Letters Remain

  • Dava Sobel on Writing Science Books Full-Time

    Reflecting on her career as a science writer (she started as a technical writer at IBM before graduating into science journalism), Dava Sobel–author of the award-winning book Longitude–offers some thoughts on what it means to be a full-time author of popular science books:

    Both my parents loved to read, convincing me by their behavior that the best way to hold someone’s attention was with a book.

    The publication of Longitude in 1995 – and its unexpected success – transformed me into a full-time author of books. I greatly enjoy the more in-depth research required for book-length projects. Someone once said to me, “I would hate your job. It’s like writing one college term paper after another.” That’s exactly what it’s like, and exactly what I love best about it. People may have the impression that book tours and public appearances are the most exciting times in an author’s life. […] But writing is really about sitting alone in a room, and the highlights occur in that room, with no one else as witness, in the small moments of the day when the work goes well.

    Dava notes that she is currently working on a play about Copernicus: a piece she describes as “a complete departure” from her usual style, albeit with the familiar theme of “the great transformation of humankind’s worldview through science”.

    Of course science-book-as-play isn’t new: Tom Stoppard‘s Arcadia is a play “concerning the relationship between past and present and between order and disorder and the certainty of knowledge” that was shortlisted by the Royal Institution for the Best Science Book Ever award.

    via @mocost

    Tags:
     / / /

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Perceived Complexity and Will Power

    While willpower and dedication matter considerably in sustaining a resolution and reaching a desired goal, the perceived complexity of the process can have a big influence on whether we are likely to achieve that goal or not.

    This conclusion comes from a study showing how the subjective “cognitive complexity” of a diet was a major factor in whether people successfully managed to stick to a diet.

    “For people on a more complex diet […] their subjective impression of the difficulty of the diet can lead them to give up on it,” reported Peter Todd, professor in IU’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

    […] This effect holds even after controlling for the influence of important social-cognitive factors including self-efficacy, the belief that one is capable of achieving a goal like sticking to a diet regimen to control one’s weight.

    “Even if you believe you can succeed, thinking that the diet is cognitively complex can undermine your efforts.”

    This agrees with the conclusions drawn from separate research showing how some simple tricks to making successful resolutions include reducing our “cognitive load” and accepting the limitations of willpower.

    Willpower, like a bicep, can only exert itself so long before it gives out; it’s an extremely limited mental resource.

    Given its limitations, New Year’s resolutions are exactly the wrong way to change our behavior. […] Instead, we should respect the feebleness of self-control, and spread our resolutions out over the entire year. […] A tired brain, preoccupied with its problems, is going to struggle to resist what it wants, even when what it wants isn’t what we need.

    Tags:
     / / /

    Lloyd Morgan

  • The Evolution of the New Atheist Argument

    In summarising the main arguments for and against the New Atheist argument, Anthony Gottlieb provides a fairly even (yet far from comprehensive) account of the evolution of 21st century atheism.

    Through John Wisdom‘s 1944 Parable of the Invisible Gardener, Gottlieb looks at how the arguments of “religious apologists” such as Karen Armstrong are falling back on arguments grounded in unfalsifiable beliefs.

    The parable of the gardener [raises] an unsettlingly powerful point about the nature of faith. If you believe something, shouldn’t it be possible to say what would make that belief true or false? What is the content of your so-called belief in the existence of a God, or of a gardener, if you cannot say what difference his presence or absence would make to the world?

    Tags:
     / / / / /

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Richard Dawkins on the Labelling of Children

    Richard Dawkins on a video for the BBC’s Daily Politics discusses the religious and political labelling of children.

    I feel very strongly that it’s wrong to label children with the opinions of their parents.

    Nobody minds labelling a child an English child, or a French child, or a Dutch child. But you’d think I was mad if I started talking about a post-modernist child, or a Keynesian child, or a monetarist child, or a liberal child, or a conservative child.

