Communication and Cognition

Sincerity Crucial to Ads, PR, and Social Media

2008-12-27T18:21:00.000-06:00

The first rule of getting noticed online appears to be "go comment on a lot of blogs."

I've been trying to increase my online presence this December, so I have been reading all the suggestions that I can find.

Each blogger has a slightly different take on the grand enterprise, but they all agree: comment on related blogs as if you were voting in Chicago: early and often.

To read the rest of this post, please visit the new site for this blog: http://www.commcognition.com/blog

GeekBrief.tv Offers Tech Realted Podcast Fun

2008-12-26T17:15:00.000-06:00

Note: This post is a reproduction of the original post on the new site for Communication & Cognition: http://www.commcognition.com/blog/geekbrief/ After more than three years on Blogger, it is time to move to a self-hosted site. I hope you'll keep reading there.

Review

Through the wonderful world of Twitter, I recently stumbled across GeekBrief.tv. I'm not a podcast guy, but something about the link caught my attention.

Once I arrived at the site, there was Geek Brief #481 (released Dec. 20, 2008). In this 4 minute, 50 second podcast, Cali Lewis (on Twitter) demonstrates a large green laser from Wicked Lasers called the Spider II GX (which costs just $1,699.99). According the Lewis (via the Guinness records folks), it's the most powerful hand held laser available.

This particular episode must be the Geek Brief version of Mythbusters, as Lewis puts the laser up to several tests:

After a long time, the laser eventually pops a balloon (presumably by superheating the air inside);

It ignites a wooden match;

It fails to light a candle, producing only smoke;

Illuminates steam over boiling water;

and makes a leather jacket smoke without leaving a hole.

After a brief introduction by Lewis, the podcast features an up-tempo professionally produced introduction. Lewis has a fun upbeat screen presence, and the podcast was lively and fun.

Mostly the podcast was interesting and self-contained, so one can watch without a serious time commitment.

And although I cannot tell you exactly why it was fun to watch, I am not alone. Lewis is a full-time podcaster with more than 25,000 followers on Twitter. I saw one estimate that each show receives between 200,000 and 300,000 views.

The laser was enough to bring me back, and I'm glad it did.

Briefs #482 (December 23, 2008), featured above, and #483 (December 25, 2008) tell the story of GeekBrief.tv's origin.

In July 2005, [husband and co-producer] Neal [Campbell] heard Adam Curry being interviewed on NPR. Adam was talking about podcasting. I didn’t have a TV in my house growing up so I didn’t know Adam Curry from MTV and when Neal started telling me Adam said this and Adam said that, I thought he had joined a cult. Then Neal played an episode of The Dawn and Drew Show for me and I fell in love with the concept of podcasting. Dawn and Drew, a young couple who live in a farm house in rural Wisconsin were doing a show from their house and building a worldwide audience. Adam Curry was doing a show from his house and building the business of podcasting. We wanted in and when Dawn and Drew announced Drew was quitting his day job so they could do the show full time, we decided that’s what we wanted to do.

The first podcast was launched on Dec. 23, 2005, just a couple of months after I started this blog over on Blogger. Needless to say, they've done a much better job monetizing their idea than me.

As an advertising professor, this was a great new media story. These two podcasts should be required viewing for our Electronic Media majors.

The rest of the two briefs tell the story of their rather meteoric success. The first brief aired on Dec. 23, 2005, and they worked out a deal with what is now known as Mevio on May 23, 2006, to podcast full-time. That's an impressive five-month turnaround.

From their inspiration by Adam Curry to their adoption of a green screen and a teleprompter, their success story is briefly outlined.

It's a great story and the kind of thing the fuels the American Dream. Hard work led to opportunity -- the way that we hope that it always will.

Mevio's Web site claims to be the "Home of Personality-Driven Entertainment," and it's Lewis' personality that drives this show.

Her Twitter bio calls her a "shiny, happy geek girl," and the description is perfect.

She has on-camera skills without coming across as a stilted professional anchor. It's just the right mix of talent and whimsy. Lewis' look might be best described as "geek chic," and it's perfect for the podcast. Lewis has bloggers calling her "beautiful" while still looking as if she actually knows about technology.

And success has led to other Web ventures, as the main GeekBriefs.tv site also links to related sites, Dear Cali, iCali.tv, and CaliLive.tv.

Whether you're interested in technology or a new media success story, I highly recommend GeekBrief.tv!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays

2008-12-25T10:29:00.001-06:00

Hope everyone is enjoying Christmas, Hanukkah, or the holiday season in general!

Photo credit: The other Sam Bradley.

High Life Delivery Man : Resonant Ad Icon

2008-12-24T13:32:00.001-06:00

Effective brand advertising necessitates emotional connections. For this reason, I am completely "in the tank" for Saatchi & Saatchi, and their CEO, Kevin Roberts. His ideas of emotional connections -- Lovemarks -- resonate with my experimental research.

And I continue to believe in my heart and mind that long-term emotional connections beat out short-term ROI for the vast majority of consumer goods and services.

Then it's no surprise that one of my favorite television of ads of 2009 came from Saatchi & Saatchi.

While reading the awesome Dec. 15, 2008, "Book of Tens" issue of Advertising Age, I came across 10 "Ads Garfield Loved."

Although I don't always agree with their rambunctious ad critic, his No. 3 choice, Miller High Life, is dead on:

The High Life delivery man is the arbiter of down-to-earth beer drinking. He's angry, confused, joyous and charismatic all at once. In the baseball skybox, amid cheese-nibbling elites who aren't even watching the game, he is transcendentally appalled.

In addition to being a funny commercial and a nice piece of storytelling, this ad is the brand. High Life is a lower-priced beer, and there is no benefit in shying away from it. Instead, this ad and the broader campaign embrace the everyman theme of an economical brew.

Frustrated that corporate America is pricing sporting events out of your range? So is the High Life delivery man.

The ad resonates, we make an emotional connection, and the magic of Roberts, Ogilvy, and Burnett happens.

Santa, please bring me more ads like this in 2009!

LPGA Commissioner on Social Media, Equality

2008-12-23T10:49:00.001-06:00

5 Questions

Families are cutting their sports budgets in the face of a recession, and women's amateur and professional sports struggle for equality more than 35 years after Title IX was passed.

The Ladies Professional Golf Association continues work on equality and marketing their product in an increasingly online world.

Their commissioner graciously took time in the days just before Christmas to talk with the Communication & Cognition blog. We appreciate it!

