The Inky Fool on English place names
Silent for too long, the wonderful Inky Fool returns with a handy guide to decoding English place names: Borough = Fortification Burn/Bourne = Stream Bury = Manor or estate, i.e. a big farm By = Viking town (that’s why they’re only in the North in the old Danelaw) Read the full article, here. Photo by Reuben Hustler on Unsplash
Evil laughs and free-riders – how to craft your villain
All stories need a villain, an antagonist. This piece from the British Psychological Society tells you how to create yours. one of the core traits a villain should show is a low “welfare trade-off” ratio: they are free-riders who cheat and steal, taking from their community while contributing nothing. Such behaviour is undesirable for societies […]
Sans Forgetica – the true font of all knowledge
We’ve talked a lot about how a little cognitive “friction” can aid learning and recall. Now, researchers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology have produced a font designed exactly for that: Sans Forgetica. I think I first came across the research through the Harvard Business Review. Here’s a blog post from 2012. It’s also […]