    And yet the whole of our society quite happily buys into the idea that you can talk about a Catholic child, or a Protestant child, or a Muslim child, or a Hindu child. That’s surely got to be wrong; to assume that a child will automatically inherit the opinions of its parents about the universe, the cosmos and morality. This must be something that should be rectified.

    via @andrewpmsmith

    Tags:
     / / / /

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Buying Cashmere

    Like linen, buying cashmere is a matter of discovering the important metrics and discarding the unnecessary.

    The truth about quality cashmere is much more complex than simply looking for that pure cashmere label.

    Pure is not an absolute term. The finest cashmere consists only of the whitest, longest, thinnest hair from the underfleece, whereas lower-quality cashmere may be either the shorter, coarser hair from the undercoat–typically from the rear end of the animal rather than its belly–or, more dubiously, shorter hair that has either not been properly dehaired or, worse still, blended with yak or rabbit hair. […]

    Yet even cheap cashmere can feel lovely. It’s hard to know, as you queue at the till, whether your bargain will pill or sag within days. (Pilling afflicts expensive cashmere too, though it should stop after the first wash.) But there are subtle signs of quality, and once you’ve got your eye in, much of the cheaper cashmere on the market starts to seem a false economy.

    Look for tension in the knitting: stretch a section and it should ping back into shape. Hold it up to the light and you shouldn’t see much sky: paradoxically, the best cashmere, though made from the finest hair, has a density to it. Examine its surface: fluffiness suggests the yarn was spun from shorter, weaker fibres and will pill. Be sceptical about softness, too. Over-milling can make a garment too soft and silky, and therefore prone to bobbling and losing its shape. More expensive cashmere may be harder to handle in the shop, but will ease up with wear and hand-washing. The best cashmere actually improves with age–so long as the moths don’t get to it.

    Tags:

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Buying Linen: Thread Count Marketing

    Remember that numerical specifications drastically influence our choices: even if they’re meaningless and contradict our personal experience?

    The same goes for thread count, it seems: Textiles expert Mark Scheuer calls it a “marketing ploy” and tells you to forget about it when purchasing, while Linenplace says it is a metric we should consider–just not the most important one–offering ‘the truth about thread count’ (via Kottke):

    In a quality product, the incremental comfort value of increasing thread count over 300 is very little. A 300 thread count can feel far superior to a 1000 thread count. Thread count has become a simple metric used by marketing people to capture interest and impress with high numbers. The problem with mass produced high thread count sheets is that to keep the price down, important elements of quality must be sacrificed, meaning in the end the customer gets a product with an impressive thread count but that probably feels no better (or even worse) than something with a lower thread count.

    Toronto-based Au Lit Fine Linens goes one further, suggesting that while thread count is important, where the cotton is grown (its quality) and where and how it is woven is what matters most.

    Egyptian cotton is acknowledged to be the finest cotton in the world, just as the Italians are renowned for their long-standing tradition of weaving. The softness of your sheets depends more on the quality of the fiber, which is why a 220 thread-count sheet can feel softer than a 500 thread-count sheet that uses an inferior grade of cotton or a twisted thread. (The lower thread-count sheet using Egyptian cotton and woven in Italy will also last longer than a higher thread-count sheet woven from inferior cotton.)

    The crux: ignore thread count, buy 100% Egyptian cotton woven in Italy.

    Tags:
     / /

    Lloyd Morgan

  • The Relationship Between Boasting and Arrogance

    In certain situations boasting about one’s achievements is a necessary evil (I’m British, OK?). It’s a delicate thing to do correctly and there are strategies to successfully avoid the situation completely[1].

    When you must brag, however, research has shown in what circumstances a person’s boasting comes across as self-absorbed arrogance and when it comes across as justified in the context of the conversation.

    The crux of it: context is everything when it comes to boasting. If Avi’s friend raised the topic of the exams, Avi received favourable ratings in terms of his boastfulness and likeability, regardless of whether he was actually asked what grade he got. By contrast, if Avi raised the topic of the exams, but failed to provoke a question, then his likeability suffered and he was seen as more of a boaster.