CAROLYN BIVENS is the commissioner of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) and the first female commissioner in the organization's history. Bivens previously served as president and chief operating officer of Initiative Media North America, the largest media services agency in the United States and part of the Interpublic Group of Companies. Bivens also has held key positions at USA Today and Xerox. In 2002, Electronic Media magazine named her one of the most powerful women in television. Source: LPGA.com.

1) What is the most important issue facing professional women's athletics today?

Equity and parity are two very important issues affecting future growth and success opportunities for women's sports. Whether it is playing the same courses (fields, stadiums, etc.) or the level of prize money and sponsorship dollars, women athletes and leagues must close the gaps with their male counterparts. We are making progress, but there is still a lot of work to be done.

2) What unique challenges do you face marketing international stars to a largely American audience?

The LPGA has an international membership, which we celebrate, and week-in and week-out the leaderboard is lit up with players from the United States and around the world. We must continue to build player profiles and awareness levels to help introduce the U.S. viewing audience to the great talent and personalities of the LPGA -- no matter where in the world they are from. World-class talent, engaging personalities and increased media exposure will help reach the U.S. audience. A consistent TV platform, which we are working very hard on for 2010 and beyond, would help immensely with these efforts.

3) How much will Annika Sorenstam be missed?

Annika is one of the greatest golfers in history, one of the greatest athletes in history, and one of the greatest role models in our sport. She continues to set the bar for excellence in all statistical categories, and yet to judge Annika only by her on course performance, is to miss the essence of a woman who is the ultimate role model. She's set an incredible standard for the talented young contingent of players who are following in her footsteps on and off the course. While we'll miss her in our tournaments and on our leaderboards, we will look forward to her continued contributions to the game – as a Global Ambassadors in support of the International Golf Federation’s bid to reinstate golf as an Olympic sport, a USGA ambassador, a host of a junior golf tournament as well as her many other business endeavors. As Annika begins an exciting new chapter in her life and in her career, we're also eager to enter a new chapter with Annika, who will always remain one of the LPGA's and one of our game's greatest ambassadors.

4) Is the LPGA involved in marketing through social networking sites?

We recognize the importance of reaching today’s youth and our global fanbase via social networking sites, and continue to explore opportunities for us in this emerging arena. We recently have established Facebook, Twitter and YouTube sites.

5) I'm the father of four young girls? Any tips for getting them interested in golf?

Golf is a sport that can be enjoyed by people of all ages. It also is a wonderful family sport whether one plays or just watches. With four young girls, I recommend you bring them to an LPGA event where you can enjoy hours of family fun in the outdoors watching the best players in the world compete. Also, introducing them to the game via a junior clinic – at an LPGA Tour site or in your hometown -- can be lots of fun as they may make new friends while learning a new sport. I’d also suggest you reach out to your local LPGA Teaching and Club Professional who could perhaps create a family learning session where the whole family can participate together. It’s a sport of a lifetime, and although I didn’t pick up the sport until I was in my 20s I am so glad I did, for the benefits of health, friendships and business are worth it!

Links:

http://www.lpga.com
Follow the LPGA on Twitter: @lpga
Find the LPGA on Facebook
And watch LPGA video on YouTube: lpgavideo

The 2009 LPGA schedule includes 31 events in 10 countries (learn more here). Hopefully you'll be watching. The season kicks off Fed. 12-14 at the SBS OPEN at Turtle Bay (Turtle Bay Resort, Palmer Course) in Kahuku, Oahu, Hawaii.

3 Cognitive Tips to Build Your Brand in 2009

2008-12-22T12:53:00.007-06:00

Using tools from the basic science of human cognition can help you differentiate your brand and get it off of the long tail (check out Chris Anderson's excellent Long Tail blog here).

In about 10 days, millions of people will celebrate and then crank out their New Year's resolutions. I say don't wait.

Today is the day to begin anew. Yesterday was the winter solstice, and today begins the best six months of the year: Every day will have more sunshine than the day before. What an exciting time to let science help build your brand and reach its potential.

This blog is about where the mind meets the message. In this case, the message is your brand. For many readers, their blog is their brand and their message. Make your brand effective.

1) Ensure that your brand has a personality

Stanford University professors Byron Reeves (my academic grandfather) and Cilfford Nass eloquently demonstrated in The Media Equation that people treat mediated messages just like they treat real people. That is, social rules apply.

Research in my lab and many others confirms that this extends to brands. We treat brands as if they are real people, and we form especially strong emotional connections when we feel that their personalities matches our own.

Seth Godin does a brilliant job with his blog. The blog has a personality, and that matches the personality of his books. It's a mixture of sagacity and informality (see the picture of half his head).

But Godin cannot simply pretend to be a sage, he must live up to it. He provides excellent insight, and he is a talented writer. If he had everything but writing skills, I assure you his pageloads would be far poorer.

His brand's personality is genuine. You have to mean it. As Lovemarks guru Kevin Roberts says, you must respect your customer.

So do some diagnostics. Ask people. If [my brand] were a person, who would it be. What would that person be like?

It may seem silly, but our data are always telling in this regard. Your consumers know your brand's personality. And if seven different consumers tell you seven different answers, you have an identity crisis.

Decide who you want your brand to be, and then make sure that everything that you do is "on message."

2) Pay attention to attention

I spend a lot of time studying human attention, and it remains one of the great puzzles of my lifetime.

William James said in 1890 that everyone knows what attention is, yet it's incredibly multi-faceted and complex to study.

Importantly, you should keep in mind that attentional capacity is finite. Every bit of your brand is competing with the rest of the world for attention.

You need to make brand communication compelling. Your message has to be the most relevant thing in the room, or you have no chance of keeping attention.

In the blog world, ProBrogger had a brilliant post about three ways to engage readers. Enagagement leads to attention. Find ways to meaninfully engage consumers with your brand.

3) Emotion tells your brain what to do

The overly serious ancient Greeks (and philosophers as recent as Descartes) that emotion and cognition were separate.

They're not. They are inseparable, and they are always working in concert.

You need to know that attention is motivated. Your brain may like to read literature, sip a fine French wine, and listen to Motzart, but it's number one job is to keep you alive.

So it is especially attuned to cues related to survival: food, violence, and potential mates.

Imagine that a naked person or a salivating tiger walked in the room right now. Regardless of how you felt, imagine not paying attention. Now look at standard book page with lines of black serif type against an offwhite background. Not so compelling, eh?

Sadly this is why there's so much sex in advertising.

I'm not urging you to add sex, but I do urge you to generate some excitement within your readers. Excitement leads to physiological arousal, which leads to attention (at moderate levels).

