Letters Remain

  • Blogs as Wunderkammern

    Wunderkammer, or Cabinets of Curiosities/Wonder, could be classed as collections of objects that fascinate or interest the collector. I suppose you could say that Jay Walker’s personal library is a type of wunderkammer, and quite an impressive one at that.

    Heather McDougal suggests that blogs are a type of wunderkammer, and I’m inclined to agree. I definitely view Lone Gunman as a “personal taxonomy”.

    Blogging, more than any cultural technology, allows for an approach to wonder in an intimate and often apparently whimsical environment: bloggers present a collection of images, ideas, and objects in a style and order specific to his or her own vision: a personal taxonomy. The software encourages the collection to be accessed according to flexible parameters, allowing movement through different kinds of “rooms”, depending on the viewer’s interests.

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Sine Wave Speech: How Prior Knowledge Affects Perception

    Sine wave speech

    Essentially, what initially sounds like random whistling sounds comes together as coherent speech when you know what you’re listening out for.

    via Mind Hacks

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Can Perfume be Art?

    Angus Trumble, curator of paintings and sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art, asks, why is great perfume not taken more seriously?

    The parallels between what ought to be more properly regarded as sister arts are undeniable. Artists and colourmen combine natural and, these days, synthetic pigments with media such as oils and resins, much as the perfumer carefully formulates natural and synthetic chemical compounds. The Old Masters deployed the first across the colour spectrum, and applied layers on a determining ground and various kinds of under-painting, slowly building up to the surface through wet on wet, or at times wet on dry, completing their work with thin glazes on top. […] So, too, talented “noses” experiment with complex configurations of olfactory elements and produce in symphonic combination many small sensations, at times discordant, sweet, bitter, melancholy, or happy as the case may be.

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Upping the Odds of Startup Success

    After debunking the myth that only one-in-ten startups succeed (the rate of success is more likely around 60-70%), Dan Kehrer offers us four key factors that improve the odds of new business survival:

    1. People. If you can afford to hire employees, do it. Well-staffed businesses have better survival rates than solo operations.
    2. Startup capital of at least $50,000. Not easy, perhaps, but businesses that start with less have higher failure rates.
    3. A college degree for the owner. Better yet, enroll in a college-based entrepreneurship program and learn the ropes before you get started.
    4. Home beginnings. To keep costs low, start initial stages of your business from a home office. Businesses that start this way and then move into bigger digs have higher success rates.

    Lloyd Morgan

  • The Napoleon Dynamite Problem

    Or maybe, “The One Million Dollar Algorithm”.

    A competition to improve the recommendation engine of the online DVD rental company, Netflix, has been running in to problems.

    As the contestants edge toward an improvement rate of 10% (the point at which the $1,000,000 prize will be awarded), their progress grinds to a halt thanks to a small selection of films that are notoriously divisive and difficult to predict. The New York Times reports that this problem is being called the Napoleon Dynamite Problem:

    Mathematically speaking, “Napoleon Dynamite” is a very significant problem for the Netflix Prize. Amazingly, Bertoni has deduced that this single movie is causing 15 percent of his remaining error rate. […] And while “Napoleon Dynamite” is the worst culprit, it isn’t the only troublemaker. A small subset of other titles have caused almost as much bedevilment among the Netflix Prize competitors. When Bertoni showed me a list of his 25 most-difficult-to-predict movies, I noticed they were all similar in some way to “Napoleon Dynamite” — culturally or politically polarizing and hard to classify, including “I Heart Huckabees,” “Lost in Translation,” “Fahrenheit 9/11,” “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou,” “Kill Bill: Volume 1” and “Sideways.”

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Transport and Development in West Africa

    Tim Harford, the Undercover Economist, takes a look at the problems with the transportation network in west Africa and discusses how this is a major factor in the region’s stunted development.

    Pity the entrepreneur who wants to do business under such conditions. If goods travel at 75 miles a day […] it is almost impossible to import materials or export products profitably from Africa’s backwaters. The economic geographers Nuno Limão and Tony Venables have estimated that high transport costs explain almost all of Africa’s economic isolation. Certainly, exporters have not been able to take full advantage of US and EU trade concessions.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • The Nerd Handbook and Caring for Your Introvert

    Rands In Repose’s Nerd Handbook is an essay on understanding geeks; from our insatiable appetite for knowledge to our hard-to-decipher social interaction ‘skills’. The Handbook is at times painfully precise.

