This morning I received a couple of comments on two old posts dating back to October 2005 and July 2006. Both posts have been popular for comments and email conversations. Neither is on topic — which are, Tech, Media, Publishing — and would fall into the very ample category of self-indulgence.

The first is, Hey, I’m a Viking, which tells how I discovered that I’m … erm … a Viking. It seems I have the genetic configuration called Baron Dupuytren’s disease, or Viking Finger. Here’s a snippet :

“This weekend I discovered I’m a Viking. … Yes, I’m one of those horn-headed, axe-wielding types who terrorized Europe for centuries. Before you run for cover, I’m not about to go on a spreadeagling spree or demand you pay me Danegeld — although that might not be a bad idea.

“I realized I’ve got Viking blood — as many in the British Isles have — because of a minor medical condition which affects the small finger tendon in the palm of a hand. This progressive condition pulls the small finger gradually across the palm, giving a rather gnarled, even romantic, impression to the onlooker. The figure of Captain Hook springs to mind. ”

The second, is about an obscure Cornish author called Crosbie Garstin, now utterly forgotten, even in Cornwall. Yet, he wrote a major Hollywood film, China Seas (1935), which starred Clark Gable, plus a memorable trilogy about the Penhales family. Here’s a taster :

“Crosbie Garstin is best known for his trilogy of novels about the Penhales family, published before the last war by Heinemann. The Owls’ House, High Noon and The West Wind are all cracking adventures set in Cornwall and on the high seas in the days of sail. China Seas, his last book, continued the genre, and was made into a Hollywood film starring Clark Gable. Garstin was an interesting character, a true adventurer and traveller. He served during the first world war in King Edward’s Horse and was commissioned on the battlefield in 1915.”

It always intrigues me why some posts attract comments long after they were published. Clearly, these two contain specific keywords that are regularly searched for on Google and other engines. Syntagma is number 1 on Google for both “crosbie garstin” and “viking finger”.

So doctors searching for medical information on Baron Dupuytren’s disease will land on our silly post. Let’s hope they don’t kill anyone with an axe.

It’s 2008 at last and the energies across the internet (especially the blogosphere) are very different from last year. It’s a bit like looking at the Earth from the barren wastes of the Moon.

That’s enough poetry for at least 12 months. Time for business.

The question on everyone’s face is : where are we now? So, where are we now at Syntagma Media?

In response to the general climate, we’ve contracted our network from 55 sites at peak, to around 30. This has been done by merging similar topics, archiving low performers and deleting the occasional dud. It leaves us with a more manageable portfolio of properties and with the task of defining a new advertising strategy for it.

We’re also anticipating the launch of our first private information site dedicated to the retail sector and aimed at retail corporations. This will become the core business in 2008 and should provide some spinoff advertising for the network.

Our print publishing program has been put on hold pending the completion of my personal writing projects, which should be wrapped up by late spring.

Energies are generally low this week and it took great effort to complete this short post.

Thank you for reading it. We’ll be back on Planet Earth soon.

We’ve all had the experience of a good mood turning sour after watching a news bulletin full of distant, but gloomy, events. It can ruin a whole evening by casting a pall of low-level misery over everything else.

Obviously there are health implications in this phenomenon usually observable through higher blood pressure and faster pulse rate. But can it also affect your wealth?

Jason Zweig believes that “the more you look at stock prices, the more illusory ‘trends’ you see.” His thesis is that Neuro-Economics “can help you understand your reactions and get richer”.

All this appears in his book, Your Money and Your Brain — Become a Smarter, More Successful Investor, the Neuroscience Way.

Neuro-Economics is a blend of neuroscience, economics and psychology designed to interpret the brain’s reaction to economic stimuli like falling stock prices. Apparently, within 12 milliseconds (one-25th of the time it takes to blink an eye), the news activates the amygdala, a part of the brain that initiates fear and anger. Falling stock prices incite the same brain circuits as the roar of a wild beast.

In those moments, if you make a snap decision, the likelihood is that you will sell your shares. You will also believe you have made a rational decision because the process happens so fast you are unaware of it.

However, all data shows that if you hang onto your shares, you will do much better in the long run. So what’s happening here?

The conclusion is that, the impulse to stay continuously informed about your shares in times of market turmoil leads to nothing but trouble — not to mention high blood pressure and pulse rate.

“Furthermore, the more often you update the prices of your stocks, the more often you will perceive ‘trends’ that are most likely to be just illusions.”

Neuroscience shows that it takes only two iterations of a stimulus for your brain to form an automatic and uncontrollable anticipation of another repetition. However, it’s more likely than not that the “news” was just noise.

Zweig’s advice to investors is : “Stop clicking on market websites. Stay away from the Bloomberg terminal. If you read the FT, pass over the market news and spend your time on the opinion pages instead. You will surely be happier — and almost certainly end up richer.”

Now that sage advice applies not only to economics and investments, but it can also be extrapolated into other areas as well.

It’s generally agreed that 90 percent of what we worry about never happens. It follows that 90 percent of speculation and prognoses never happen either. Keeping up with news, current affairs, politics, and many other topics, will prove to be nothing but hot air and a lot of bothersome timewasting. We should save our equanimity for the actuality of our own lives and never make decisions on the basis of incoming “news”.

This book neatly adds convergence to a couple of trends. All those books that tell us how to save time, e.g. The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss, and the current crop of books showing how great scare stories like mad-cow disease and apocalyptic warnings of the end of the world, never turn out the way the doomsters predict.

The Simpsons really is good for your health and your wealth.

Continuing into Fall with our summer series of changes at Syntagma Media, we are now incorporating the long-planned print publishing arm into our main Syntagma workstream. This move is on the advice of Gerry Reynolds, our business consultant.

Dial Publishing has been eased into oblivion and its projected print products moved to the Syntagma Media brand. Some of the book titles we earlier had in mind have been syphoned off to a trade publisher, leaving a couple to launch our new imprint.

They are, The Natural History of Nirvana by yours truly, which we hope to have out in the New Year; and The Syntagma Story, which may materialize by May 2008 if there’s enough interest.

Our office move scheduled for October has fallen through, so we are now aiming for November, or at least before Christmas. Our current location is a real property hotspot so it’s no easy matter finding alternative office or residential space. We may have to move out into the sticks, assuming at least 8Mb/s broadband is available.

We are also continuing to develop new sites and topic areas : health and fitness being the probable next launch, followed by a sub-network devoted to the West Country of England. The aim is to transform the inventory into a fully commercial network.

So there you have it, slimming down and expanding out from a solid base is the name of the exercise.

Hot business tip : Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.

Bzzzzzz!