Don't be the News Hour of your product category. Be a little bit exciting. Understand that, for example, we like to look at people. So show people, for example. Find the appropriate emotional connection for your brand.

Just don't be boring. Attention is lost.

But don't forget about personality! Sex for sex's sake is stupid, and it draws attention away from your brand. Find a way to add emotion to your brand that is consistent with the brand itself.

Putting them all together

You still have to have a good brand and a good message. But getting your message noticed and remembered is no simple task.

Your brand needs a personality, and you need to be true to that personality. But if you pick a bad one, you're doomed.

Your personality and your message should be constantly engaging. There's simply too much world competing for limited attentional capacity.

Write from the heart, as Glen advises in an excellent post at PluginID about driving traffic to your blog.

Effective use of emotion will help you engage readers. Look at these human connections phrases in a recent post by eminent social media blogger Chris Brogan: "She remembered my name," "she was a book lover like me," "she loved hand-selling books," "She ...had lots of great conversational information," "I had a beer with him," "That is the feeling I want from social media." And finally:

It’s this thing where people can spend a few extra moments to make a human connection instead of an “off the shelf” connection.

That genuine human connection may be the most basic human emotion. Make those connections in a meaningful, genuine way, and 2009 will be a better year for your brand.

Finally, it's your turn to add to the conversation. How does your brand (or blog) make an emotional connection?

Make Powerful Social Networks in The Sandbox

2008-12-21T18:43:00.004-06:00

If a blog is to represent anything more than a digital pamphlet, it must be about conversation. We must talk and interact. You, dear reader, must be part of the conversation.

@mark_hayward has proposed The Sandbox as the place where we make those connections.

I like the idea, and I hope you'll join me there in seeing where it leads.

5 Newsroom Tips to Improve Your Blog Today

2008-12-20T17:29:00.001-06:00

Updated 9:51 a.m. Dec. 21, 2008: Reader response requested.

Very talented writers publish excellent blogs every day, but the training received by most members of the blogosphere came in the time it took to fill out the forms to create the blog.

This lack of training is little problem for people sharing recipes or documenting the first days of their newborn child. However, many bloggers aspire to make a living at the craft, and financial independence is extremely unlikely for untrained hacks.

The print newspaper is dying a rather fast death, but formal journalism training benefits storytellers. With that said, here are five news tips for Bloggers:

1. Don't bury the lead

If you pick up the newspaper or call up the New York Times online, you will notice that few stories are told chronologically. That's because boring stuff usually happens at the beginning. Journalists get to the point. What makes this post interesting? Get that up front, or your readers will move on. In traditional news writing, the first paragraph is called the lead (often spelled "lede" to differential it from the hot liquid metal, lead, from which papers were originally printed).

And good leads contain the most important information.

Embarrassingly, burying the lead came to mind because I got called on it last week by a friend and fellow journalist. D'oh. How could I have been so careless?

2. Write compelling headlines

Clever, well-written headlines draw readers into the story. This was true on newsprint 100 years ago, and it's true today. Every word counts. Take the time present the most important facts compellingly.

A good headline cannot save a bad post, but a bad headline can prevent a good post from ever being read.

When I worked the copy desk at the Albuquerque Journal, I viewed every headline as a contest -- a contest that I wanted to win. Every day I wanted to hear a colleague say, "great headline."

Most people think that reporters write headlines. They don't. At best they suggest headlines, but in my experience they don't even do that. Headlines are written by copy editors, who know the font size and the number of columns that the headline needed to cover. And they have lots of practice at writing good headlines.

Blogs usually have a single-deck headline of a fixed length. Although this is limiting, it is not an excuse for lazy writing (more advice I need to remember, too).

Bottom line: Never, ever write the headline first. The best headlines are written at 10 p.m. when the reporter has been home for four hours. And they are never written before the story.

3. Make every word count

One of the biggest blog problems is excessive prose. Even when newsprint was cheap, there was a fixed newshole. And when it was filled, you stopped. This blog post can stretch to infinity. That's not an advantage.

As an analogy, consider what a former friend used to say to robust women with bare midriffs.

"Just because they make that in a size 13, honey, doesn't mean you should wear it."

Likewise, don't writer every word that comes to mind because you can.

Try to write tight. Sure there's endless space, but extra words are bad. You're probably blogging during spare time, and you don't have a rim and slot editor to trim fat. Be concise anyway.

4. Add color to your stories

I'm not a gifted writer. On my good days, I am a trained writer who tries hard. When I see a writer use powerful, concrete language, I am moved.

You can feel it when just the right detail is added to a story. What is the single aspect of a person or a situation that is crucial to the reader's understanding? Find it. Write it.

Remember that a picture is worth, more or less, 1,000 words. Only you can see what you're trying to say. Fight for exactly the right words to convey that scene to the reader.

5. Avoid adjectives

Excessive adjectives are the comforting crutch of the lazy writer. Sure, even well-trained, dedicated need some colorful descriptive adjectives. But if you're using a lot of them, then you have simply failed to find the right nouns and verbs (hopefully the humor is not lost in this paragraph).

Mark Twain is reported to have said, "When you can catch an adjective, kill it."

Did you really need to say, "violent explosion"?

This would supposedly differentiate it from a peaceful explosion.

We may talk of "future plans," but there's one adjective too many in that sentence. Unless your time machine surpasses mine, future plans are the only plans.

Catch them and kill them.

I'll be a better writer tomorrow for having reminded us both of these ideas. But surely, you are sitting there thinking, how could he have forgotten ...?

So, tell me. What is the sixth blog improving tip that I should have included?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

Learning good writing is not like learning to ride a bicycle (more on clichés another day). Good habits are forgotten. And writing well takes time. Take the time. Your readers will thank you for the investment.

Relationship Targeting: Know Your Customer

2008-12-19T16:28:00.003-06:00

I'm always amazed when I stand in front of 170 young advertising students and talk about targeting for the first time.

Largely, this is lost on them. Sad, really.

Matching your brand to a small group of consumers may be the most important thing that you ever do.

My lab has done a lot of research of brand personalities, and to me the fascinating bit is just how easily people assign personalities to inanimate brands.

Right now I'm working on an exciting new project with Tim Laubacher. We're using Darwin's principles of natural selections to find out just what personality is attached to a given brand. More on this in coming months (read more on the underlying principles here).

What do targeting and personality have in common? Tailoring your target market. Sure, my last post blasted Burger King for too narrow a target, but most companies aren't Burger King.

In the Dec. 8, 2008, Advertising Age, there is an article amazingly buried on page 4.