    The nerd has based his career, maybe his life, on the computer, and as we’ll see, this intimate relationship has altered his view of the world. He sees the world as a system which, given enough time and effort, is completely knowable. This is a fragile illusion that your nerd has adopted, but it’s a pleasant one that gets your nerd through the day. When the illusion is broken, you are going to discover that…

    Your nerd has control issues
    Your nerd has built himself a cave
    Your nerd loves toys and puzzles
    Nerds are fucking funny
    Your nerd has an amazing appetite for information
    Your nerd has built an annoyingly efficient relevancy engine in his head
    Your nerd might come off as not liking people

    I see a lot of myself here, and I’ll have to remember to send this to any future prospective Mrs Morgans. In fact, while I’m at it, maybe I should also send them The Atlantic‘s article on caring for your introvert… they share a lot in common with us.

    Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?

    […]

    If you answered yes to these questions, chances are that you have an introvert on your hands—and that you aren’t caring for him properly.

    How can I let the introvert in my life know that I support him and respect his choice?

    First, recognize that it’s not a choice. It’s not a lifestyle. It’s an orientation.
    Second, when you see an introvert lost in thought, don’t say “What’s the matter?” or “Are you all right?”
    Third, don’t say anything else, either.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • Gladwell, Journo-gurus, and Anecdotes as Science

    You can guarantee that whenever Malcolm Gladwell brings out a book he’ll make headlines. And with his latest book having recently been released, here are a number of interesting and contrasting views.

    First (via Kottke, and in Gladwell’s own words), what to expect from Outliers: though the story of Sidney Weinberg, from high-school dropout to senior partner at Goldman Sachs, Gladwell asks whether underpriviledged outsiders (outliers?) have an advantage.

    Next, in an article that is possibly slightly too long, New York Magazine profiles Gladwell and reviews Outliers. Afterwards I find myself agreeing with the comments of Mind Hacks‘ Vaughan: I found Gladwell’s previous books intruiging but didn’t quite “get the punchline”. The Tipping Point was excellent as a collection of psychology and sociology anecdotes, but I read it in record time as even my cursory knowledge of these two fields equipped me with prior knowledge of almost everything in the book.

    Next, More Intelligent Life coins the phrase “journo-gurus” in an article looking at the rise of journlists as consultants.

    These journo-gurus are not just sharp observers of business, but sharp practitioners too. They have mastered the dark arts of synergy and global branding. They churn articles into books and books into lectures. […] Friedman dreams up Madison Avenue phrases that stick in the mind, such as the “golden straitjacket” for foreign investment. Gladwell turns complex business ideas into engaging narrative. Anderson has broken with convention by inviting readers of his blog to debate his arguments before they reach the presses.

    Finally, Joel Spolsky takes the reigns to criticise these ‘journo-gurus’, saying something I’ve been thinking but in a much better way than I could ever have managed:

    Anecdotes disguised as science, self-professed experts writing about things they actually know nothing about, and amusing stories disguised as metaphors for how the world works.

    […]

    This is not the way to move science forward. On Sunday Dave Winer [partially] defined “great blogging” as “people talking about things they know about, not just expressing opinions about things they are not experts in (nothing wrong with that, of course).” Can we get some more of that, please? Thanks.

    A number of these articles come as a refreshing change as Gladwell is becoming the Coen brothers of journalism… everything he touches is gold, whether it is or not.

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    Lloyd Morgan

  • The Nature of Gender

    Using the story of 8-year-old Brandon, The Atlantic discusses the nature of gender, and the issues of ‘treating’ gender identity disorder in children.

    It took the gay-rights movement 30 years to shift from the Stonewall riots to gay marriage; now its transgender wing, long considered the most subversive, is striving for suburban normalcy too. The change is fuelled mostly by a community of parents who, like many parents of this generation, are open to letting even preschool children define their own needs.

    I, somewhat prematurely, hope that as a parent I’ll strive to bestow gender-neutral toys on my child(ren) and attempt not to force gender roles on them.  ‘Til then I’m left pondering; is ‘gender’ a physical, psychological, or societal construct?

    via Mind Hacks

    Lloyd Morgan

  • Pleasure and the Multiplicity of Self

    The Atlantic has a fascinating article on the psychology of pleasure, where the author suggests that we each consist of multiple selves, all in conflict, vying for control and separate desires.

    Of particular interest is the act of self-binding—the taking of actions to prevent a later ‘self’ succumbing to temptation—and its development.

    I recently studied young children’s understanding of self-binding, by showing them short movies of people engaged in self-binding and other behaviors and asking them to explain what was going on. The children, aged 4 to 7, easily grasped that someone might put a video game on a high shelf so that another person couldn’t get it. But self-binding confused them: they were mystified when people put away the game so that they themselves couldn’t get hold of it.

    But even though young children don’t understand self-binding, they are capable of doing it.

    To demonstrate this ability, the article discusses the ‘marshmallow experiment’ (discussed previously in the context of self-control), and goes on to suggest that even pigeons can self-bind.

    via Mind Hacks

    Lloyd Morgan