Letters Remain

Category: interesting

  • Optimum Starting Prices for Negotiations and Auctions (and Why)

    A high initial offer in negotiations is more likely to lead to a high final price, yet in auctions a low start price is more likely to lead to a high final price. These are the findings of a recent study that attempted to find the optimal starting prices for negotiations and auctions. In negotiations…

  • Grammar Precisionists, Rejoice!

    Jason points to a 10-question grammar challenge given to the students of a non-fiction workshop held by David Foster Wallace. It’s not a particularly easy challenge, made worse by the fact that my non-native English speaking girlfriend just beat my score comprehensively (this wasn’t a difficult feat, however). The answers are provided, and I particularly…

  • Environmental Effects of the Shipping Industry

    I don’t usually give much credence to Daily Mail articles—given the paper’s editorial stance and propensity for junk food news—but I made an exception for one penned by Fred Pearce, New Scientist‘s environmental consultant. Still not completely free from sensationalism, Pearce looks at the pollution emitted by the shipping industry, particularly some of the world’s largest…

  • Seven Psychological Principles Con Artists Exploit

    Inherent human vulnerabilities need to be taken into account when designing security systems/processes, suggests a study that looks at a dozen confidence tricks from the UK TV show The Real Hustle to determine recurring behavioural patterns con artists use to exploit victims. The study was a collaboration between Frank Stajano of the University of Cambridge…

  • (Preventing) Manipulation Through Irrationality

    Through the theories discussed in Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational (and largely based on the excerpts in Chris Yeh’s outline of the book), two articles have emerged on different sides of one topic: our irrational decision-making in terms of products and purchases. One on how to take advantage of our irrationality when marketing products, and another…

  • Financial Equivalents of Life Events

    Willingness to pay to prevent traumatic life events is “the relevant standard” for measuring the hurt they inflict upon a person. This is according to Robin Hanson, responding to comments in an earlier article of his (previously) where he suggested that as cuckoldry “is a bigger reproductive harm than rape, so we should expect a…

  • Incidence and Prevention of ‘Non-Paternity Events’

    A non-paternity event is a situation whereby the biological father of a child is “someone other than who it is presumed to be”. Typically this involves some form of paternity fraud. In one of the most gut-wrenching articles I’ve read in months (due to the many human interest stories in the article, no doubt), the surprising incidence…

  • Why We Make Lists

    One of the current exhibitions being held in the MusĂ©e du Louvre, Paris has been curated by author and consistent top intellectual, Umberto Eco. The Infinity of Lists, as the exhibition is called, looks at the human fascination with lists and how they have progressed cultures. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It…

  • 100 Tips for Providing Perfect Restaurant Service

    Bruce Buschel–author, co-creator of a musical, director and producer–is opening a seafood restaurant in New York. In his Small Business column for The New York Times he offers 100 tips to ‘restaurant staffers’ (waiting staff) on how to behave front of house (that’s the first 50 tips; here are the second 50). I (unexpectedly) found myself agreeing with…

  • In Defence of Fixed Service Charges (or: Why Only Tip for Service?)

    Tipping: that most contentious of issues that–depending on your location–can be illegal, required, or the most heinous of etiquette crimes. It’s a complicated business (as the Wikipedia entry indicates by the size of the Tipping by region section), and an odd and occasionally uncomfortable tradition. As a self-proclaimed ‘socially awkward Briton’ David Mitchell laments the…