Under Jack Neff's byline, "That 80% of sales comes from some 2% of buyers; Study: Package-goods brands' consumers bases very small, yet diverse."

Think about that. Two percent of all buyers make up the lion's share of your sales.

Numbers like those start to make a strong case for broader use of customer-relationship management among package-goods players who've questioned its applicability because of the high cost per consumer.

This means that even the narrowest of traditional markets are likely to fail. This small yet diverse bit is tricky.

Tools such as the one that I am developing with Laubacher will allow real-time diagnostics of a brand's multiple personalities. We can uncover these niche markets.

And then the real work actually begins. How do we reach these people when mass media will terribly overshoot and overspend. Then, how do we keep them among our 2%.

As Neff correctly identifies, relationships are the key. And compatible personalities are key to relationships. Think of this as a brand version of eHarmony: 29 dimensions of compatibility.

And you have to be careful not to drift. Once you establish your brand personality, you have to remain true to it. Google used to be one of my absolute favorite brands, but today I referred to them as the "Wal-Mart of the Web" due to their control of some of the features of this blog (Google owns Blogger).

I'm impressed with some corporate efforts on Twitter (e.g., @Starbucks). However, following 21,355 people (at present), this is more like a casual hook up than a committed relationship.

It's a great time to study communications. I'm counting the days until the word "Mass" is toppled from the front of my college like a statue of Lenin or Hussein.

Review: Burger King's Whopper Scent

2008-12-18T10:55:00.000-06:00

During my first semester teaching at Ohio State, I shared with my students an Advertising Age story about Burger King's franchisees near riot over "the King."

The Oct. 25, 2005, story ran under the headline, "Franchisees turn on Crispin's King."

The problem is that BK is the No. 2 burger chain in the country, distantly trailing No. 1 McDonald's and barely leading No. 3. Wendy's.

Burger King goes well with their target market: young males. And although the King played well with that audience, he was not bringing in new customers.

Burger King is "highly effective with a very narrow target so the strategy is working, but is it the right strategy?" said one fast-food industry executive. "From a traffic perspective ... the answer is no. They're selling higher-priced products to fewer people, and that's where McDonald's understands that it's a volume-driven business."

This tension continued for more than two months:

Until now, the two sides would clash, but generally come to some form of compromise. But franchisees have recently balked at corporate plans with increasing frequency, with some criticizing the fast-feeder's focus on young males at the expense of women and families, a strategy forged in conjunction with its agency, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, Miami. (Advertising Age, January 9, 2006, Peace breaks out: BK quells franchisee feud; Franchisee board renews relations after fights over chain's marketing tack).

Somehow these King ads managed to persist and even elicit imitations:

We can only imagine what the Burger King suits -- to say nothing of the entire creative department at BK's ad agency of record, Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Miami -- must be thinking every time they see one of a new collection of McDonald's spots featuring various kids and a plastic statue of the iconic Ronald McDonald seated on a bench. (Chicago Sun-Times, March 1, 2006, McDonald's serves BK leftovers)

Now more than three years later, the King persists. Clearly Burger King has access to proprietary data that I do not share. However, almost universally my discussions confirm the original franchisee concern: the ads play well to the target market are irritate almost everyone else.

Let's put it this way, since that original ad appeared, I have not once heard my wife suggest going to Burger King for a salad.

Fast forward to this week, and I see a Tweet by a former Tech Student @humbearto that read:

Hilarious: www.firemeetsdesire.com Click for the king. Oh Burger King, when will you stop outdoing yourself? 8:41 AM Dec 16th from web.

As you can see in the screen shot above, Burger King has launched a new King-based Web site for the Whopper-scented fragrance, Flame. Perhaps the weirdest part is that they actually made the fragrance, and you can order it from the Web site.

The visual humor comes from the idea that either the King or the scent would be sexy.

This online marketing effort will surely drive traffic to the Web site and young males to the stores. But they were going anyway. In order to succeed, you have to be able to expand beyond the base.

I liken this to John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate. Of course she played well with the base. They loved her. But were they going to vote for Obama? Of course not.

And although there is something to be said for energizing the base, I don't see the King brining in new customers.

CNN's Anderson Cooper even called the spray, "news of the weird."

5Q: Grammar Girl by Mignon Fogarty

2008-12-16T13:46:00.008-06:00

In the world of text speak and emoticons, many think grammar is a thing of the past.

Not so, says this week's guest, Grammar Girl's author of Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing.

Grammar is still key to clear communication, as we hopefully see below.

Mignon Fogarty is an accomplished grammarian, book author, and podcast network founder.

1) Is "whom" really doomed?

Grammar Girl: People certainly exist who think “whom” should die a fast death. They'll argue that nobody knows how to use it anyway, so there's no point continuing to insist that they try to learn. To me, this smacks of the tyranny of low expectations. I still fight for “whom.” It's not as if it's that hard to learn the rule. Use “whom” when you're referring to the object of a sentence. If you can hypothetically answer the question with “him,” use “whom.” If we drop “whom,” what's next? “Lay”? “Set”? I tend to believe in people. I think they can get it right if they try.

2) Students' writing seems so bad today. Am I just old, or has something changed?

Grammar Girl: People have told me there was a trend in education in the '70s that got away from teaching the fundamentals of writing and instead focused on getting students to read. The assumption was that if students read a lot, they would absorb good writing skills. What seems even worse to me is that sometimes each student was encouraged to pick a book he or she though was interesting, so teachers would have every student in their class reading a different book. I don't know how a teacher would teach anything under those circumstances!

I hear that the trend is moving back toward teaching the fundamentals, but I also hear that young teachers who went through school in the '70s are struggling to teach grammar because they were never taught it themselves.

I'm sure this isn't the case in every school and with every teacher, but I'm willing to bet it's part of the problem you're seeing with students' writing today.

3) As "video killed the radio star," did new media kill the grammar star?

Grammar Girl: Gosh, I'd say that new media created the grammar star. Without new media, I would never have been able to make the kind of career I have teaching grammar.

Some people do think that new media such as text messaging is killing grammar because people are so tempted to use abbreviations such as “l8” and “u,” and those habits can spill over into other kinds of writing; but I tend to believe these are just new ways to play with language, and as long as people understand the difference between a text message and an annual report, we're going to be OK.

4) What made you decide to write the book?

Grammar Girl: Writing a book seemed like the obvious next step after my podcast became popular. Listeners were asking me to write a book, and publishers were approaching me about writing a book. It was a great experience. Although I enjoy producing my podcast every week and giving talks to organizations, there's something different and wonderful about having a physical thing you created to hold in your hands.

