Letters Remain

Author: Lloyd Morgan

  • A Beginner’s Guide to SEO

    SEOmoz has done a lot for my perception of SEO companies: before I became aware of them a number of years ago, I was wary of the entire sector (with good reason, many would say). To help us all understand the world of legitimate SEO a bit better and to provide a primer on how…

  • Language’s Influence on Culture

    I’ve written before about Lera Boroditsky’s fascinating research into how language affects thinking, and a recent article by Boroditsky in The Wall Street Journal covers similar ground, asking Does language influence culture? The answer, it seems, is yes: Russian speakers, who have more words for light and dark blues, are better able to visually discriminate…

  • Stephen King on Writing Successfully

    It took Stephen King ten minutes to learn how to have a successful and financially rewarding career writing fiction and he believes he can teach us the same in ten minutes, too. King–author of countless novels and the much-lauded book on the craft, On Writing–starts with a short story of his youth followed by twelve tips professing…

  • The Advantage of Busywork: Happiness

    “We are happier when busy but our instinct is for idleness”, says Christopher Hsee, a researcher at the University of Chicago who has been studying the link between busyness and happiness. What this means is that work conducted merely to keep us busy (so-called busywork) can actually increase our happiness, despite what conventional wisdom suggests…

  • The Personal Business of Recommending Books

    For book recommendations, most of us rely on the suggestions of trusted friends and on word of mouth. This, at least, allows us to hold someone accountable for those inevitable poor recommendations. But what of ‘professional’ book recommenders (writers in publications, not algorithmic ‘recommenders’)? Laura Miller–author of the book recommendation Slate column, –looks at what…

  • Oil Spills and Nature’s Resilience

    Faced with an oil spill of the Deepwater Horizon‘s magnitude, nature is resilient and well-adapted to cope with the consequences–that is, provided we don’t try to clean it using methods that will do more damage. Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist (and many of my favourite popular science books), discusses what we should remember…

  • Privacy and Identity on the Internet

    Jeffrey Rosen, law professor at George Washington University (GWU), has called the current incarnation of the Internet “a digital world that never forgets” in a recent piece on privacy for the The New York Times. It’s an astute article looking at the idea of segmented identities, the search for a way to safely control our…

  • Foreign Accents Make Statements Less Trustworthy

    Due to the principles of processing fluency (also known as cognitive fluency, discussed here many times before), we know that information that is easier to process is perceived to be–among other features–more familiar, pleasant, truthful and less risky. A recent study has shown that this is also true for foreign accents: statements spoken by non-native…

  • Using Charity to Increase Voluntary Payments

    If a business is experimenting with voluntary pricing (‘pay-what-you-want’ pricing), to increase sales and profits give a portion of voluntary payments away to charity (and advertise the fact, naturally). That’s the conclusion from a study by researcher Ayelet Gneezy comparing a number of pricing plans involving–in various combinations–voluntary payments, fixed prices and charitable donations: At…

  • Life Advice Through Management Theory and Business Strategy

    When Harvard Business School’s class of 2010 invited professor Clayton Christensen (expert on disruptive technology and innovation, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma) to address them, they requested he talk on how to apply management theory principles to one’s personal life. Christensen responded by answering three questions: How can I be sure that I’ll be happy…