large, human, randomized placebo-controlled trials” were included), Information is Beautiful’s David McCandless collaborated with Andy Perkins to produce a comprehensive data visualisation mapping the the effectiveness (or not) of a wide range of health supplements (there’s a static image and interactive Flash version available).…

  • The Efficacy of Hand Sanitizers

    Given their prevalence in offices, hospitals and pharmacies (how naïve?), I would have thought the effectiveness of hand sanitizers would have been a lot greater than it is: In 2005, Boston-based doctors published the very first clinical trial of alcohol-based hand sanitizers in homes and enrolled about 300 families with young children in day care. For…

  • Fiction-Writing Rules, from Fiction Writers

    Inspired by Elmore Leonard’s lauded book of the same name, Ten Rules of Writing, The Guardian asks a selection of 28 authors (from Margaret Atwood to Will Self) for their ten rules of writing for the aspiring fiction author (part two). Elmore Leonard’s ten are included, and he summarises them with the following: My most important rule…

  • Social Networks and Their Far-Reaching Influence

    In a short and balanced review of Connected–“a scientific look at the ties that bind us together”–we are treated to some interesting findings on social networks and their myriad external effects–including how far these effects ‘travel’ through said networks. Controlling for environmental factors and the tendency of birds of a feather to flock together […]…

  • Things Every Programmer Should Know (Languages)

    As part of a continuing series*, O’Reilly requested “pearls of wisdom for programmers” from leading practitioners of the craft, publishing the responses. The end result is the O’Reilly Commons wiki, 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know. The contributions that appear in the final, published book are freely available as are sixty-eight further contributions that didn’t…