One of the best parts of creating the book was being able to see the characters I use in my podcast (Squiggly, a yellow snail, and Aardvark, a blue aardvark) come to life in the illustrations.

5) What makes your book a perfect gift idea?

Grammar Girl: It's inexpensive, entertaining on the first read, and useful as a reference book for years to come.

Links:

You can follow @GrammarGirl on Twitter.
You can check out her Behind the Grammar Weblog.
You can check out the book's Web site.
You can also check out her podcasting network.

As a former copy editor, I am impressed. A fan of "whom" and skilled user of the semicolon!

And I offer a special thanks to Fogarty for answering these questions at the last minute due to the fact that the holidays subsumed other volunteers!

The book makes a great holiday gift. If you order by Thursday, December, 18, 2008, you can get a personally autographed copy of the book for $19! To get this great holiday gift, see instructions here. In fact, it's worth checking out the site simply for the humor about gift wrapping.

If you're not into the personal touch (or you missed the deadline), order the book at Amazon.com.

Newspapers RIP; Detroit Raises White Flag

2008-12-15T17:29:00.004-06:00

I started my career as a newspaper reporter for the Las Cruces Sun-News. Before that I interned for The Modesto Bee, and I was the editor-in-chief of New Mexico State's student newspaper, the Round Up for two years.

The Round Up is/was/will forever be the best job that I ever had.

When I left NMSU with diploma-in-hand in 1997, I was as "print" as you could be. Man, did I love newspapering.

Read about how cult members become completely devoted to their cause, and that is how I felt about the institution of the daily newspaper.

It was my calling.

Veteran newsman Mack Lundstrom only intensified that love during my Dow Jones Newspaper Fund internship boot camp at San José State that summer. If you ever wanted to love a newspaper, just spend a few hours talking to Mack. He's still my hero.

Many fluke events led me away from the daily newspaper, but I have missed it nearly every day. And it has been especially sad to watch the industry die as the business model implodes.

But I have to admit that I wasn't ready for what I saw today on Twitter, posted by @MarketingProfs:

Detroit newspapers quit print home delivery: http://tinyurl.com/5k4vxj

What? How is that even possible? What? OK, maybe in 2018, but 2008? Twenty-bleeping-oh-eight?

It read like a headline from the Onion. But it was painful nonfiction.

According to the Wall Street Journal story:

The Free Press and the News would be the first dailies in a major metropolitan market to curtail home delivery and drastically scale back their print editions. Other newspapers are contemplating similar moves in response to the erosion of advertising and the rising costs of printing and delivery. In October the Christian Science Monitor said it will stop printing a daily newspaper in April and move instead to an online version with a weekly print product.

Insane. Just insane.

I get it -- and I'm even part of the problem with this blog, my Facebook and Twitter pages (follow me on Twitter). And I subscribe to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal only on Sundays. But I just cannot explain the gravitas with which this hits me.

Being in my mid-30's makes me feel antiquated and irrelevant, but this makes me feel as if I have one foot in the grave.

No home delivery -- even on most days -- is a white flag of irreversible consequence.

Internet, I love you. But you took just 14 years to deliver a coup de grâce to my first love. And for that I can never forgive you.

Say it ain't so.

Review: Socially Awkward Viral Pizza Ad

2008-12-13T11:58:00.003-06:00

Why do people enjoy socially awkward events?

I spend a good portion of my life in an attempt to avoid these types of situations, and yet others flock to them in a mediated context. Why?

This Pizza Hut offering would have to be viewed as a success, as it currently has more than 142,000 views on YouTube and cost approximately $25,000 to produce (Advertising Age).

So congratulations to Pizza Hut for making me very uncomfortable for about three minutes. You've done a pretty good job of attaching negative affect to your brand.

That's what you were going for, right?

Review: Dunkin Takes on Starbucks

2008-12-12T09:54:00.002-06:00

Thanks in part to the insistence of a friend, I realized that the ol' blog needs an infusion of life. So I thought back to my newspaper days. What would help me publish more often? Regular features!

On Tuesday, I wrote about the new feature 5 Questions. The name is uninspired, but I have found that hastily coined names quickly draw my ire. I'm happy with the first post, and work on the future posts is going well thanks to suggestions by initial interviewee Bob Schaller. Believe it or not, I have some pretty cool interviews lined up, so stay tuned for that.

Another regular feature will involve current advertising reviews. I'd like to promise that it will be weekly, but I am perhaps not that brave.

This new feature also needs a name, so please feel free to suggest one. Every good "Ad Review" name that I can think of is taken.

Dunkin' Beats Starbucks

As one who came of age in the 1980s, I grew up with taste tests. It seems that Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi was omnipresent on television.

Since then, we have seen far fewer taste test ads. Perhaps this is because the gimmick was overdone and perhaps this was due to the fear that is omnipresent in comparative advertising: you're showing your competitor, too. Low attention viewers might see only the Starbucks logo.

Yet Starbucks is vulnerable, and the competitors are attacking. According to the Nov. 10, 2008, Advertising Age (subscription required), fourth quarter profits were down 97%, and same store sales were down 8%.

This comes in a year where the coffee giant already has delved into traditional advertising, closed for retraining, shuttered stores, and given away free coffee for voting.

McDonald's has been on the attack, putting up billboards outside Starbucks' corporate headquarters that read, "Four bucks is dumb" (New York Daily News). Another billboard claims, "Large is the new grande" (Seattle Post-Intelligencer).

Starbucks won't bite, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

"We're not going to get into that conversation. We're not going to get sucked into the, 'My coffee is better than your coffee,' price point type of coffee conversation," Starbucks Chief Marketing Officer Terry Davenport said. "We're going to play at a much higher level."

Dunkin' Donuts also is trying to capitalize on the vulnerability with their taste test ad.

"Try the coffee that beat Starbucks," the ad claims.

The ad employs a straightforward, direct appeal: Dunkin' Donuts' coffee tastes better. Whereas McDonald's is attacking on snobbery and price point, Dunkin' is going after taste.

This campaign likely will have some success in driving people to the store, but the claim must substantiated. In my case, I "bit" on an earlier ad. A regular Starbucks drinker at home and at work, I bought a pound (or what passes for a pound these days) of Dunkin' coffee.

It wasn't bad, but it didn't match my preferred Starbucks French Roast.

That's both the benefit and curse of a straightforward benefit ad: if consumers agree, you're likely to profit; however, there's nowhere to hide if your promise falls short.

