Letters Remain

Author: Lloyd Morgan

  • Ted Kennedy’s Eulogy for Bobby Kennedy

    Earlier this week I listened to and read Ted Kennedy’s eulogy for his brother, Robert Kennedy. I had never heard this speech before and it is a fantastic oration worth listening to in full. However… I would advise listening to the speech on the embedded video while reading along so that you can hear the…

  • Map of Science

    By crunching data from more than a billion user interactions on scholarly databases, Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers produced a high-resolution map of the relationships between different fields of science. That’s from Wired where they display the ‘Map of Science‘ that was produced, in part, to “help researchers frame discipline-hopping questions and identify neglected cooperative opportunities”.…

  • 10 Design Commandments

    The 10 commandments of design , as set forth by Dieter Rams: Good design… is innovative makes a product useful is aesthetic helps a product to be understood is unobtrusive is honest is durable is thorough to the last detail is concerned with the environment is as little design as possible As Jason points out,…

  • Design Patterns for Errorproofing

    Persuasive technologies are those which are designed to change the attitudes or behaviours of users. Errorproofing, on the otherhand, is concerned not with behavioural change, but in ensuring certain behaviours are met. Errorproof technologies, then, are those which “[make] it easier for users to work without making errors, or [that make] errors impossible in the…

  • 13 + 17 Tips for Startups

    Two articles of fundamental startup tips, from two people who know what they’re talking about: Startups in 13 Sentences, by Paul Graham of Y Combinator. Of the 13 sentences, which one does Paul believe is the most important? Understand your users. That’s the key. The essential task in a startup is to create wealth; the…

  • Tournament of Books

    The fifth annual Tournament of Books is currently in progress. The tournament—dubbed the “battle royale of literary excellence”—pits 16 of the best novels published in the previous year against each other to find the winner of the coveted Rooster. Round one: 2666 vs. Steer Toward Rock Netherland vs. A Partisan’s Daughter The White Tiger vs.…

  • Recipes and Vegetables: Now and Then

    A study looking at recipes in ‘classic’ recipe books such as The Joy of Cooking has found an average 40% increase in calories per serving over the last 70 years—about an extra 77 calories—due, in part, to a vast increase in portion sizes. Lisa Young, an adjunct nutrition professor at New York University, had similar…

  • The Cult of Done

    The Cult of Done Manifesto is a compelling list of ‘rules’ for getting things done. I think the premise of The Cult of Done is: to do; to be unconcerned with failure; to learn from outcomes, be they good or bad. I particularly like the Rubix Cube manifesto poster. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and…

  • Periodic Table of Typefaces

    The Periodic Table of Typefaces is a fantastic visualisation of 100 of the most popular, influential and notorious typefaces available. Grouped by families and classes of typefaces ((sans-)serif, script, glyphic, grotesque, etc.), each ‘element’ lists the designer, the year designed and a ranking of 1 through 100. Sites used to calculate the ranking: The 100…

  • Paternal Age and Child Development

    Advanced paternal age at conception has previously been shown to affect the resulting child’s health in many ways. Now, advanced paternal age has also been associated with impaired neurocognitive abilities (“the ability to think and reason, including concentration, memory, learning, understanding, speaking, and reading”). Advanced paternal age showed significant associations with poorer scores on all of…