Reviews

The Holloway Consulting’s Construction Experts Blog is what the title suggests and more.  This blog covers a diverse range of issues and answers many questions in the construction industry. Questions range from the Hoover Dam Bypass arbitration to residential construction.  It also offers a few entries showcasing the work of Holloway Construction.

This blog has a considerable amount of content for only having been around a few months (archives go back to May 2011). It is also well organized and easy to read. One suggestion would be to add snippets to the entries as now the front page is very long which may lead some readers to miss part of the content provided.

For those involved in a construction project or working in the industry it could be seen as a useful resource. I was particularly drawn to the blog addressing “residential construction disputes“, which could save a lot of time and effort in the planning and design stage of your house renovation, if you started here first. Avoiding problems before they occur is always a good plan.

The majority of the content is quite technical and not for faint of heart and the blog heavily leverages it’s content to sell Holloway construction. Believe it could be just as effective without pushing the product so much and having less posts on the front page. By doing so it could utilize the sidebar more effectively to draw in clients from the content of the blog.

This blog scores a 3.2/5 at the moment.

You Are Not So Smart is a blog by  journalist David McRaney, who also “loves psychology, technology and the internet.” Its area of focus is dedicated to showing us how we are not actually the rational, logical beings we like to think we are.

Written in plain English and free from unnecessary technical terminology, You Are Not So Smart manages to make pretty complex, high level decision making theories and the idea of cognitive biases easily understood by the average Joe. His journalistic background means the writing is of an exceptionally high quality and filled with pithy statements that stick in your mind long after you’ve clicked back to Youtube. McRaney also manages to make his potentially dry subject matter highly entertaining by peppering his posts with modern-day, contextual examples that just about anyone can relate to – ranging from Farmville to Halloween costumes – to illustrate the points he is making.

In one of his latest posts, The Sunk Cost Fallacy, McRaney uses the popularity of Facebook games like Farmville to explain why humans experience loss more acutely than gain, and manages to do this in a highly engaging manner without trivializing the subject matter. By the end of the post, readers have a clear idea of why they inevitably are compelled to “throw good money after bad” – a concept that frequent gamblers would gain much from grasping.

Other brilliant posts include Confirmation Bias, which posits that your opinions are not the result of rational, objective analysis but rather “the result of years of paying attention to information which confirmed what you believed while ignoring information which challenged your preconceived notions.” And Deindividuation, which suggests that under the right conditions, people are prone to losing their individuality and behave in a manner they otherwise would not.

A really easy, enjoyable read that won’t make your brain hurt, but will certainly make you smarter.  Without a doubt, this blog deserves a 4.3/5; considering it’s a great read, hopefully the activity and posting frequency increases.