See for yourself at the new Web site: http://www.dunkinbeatstarbucks.com

Football and Research Money: Big Ten Wins

2008-12-10T22:36:00.001-06:00

During a conversation the other night, we were debating the relative merits of the various university athletic conferences.

I work at Texas Tech, a member of the Big XII Conference. I grew up in Kansas City, which was the heart of the former Big 8 Conference. I also earned my master's degree at Kansas State, so I am partial to the Big XII. Bad news for me below.

My Ph.D. is from Indiana, and my first faculty position was at Ohio State, so I am partial to the Big Ten, too.

Some of my other colleagues are from Southeastern Conference schools, and I was talking smack about the traditional football powerhouse conference.

So I wondered how the conferences stack up academically. It's difficult to pick any one metric for academic success, but I decided to go with research funding. Research is the lifeblood of major universities, and funding fuels that research. I turned to the Center for Measuring University Performance and their 2007 Top American Research University Report.

So how do the conferences of the Bowl Championship Series stack up?

Well, it's not quite easy to tell. Apples and oranges, and something like that. Some university totals appear to include their medical school and some don't. So there's no total for Baylor University, which suggests they have less than $20 million in annual federal research funding. However, Baylor College of Medicine had $458,694 in research funding in 2005. To include or not include? Also, there is no amount for Boston College. Pittsburgh leads the Big East, and if it were not for Pitt (which surely includes their medical school), the Big East would average about half of the next lowest conference.

No matter Baylor's fate (I decided to exclude the medical college), the news is not good for the current top powers in football. The Big XII and SEC have the top four ranked teams in the land and five of the top seven. However, gridiron greatness does not translate to research power.

The Big XII is dead last among the six BCS conferences, and the SEC is fourth (if you include Baylor's medical school, the Big XII jumps to fourth).

The Big Ten, led by Michigan, leads the way. Although, the Big Ten is "down" this year, Michigan is the most successful program in college football. So these data may be spurious. Florida also tops the SEC in football and research dollars.

In rank order, here are the final data for average annual funding for each institution for 2005 and 2004.

Conference, Average Amount, Top Program
Big Ten, $477,259,000, (that school up north)
Pac 10, $422,266,000, UCLA
ACC, $296,778,000, Duke
SEC, $210,054,000, Florida
Big East, $209,668,000, Pittsburgh
Big XII, $201,376,000, Texas A&M

5 Questions: Author, Educator Bob Schaller

2008-12-09T15:57:00.002-06:00

Today marks the beginning of a new weekly feature for Communication, Cognition, and Arbitrary Thoughts. I've decided the Weblog needs an infusion of new energy. So each week, I'm going to post a "5 Questions" feature with someone interesting.

I got the inspiration from Bob Schaller, who writes a number of "20 questions" features. Since Bob writes much faster than me, I decided to stick to 5. I also found it appropriate for him to be the first featured individual.

Bob Schaller is an accomplished author, educator, and journalist. He has published more than 35 books, including a recent biography on Olympic swimming sensation Michael Phelps titled, Michael Phelps: The Untold Story of a Champion (available at Amazon.com, $6.29). He is a staff writer for SwimNetwork.com. Currently a doctoral student in mass communications at Texas Tech, Schaller has worked at newspapers in Nebraska, Colorado and California. He also writes for Splash Magazine, published by USA Swimming.

1) What’s the most important characteristic for a writer?

Schaller: To respond to criticism well, to apply it, and always get better. The best experiences I have had always involve editors who take me out to the proverbial woodshed. My talent is marginal, but my work ethic is exceptional. I like that feedback because it makes me better. Also, write across different genres, not just one or two. If you want to make a living at it, that's essential, and it's also a great way to get better. There's a narrative arc even to explicating a technical writing project like explaining a digital camera. Though that's different from a biography, it involves a lot of the same critical-thinking and writing skills. Passion is awesome, and people should have that in whatever they do. But a lot of people who love to write simply aren't that good at it. It's tough, because writing is so personal -- we can all do it at the basic level. But to do it professionally is a whole new skill set. Hey, I can hit a running 12-footer, maybe even more often than Kobe, but the Lakers haven't called. Still.

2) You’ve taught print journalism and are writing a text on online communication. What must journalism students know today that wasn’t taught 10 years ago?

Schaller: There has been a move away from teaching -- in my brief experience -- storytelling skills. The new media present new challenges, and they require different skill sets to tell a story well across media. There are some basic components to journalism and storytelling that ring true across media -- get it right, be clear and concise, etc. -- but doing it on video, print, or audio are different skill sets. It'd be hard to be good in all three, but it shouldn't come at the expense of developing and honing one's skills. Being a jack of all trades and master of none means a small market, or limited opportunities. Or at least get good at one before moving onto the others. I like the idea of the multi-media journalist, but a lot more thought, planning and better learning outcomes are going to have to be developed before the new media journalist is part of the working world -- and curriculum. A big part of that is a lot of the good folks in academia left the "real world" before the Internet. It'd be hard for anyone to teach something they never experienced. The real-time news cycle is a foreign term to those who left the field before they had the pressure of which story to post, or hold, and when to update a Web site, how the news cycle changes fact checking and editing. Knowing how to use the bells and whistles on this new engine is awesome, but not if you are spinning your wheels. Everyone can produce media -- that's awesome -- but not everyone wants to read or hear what EVERYONE else to say. That was the big myth with the citizen journalist, that anyone would care about what others have to say. All the "interactivity" is nasty comments appended at the end of story and below YouTube videos. People want to express themselves -- cool -- but a rant or vulgar diatribe is not a form of journalism whatsoever. Now, if they have rhetoric skills, it's a different conversation -- speaking of which, those should be taught, too.

3) What do you wish that more freelance writers knew?

Schaller: That you are a contractor as much as a writer. You'd better market yourself if you are going to put food on the table. You can't believe in writer's block and be a real writer. Sometimes the words find you, but sometimes you have to find them -- I have repeated that several times teaching, because it's a craft. Someone goes out in the real world and Joe's PR Firm needs a release written by 5 p.m., and you say, "I can't do it, writer's block." Goodbye. Next.

Being a freelance writer is a great life, a life of dreams. But your name is your brand, so you'd better attach it to projects you are committed to do, and do well. Also, there's this myth about freelancing that you have no boss. Anyone who signs a paycheck to you is your boss, and if you make them mad once, you run the risk of never writing for that Web site or magazine again -- worse, it might extend to ALL the editors in that person's network, because we all know that word travels fast in these times. Also, don't ever miss a deadline. I try to "comically" beat deadlines -- to get the assignment done well and turned in as quickly as possible, so fast that the editor laughs because she or he "can't believe how fast'' I turned it in. Because when they need something under the gun in the future, they will remember you for that. And usually, with we-need-this-fast assignments, the pay is correspondingly higher because of the urgency.

