Letters Remain

Author: Lloyd Morgan

  • The Science of Persuasion

    Persuasion is not an art; it’s a science. That’s according to Yes!ā€”the book by social psychologists Robert Cialdini,Ā Noah Goldstein and Steve Martin that proposes to offer 50 ‘scientifically proven ways to be persuasive’.Ā  For his review of the book, Alex Moskalyuk lists these 50 ways to be persuasive, as gleamed from dozens of psychology studies.…

  • The Problems with Saving

    In 2007 the average American saved 0.6% of their income. By February of this year that had risen to more than 4%, but in the 1980s it was 10%. With this in mind, Tim Harford asks why are we such awful savers, and what can we do to improve the situation? Behavioral economists [ā€¦] have…

  • Advice for Design and Life, from Milton Glaser

    Milton Glaser, the designer best known for creating the ‘I ♥ NY’ logo, offers ten pieces of advice from a life in design: You can only work for people that you like: “all the work I had done that was meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with a client”. If you have…

  • The Introverted Traveller

    Starting with the declaration that “We introverts have a different style of travel, and I’m tired of hiding it”, Sophia Dembling looks at the differences in how introverts and extroverts travel, and what this means. I’m always happy enough when interesting people stumble into my path. It’s a lagniappe, and I’m capable of connecting with…

  • The Story of Big Numbers

    Physicist Albert Bartlett is quoted as saying that “the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function”. Starting with a thought experiment in which two competitors are challenged to come up with the bigger finite number, Scott AaronsonĀ has writtenĀ an accessible and fact-filled essay about large numbers, touching on topics…

  • Advice from Hoehn’s Year

    One year after setting his personal goals Charlie Hoehn takes a look back at his achievements and offers some fantastic advice: Your friends who don’t care or are stupid will use Monster, CareerBuilder, and Craigslist (I was one of these stupid people for a few weeks). They will compete with hundreds of people for mediocre…

  • Can Technology Solve Our Climate Problems?

    After reading Cambridge physicist David MacKay’s much lauded Sustainable Energy (free download available), the FT Economist Tim Harford worries that we are “too complacent about technological fixes for the twin problems of climate change and finite oil and gas reserves”. Harford suggests that if we contemplate the idea that technological progress may not solve these…

  • 25+ Etiquette

    Bringing to mind something I wrote about last week (The Quarterlife Crisis), this advice to those 25 and over is more etiquette lesson than antidote to the 20-something malaise. It is time, if you have not already done so, for you to emerge from your cocoon of post-adolescent dithering and self-absorption and join the rest…

  • Social Cognition and Staving Off Dementia

    A longitudinal study of health and mental lucidity in the agedā€”focusing on the huge retirement community of Laguna Woods Village south of Los Angelesā€”is starting to show some results. From studying members of the so-called ‘super memory club’ (people aged 90+ with near-perfect cognitive abilities) it is being suggested that not all mental activities are…

  • Learn Statistics, Damn You!

    Thanks to my moderate knowledge of statistics, I know that I have a lot more to learn in the field and should never make assumptions about data or analyses (even my own). Because of this I share a grievance with Zed Shaw who says thatĀ “programmers need to learn statistics or I will kill them all”.…