Letters Remain

Author: Lloyd Morgan

  • Most Borrowed Author in Britain

    For the second year in a row James Patterson has been announced as the UKā€™s most borrowed author. Interestingly, all is not as it seems: in calling Patterson “less aĀ novelist than a literary factory”, The Guardian notes thatĀ he actually employs a large number of writers to do the majority of his writing. Patterson and the…

  • The Storytelling of Ian McEwan

    I’ve never read any of Ian McEwan’s novels, but after reading a lot of intriguing stories about his writing style (specifically,Ā this articleĀ discussing McEwan’sĀ Enduring Love) I think I may have to add him to my reading list. This comprehensive look at Ian McEwan’s life and writingsā€”full of insights and observationsā€”will hopefully pique your interest too. viaĀ Arts…

  • Risk Analysis Education

    Ron Lieber of The New York Times asks, Could the current financial crisis be breeding an entire generation of risk averse traders? Kevin Brosious, a financial planner in Allentown, Pa., polled the students in his financial management class at DeSales University on the percentage of their portfolios they would allocate to stocks right now. The…

  • Academic Earth

    Academic Earth is the latest addition to my growing collection of online lectures from leading universities around the world. The site currently includes lectures from Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale on topics ranging from Entrepreneurship to Law, and Economics to Psychology.

  • The Urban Paradox

    With all the benefits cities bring to their inhabitants there are also numerous drawbacks; drawbacks that could, if not accounted for and studied, spell the end of cities as we currently know them. That’s the view of Geoffrey Westā€”president of the Santa Fe Instituteā€”as he discusses what needs to be done to safeguard the future…

  • The Places We Live

    The Places We Live exhibits awe-inspiring photos of slums in combination with stories from the people who inhabit them. Well worth enduring the Flashtastic interface for. In 2008, for the first time in history, more people will live in cities than in rural areas. One-third of these urban dwellersā€”more than 1 billion peopleā€“live in slums.…

  • The Trough of No Value

    The trough of no value is the concept that most objects go through fluctuations in their real-world worth: the trough is that seemingly never-ending time between used/junk and antique/collectible. Unfortunately the majority of my possessions fall into this category, including, it appears,Ā those vintage Wharfedale speakers that I was looking for this past weekend (apparently I…

  • Year One in Review

    366 days, 616 posts and 15,144 spam comments later, I am happy and proud to announce that Lone Gunman is now one year old (founded on February 29th 2008, I suppose it’s not even that, is it?). LG has evolved into something completely different to what I had first envisaged and the whole experience of…

  • Website Launch Checklist

    Here’sĀ a great checklist for when you’re developing and launching a new website, as produced by Dan Zambonini of Box UK. Topics covered include: Pre-Launch Content and Style Standards and Validation Search Engine Visibility, SEO and Metrics Functional Testing Security/Risk Performance Finishing Touches Post-Launch Marketing Ongoing via @zambonini

  • Two Reasons to Travel (Rational and Emotional)

    These two stories have had a powerful effect on me: Why economist Alex Tabarrok (of Marginal Revolution) decided to travel to Machu Picchu spontaneously: At lunch with Bryan and Tyler last week the question arose as to what we would do differently if we were immortal. Ā [ā€¦] Ā I answered that I would travel more. Later…