4) You have amazing networking skills. What is the biggest mistake that recent graduates make in networking?

Schaller: Thinking people owe them something. I tried to help someone here, and they were so mad they didn't have an answer that week, that person stopped talking to me even when we passed in the hall. Think I will help that person again? Not likely. Also, remember that everything you do is an opportunity to network. Even if you are working for a poverty-level wage at a nonprofit (which is awesome, that's just not me), you are going to deal with big companies. Make connections, send a thank you -- send a resume and work sample. No is going to move you up unless you move yourself up. A lot of people love filling out applications online, and that's cool if it is asked for, but that's just getting you in line -- I want my students and friends at the front of the line so they get a shot, and what happens from there is up to them. Another important thing is that people think the opportunities are endless. They are, but if you get an interview, don't give it anything other than your best. You have a million arrows in your sheaf, but you only get one shot at most targets. Miss once, and that often is it. Also, don't ever react to a perceived (or even real) disrespect if there's a networking opportunity. Sometimes, people don't mean what they say, or they are having a bad day and take it out on you -- they'll remember the person who took the high road for all the right reasons, and you might get a job, and an apology, down the road. If you react, you just got to feel good for a second, and doors have closed. I'd rather chug a gallon of pride than throw away a five-figure freelance gig over ego.

5) If someone were to write a biography on Bob Schaller, what should the title be?

Schaller: Dumb luck uncovered: How do these things happen?

Thanks, Bob!

Never Celebrate Semester's End Early

2008-12-07T17:27:00.001-06:00

Ugh. The beat goes on. Ugh.

We popped a top too early.

Come on, posting of final grades.

End of World Looming? India Says "Perhaps"

2008-11-30T15:33:00.003-06:00

LUBBOCK (not India), Texas -- A disturbing column in the New York Times forwarded to me from doctoral student Wendy Maxian makes me think that the next aluminum foil-headed prognosticator might be right.

As former friends continue to face layoffs in journalism, I cannot help but cringe over local news being staffed from a continent away.

I checked in with one of his workers in Mysore City in southern India, 40-year-old G. Sreejayanthi, who puts together Pasadena events listings. She said she had a full-time job in India and didn’t think of herself as a journalist. “I try to do my best, which need not necessarily be correct always,” she wrote back. “Regarding Rose Bowl, my first thought was it was related to some food event but then found that is related to Sports field.”

It was once written that all politics are local. I never imagined that the corollary would be that no journalism is local.

The only way this works is if newspapers (whatever form they will take) are some sort of cheap aggregators, and all genuinely local information comes from blogs.

In which case, even a hack coder such as myself can probably write a better program to aggregate news -- and do so more cheaply than $7.50 per thousand words.

Sigh.

Bill Snyder a Wildcat Once More

2008-11-24T16:28:00.002-06:00

For all the other problems in the world, my life is one of complete joy today. Bill Snyder is once again the head coach of the K-State Wildcats.

Welcome back, Mr. Snyder. We have missed you dearly.

This is an awesome day, and I'm wearing purple!

Gambling, Punting, and Unnecessary Risk

2008-11-23T10:26:00.004-06:00

I enjoy listening to sports radio, but I have not done so often lately. I have preferred the quiet to the talk.

When I do listen, I notice that they spend quite a bit of time talking about betting on sports. That's wasted on me. I'm not a gambler. Moreover, the entire idea of gambling is foreign to me.

We live in West Texas, and I drive to New Mexico a couple of times per year. Usually around Roswell we see a billboard for Powerball lottery. Texas is not a Powerball state, so the jackpot amount usually is a surprise. When it's large, we usually drop a dollar.

People call the lottery a tax on people who are bad at math, but I would argue that these are exactly my kind of odds. I won't miss the dollar, and I'd be a lot better off with an extra $200 million. So spending an extra $3 a year is no trouble.

Conversely, doubling my money holds almost no interest. Whatever spare money I have has a purpose. And losing it for no good reason seems, well, stupid. And doubling it won't buy me a new house, a new car, or anything I really want. Thus the risk-reward ratio is quite poor.

This guiding principle extends to sports. I love Big Ten football. Woody Hayes. Three yards and a cloud of dust. And although I enjoy watching Texas Tech football, it is against my entire nature. I would have made a boring football coach.

I believe Jim Tressel when he says that the punt is the most important play in football. I believe that defense does win championships. I grew up watching Marty Schottenheimer's Kansas City Chiefs win 16-13 slugfests.

There's nothing like a tenacious defense and an ability to run the ball. You can close out games.

Last night, watching the Red Raiders get pummeled by Mobilehoma, coach Mike Leach's propensity to go for it on fourth down failed. Giving such a skilled opponent a short field was extremely costly.

This itself is an interesting study in risk. If you've ever played video game football, you occasionally find yourself ahead late in the game trying to protect a lead. Faced with certain defeat, your opponent is forced to repeatedly go for it on fourth down.

In my experience, this is almost impossible to defend. It seems that so much of football is designed to keep most runs short. So for the entirety of the game, holding your opponent to three straight 3-yard runs spells victory. They punt on 4th and 1.

However, nursing a 3 point lead with 2:30 to go, your opponent is going to try for that yard every time. And it's incredibly effective.

Yet so few take this gamble when it's not absolutely necessary. Imagine how difficult it would be to stop a team with a solid running attack and play action passing that always went for it on fourth and short. I'm not saying it would be effective in the long run, but I would hate to defend it.

In the end, it's a function of probabilities, and a well executed punt has better odds.

And these coaches are gambling with millions of dollars: their lucrative contracts.

Which brings us back to the entire issue of gambling.

Although I don't have the patience to fact check this, ESPN radio's Colin Cowherd said this week that sports gambling increases when the economy is bad. When you and your family need the money the most, you're most likely to flush it away.

In our lab, we spend a lot of time studying appetitive and aversive processes. Good things feel good, and bad things feel bad. This is universal. But for some people, good things feel so good that risks are ignored. And for others, bad things feel so bad that no risk is tolerable.

To me, gambling is simply a function of appetite and aversion. I don't have a high tolerance for risk, so it logically follows that I am not much of a gambler. But it also explains why people might be more likely to gamble during times of economic strife.

Imagine that you're a little bit hungry, but you'd have to run across a busy highway to get food. You probably would sit out the human Frogger. Now imagine that you're starving. No amount of traffic would prevent you from risking the highway. Eat or die. So the traffic does not increase your risk.

