Academic Research Study, Chance at $250

If you're not a communications professor or graduate student, consider participating in a study for a chance at cash!

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Greetings.

Your opinion is important to us. You are invited participate in an academic Texas Tech University research study about attitudes, memory, and lifestyle.

If you choose to participate in the study, you will be entered into a raffle to win one of 8 cash prizes. The top prize is $250, and second prize is $100. There will be six $25 cash prizes.

To participate in the study, all you have to do is click on (or copy and paste) the link below and answer some questions. If you choose to participate, you will answer questions about your attitudes, memory, and lifestyle. This entire study should take less than 30 minutes.

All of your responses will be completely anonymous. Your data will in no way be connected to your name. You will have to provide contact information for the raffle, but it will be used only to enter you in the prize drawing and to let you know if you've won.

Click on the link below to get started. We encourage you to pass the link or this message along to anyone you know who might be interested in participating. Simply forward this message, or the link, on to them. The study will be open to responses until March 12, 2008, at midnight.

If you have any questions, please contact me.

Thank you for your time and helping us out!

Please copy and paste the URL below to get started:

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UPDATE: Study now closed. Thank you for your interest.

Viral Marketing from Former Student

Kohl’s Simply Vera Vera Wang and Life in Rhythm Spring creative are up on YouTube.

Start forwarding them around and get those views up! JC Penney’s American living is up to 288.

Quick reference

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3zXnO2IhA4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWcFo9QV7Ak

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxGObUKnx0M

Hispanic Media Matters in Texas

Hispanic Spending in Texas to Surpass $2 Million

Primary Showdown Benefits Telemundo, Univision as Clinton, Obama Camps Pour Money Into Lone Star State

By Ira Teinowitz

Published: February 25, 2008

WASHINGTON (Adage.com) -- The Hispanic market in Texas is seeing an unprecedented boom in campaign spending as presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton vie for supremacy in the Lone Star state.

Together, the candidates spent nearly $2 million advertising to Spanish-speaking Hispanics in California, and broadcasters are saying spending ahead of the March 4 Texas primary could top that.

"I've been in Spanish television since 1985, and this is most active season I've ever seen," said Enrique J. Perez, senior VP-sales for Telemundo Station Group. "For the first time, Hispanic media is being planned side by side with general media."

Reflections Inspired by Weblog Inactivity

• One never intends to take a week off from Weblog posting.
• I am thankful every day that I don't have to be at work at 8 a.m.
• I keep intending to look up scientific articles on circadian rhythm.
• The now forgotten source who advised me never to chair more than three committees at once was wise indeed.
• I really hope that this whole Millennial student thing is a phase; otherwise I might have to find a new career.
• Sending letters acknowledging job applications takes more time and effort than the actual business of hiring.
• Things my Ph.D. adviser once did seemed like relatively arbitrary decisions at the time. In hindsight they seem like genius management techniques.
• Unless you're a slacker, there will never be enough hours in the day.
• I'm long overdue for a visit to New Mexico.
• If you could see how blue the sky is right now, you'd want to live in West Texas, too.
• Although there are many things that I miss about my job at Ohio State, I am thankful every day that I live closer to this country's southern border than its northern one.
• It is supposed to be 74 degrees here today.
• But we had 30 mph winds yesterday and will again tomorrow.
• My To-Do list is so overstuffed that I am crushing under the weight, yet I still find it difficult to say "no" to interesting new projects.
• In my experience, people are either team players or they are not. You can almost always count on team players, but you can rarely count on the others.
• People seem to create drama where there need not be any.
• If you work every night until at least 7 p.m., you will eventually test your spouse's patience.
• Although I am glad to be in the Southwest, I miss Dunn Meadow.
• I finally ordered a frame for my doctoral diploma -- 3 years after graduation.
• If I have to prep a single new course, I will go crazy.
• Did I mention that I am designing a new course just for fun?
• I wish that it would warm up more quickly so I could go for a bike ride.
• In my experience, people do not achieve greatness unless they forever look over their shoulder and see failure stalking them at every turn.
• Fewer than 1 in 20 students will pursue greatness for its own sake.
• I spent most of winter break pondering a more Transcendental lifestyle.
• Vegas odds don't look so good on me pulling that off.
• Rome was not built in a day. I usually forget this.
• So many decisions seem so much clearer when you're the one making them. It's a humbling experience.
• Almost warm enough to ride ...
  

What Was Stayfree Thinking?

My colleague James Angelini pointed this out the other day, and every time that I think of this Stayfree "Water Tower" ad, I think "Bad idea."

Harvard Steps toward Open Publishing

Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Harvard University professors may publish more research online, free to readers, after the school's arts and sciences faculty adopted a new policy that may be a blow to scholarly journal publishers.

The policy was approved in a voice vote yesterday, according to Robert Mitchell, director of communications for the 730-member arts and sciences faculty. The meeting was held at the university's Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus.

Read the entire story here.

Thanks to AEJMC Web site for alerting me to this.

I have been arguing for such a model for a while now (for example, read here). More on this topic, soon.

Good to See Jericho Back on CBS

Although I like the show, I am more impressed with fans' viral Internet efforts (and mailing peanuts) that rescued the show from cancellation.

The first show back had a very different feel, but it was a good episode nonetheless.

I hope you'll watch, too.

Thanks for the Memories, General

Coach Knight, you will be missed.

Children, Television, and Attention Deficit

I enjoyed reading a recent post about a child's perspective on ADHD on Well (New York Times), one of my new favorite blogs.

Some of the comments mentioned television, which prompted me to post this comment (#71):

There is some evidence to suggest that the link between television and ADHD is possible, although much more research would be needed before a causal link is documented.

We know that many structural features of television cause automatic reallocation of attention resources. The most studied of these structural features is the camera change, or edit (from one camera shot to another). It is impossible to notice at the conscious level, but every time the camera changes, the brain is momentarily confused about what happened. This makes sense if you think that the entire visual screen changed in 1/30th of a second (in the United States).

Several academic studies — starting with the work of Dr. Annie Lang of Indiana University in 1990 — have shown that camera changes lead to orienting reflexes, which lead to automatic reallocation of attentional resources.

Television tends to be increasingly fast-paced (i.e., frequent camera changes) these days, and we know that fast-paced television can overload the cognitive processing of viewers. This is especially true when there are more than 10 camera changes per 30 seconds. Ironically, my kids are watching TV in the same room right now, and this kind of fast pacing does indeed occur in limited stretches. I just counted.

So it is possible — although far from documented yet — that fast-paced television is “teaching” the brains of children to expect a world full of rapid visual change — far more change than one would expect in the natural world. Thus it follows that perhaps these brains crave change and therefore seek change when it is not present. Again, it’s *possible.*

The data suggest that it’s not just television — but the type of television — that may be to blame. As someone who conducts research in this area, I would not expect boring, slow-paced television to exhibit much of an effect. Parents: Have your kids watch C-SPAN! Of course, children (like adults) prefer faster pacing, which is part of the problem. We like the content that is most likely to be bad for us.

— Posted by Samuel D. Bradley

I kid you not when I say that I wrote this with my laptop in the living room as three of my four daughters watched TV in front of my. In part due to concerns about brain rewiring, the baby is not allowed to even face the television.

I'm Such a Jerk Sometimes

I have had, like, a year to write this book chapter. And I wait until the very last day after the deadline already has been extended twice.

Darn my newspaper training that taught me to write on deadline!