    In other words, to pull off a successful boast, you need it to be appropriate to the conversation. If your friend, colleague, or date raises the topic, you can go ahead and pull a relevant boast in safety. Alternatively, if you’re forced to turn the conversation onto the required topic then you must succeed in provoking a question from your conversation partner. If there’s no question and you raised the topic then any boast you make will leave you looking like a big-head.

    However, as noted at Mind Hacks, this study was conducted in Israel and there are obviously going to be regional variations:

    I’ve informally noticed that the social acceptability of ‘talking oneself up’ varies greatly between countries – from the USA, where moderate self-praise is standard social currency, to the UK, where it is only acceptable when followed by a self-deprecating comment or joke, to Sweden where it is only acceptable when one is threatened by armed men or the future of the world hangs in the balance.

    [1] Ben Casnocha suggests:

    In a group setting with impressive people (conference, dinner party, etc) have a third person introduce each person instead of self-introductions. You can’t brag about yourself. A third party can.

    Tags:
     /

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Reasons for Compassion and Charity

    Tackling the idea that human empathy is self-serving, Dacher Keltner, for UC Berkeley’s Greater Good magazine, reviews a number of studies looking at why we are compassionate.

    In other research by Emory University neuroscientists James Rilling and Gregory Berns, participants were given the chance to help someone else while their brain activity was recorded. Helping others triggered activity in […] portions of the brain that turn on when people receive rewards or experience pleasure. This is a rather remarkable finding: helping others brings the same pleasure we get from the gratification of personal desire.

    The brain, then, seems wired up to respond to others’ suffering—indeed, it makes us feel good when we can alleviate that suffering. But do other parts of the body also suggest a biological basis for compassion?

    That’s the biological view on compassion, but what about other views? Ryan Sager looks at altruism from an evolutionary psychology standpoint.

    Studies seem to indicate that perceived altruism enhances attractiveness. [One study] for instance, finds that “cooperative behavior increases the perceived attractiveness of the cooperator.” (The same study also finds that people are more altruistic toward people who are attractive — but you probably already knew that.) Likewise, [a] paper in the British Journal of Psychology finds evidence that women have a significant preference for altruistic mates, more so than men.

    via Arts and Letters Daily

    Tags:
     / /

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Charitable Donations: The Problem of Restricted Funds

    By donating funds to disaster-specific charitable organisations and campaigns we restrict the use of our funds to the relief of that problem only. This can cause long-lasting issues for charities and worldwide disaster recovery efforts in the future.

    To ensure the charitable help best, the charitable should ensure they give unrestricted funds that are not earmarked for specific disasters.

    [Médecins Sans Frontières] has already received enough money over the past three days to keep its Haiti mission running for the best part of the next decade. MSF is behaving as ethically as it can, and has determined that the vast majority of the spike in donations that it’s received in the past few days was intended to be spent in Haiti. It will therefore earmark that money for Haiti, and try to spend it there over the coming years, even as other missions, elsewhere in the world, are still in desperate need of resources. […]

    The last time there was a disaster on this scale was the Asian tsunami, five years ago. And for all its best efforts, the Red Cross has still only spent 83% of its $3.21 billion tsunami budget — which means that it has over half a billion dollars left to spend. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that’s money which could be spent in Haiti, if it weren’t for the fact that it was earmarked. […]

    If a charity is worth supporting, then it’s worth supporting with unrestricted funds. Because the last thing anybody wants to see in a couple of years’ time is an unseemly tussle over what happened to today’s Haiti donations, even as other international tragedies receive much less public attention.

    Tags:
     / / /

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Resources for Community Building

    Richard Millington—online community builder for the UNHCR and one of Seth Godin’s 2008 interns—has compiled over 100 of his best posts from the previous two years.

    There’s a wealth of valuable information at FeverBee and this list is a great introduction to the topic of community building. A few of the twelve categories Millington has used in organising his posts:

    • Pre-Launch and Strategy
    • Building An Online Community Website
    • Increasing Participation
    • Measurement/ROI
    • Monetizing
    Tags:
     / / /

    Lloyd Morgan