Perhaps you need that extra $100 so bad that you cannot see the folly of losing the $100 you do have.

So Las Vegas remains a mystery to me. It's a monument built to a god that I just don't understand.

Some Late November Observations

2008-11-22T08:27:00.004-06:00

It seems as if we have been three weeks from the end of the semester for an eternity. It truly will never end.
We're doing several faculty searches, which has me looking toward the future and what this place should look like.
The quality of applications suggests that we have turned a corner at Texas Tech.
It's exciting that really good people want to be here.
My office is once again a complete wreck. It's embarrassing that I have three desks covered several inches deep in papers and books.
I really enjoy my colleagues. I feel lucky to work in a great place.
They call Twitter microblogging, and it has certainly harmed my macroblogging.
Thanksgiving is scheduled at a really annoying time.
Data analysis always beats writing. Unless, of course, that writing is blogging.
My life was better before Facebook and MySpace.
I wish that my e-mail would go into a secret folder on my BlackBerry so that I could see it when I wanted to without being forced to deal with it.
I'm not going into the office today. First Saturday in as long as I can remember.
I will still be working from home.
I'm the happiest I have been in late November in as long as I can remember.
No matter how great your kids and spouse, you can eventually test their patience with consecutive 12 hour days.
You've been working too much when your four-year-old asks you if you've been out-of-town.
I have no idea what I want to teach in Fall 2009. It may seem silly, but I have to decide relatively soon, and I am completely conflicted.
My wife and I are long overdue to go out to dinner alone.
Long overdue.
We've had dinner along like once in the past year.
I'm nostalgic for K-State football and Indiana basketball.
Despite the fact that both sucked/will suck this year.
A week from now, I will be in New Mexico, which is one of the best parts of living in Lubbock.

Writing My First Book Update

2008-11-16T09:16:00.004-06:00

I thought that I'd take a moment this Sunday morning to share my progress on the textbook I am helping to write.

A lot of people want to write a book, so I thought perhaps this might be of interest. Emphasis on might.

The book is an undergraduate textbook on research methods in advertising and public relations.

My real life continues to get in the way, so I am quite a bit behind schedule. I worked on the book for about 7 hours yesterday. The project of the day was a riveting chapter on data tabulation.

If it were simply a matter of sitting down and writing, it would be one thing. But data tabulation, as one might imagine, involves tables. So most of the day was spent making tables. Seven tables and one figure.

I could have simply made up data. However, being a scientist, hypothetical data is an allergen. So I found a national dataset and spent much of the day mining through the codebook for examples that have at least a chance of being relevant to advertising and public relations students.

As a side note, I have a newfound respect for all examples in textbooks.

Once I found a suitable example, the data were analyzed in statistical program SPSS, and then I could make the tables.

Today will represent another 8 hours on the project. I'll spend an additional hour or so on data tabulation, and then it is on to the fascinating world of quasi-experiments.

In many ways, the work is quite rewarding. In other ways, it is quite frustrating. This type of writing is unlike my journalism training, and it is vastly different from the scientific writing that takes much of my time these days.

And I am writing a little bit more than a quarter of the textbook. This will be a little bit of a rush in a quarter of a year. Thus, the entire thing would have been a rush in a year.

This gives me even more respect for those who can produce quality works far more quickly, including a colleague at Texas Tech.

I'm thankful to have the experience. I've always wanted to write a book. As a child, I'd sit around my parents' advertising agency fabricating books. Long before the days of desktop publishing, I was fascinated by the blank books you could buy at a bookstore. So much waiting to be said.

So I'm glad to know just how much work really goes into it.

This would be a lot more fun if I were writing about an area of research about which I care intensely. Instead, this is serving a need. And as with all things, satisfying wants is more fun thatnneeds.

Olbermann on Gay Marriage: Genius

2008-11-14T14:34:00.001-06:00

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

2008-11-09T15:33:00.002-06:00

I am a hopeless pack rat. Parting is not sweet sorrow.

Yesterday my wife unpacked a couple of pint glasses from the Blue Corn Cafe & Brewery in Santa Fe, N.M. They don't look at all like the ones shown on the Web site.

I found them when I unloaded the dishwasher today.

These particular pints date back to the weekend after my college graduation from New Mexico State in 1997.

It was a great trip ... especially because it was such an exciting time of adventure and things to come.

I don't drink out of them much. But I sure like having them. Seeing them upside down in the dishwasher today caused a great rush of positive affect and nostalgia. It was a great moment on a day that I woke up sick.

Don't Watch TV for Results, Try Twitter

2008-11-05T16:05:00.002-06:00

Watching the election returns last night, I consistently had faster results on Twitter than any of the TV networks.

Go social media!

ESPN College Gameday Brings Fun to Lubbock

2008-10-31T19:15:00.004-05:00

Much fun is being had in Lubbock because ESPN's College Gameday show is in Lubbock for the Texas vs. Texas Tech match up.

Cynic Wes Wise said it would never happen.

Here I am with lab crew Wes Wise, Brandon Nutting, Wendy Maxian, and Kelli Brown.

Wreck 'Em!

Wisdom from The Paper, Drivel from Me

2008-10-29T21:14:00.002-05:00

One of my favorite movies of all time is The Paper with Michael Keaton and Robert Duvall. Love it!

Since I used to be a newspaper man, it tugs at my heart.

Anyway, in one scene, the divorced, disowned by his daughter, borderline alcoholic, prostate cancer having Duvall is sitting on a barstool talking about life.

And the Internet is ticking me off by not revealing this quotation, but he says something akin to:

Between your work, your house, and your family, they want more than you have to give. There are only 24 hours in a day. So your crap on your family because they're people, and they'll understand.

So that's basically how I feel working so much lately. Sorry family.

As I was writing this, the wife comes by and says, "I thought you were going to spend time with me."

Oops. Gotta go.

Need to Win Lottery So I Can Design Cool Stuff

2008-10-28T13:24:00.003-05:00

I could have thought of this.

I should have thought of this.

With a little bit of help, I could have coded this.

I feel as if I missed out.

http://www.wefeelfine.org/

Book Contract Feels Like Faustian Deal

2008-10-25T09:23:00.004-05:00

I officially signed a book contract this week. Along with three other authors, most notably former advertising department chairman Donald Jugenheimer, we're writing a textbook on research in advertising and public relations.

In the next three months, I will have to write 8 chapters in a little under 90 days. This means that I will have to write more than I have since I was a daily reporter at the Las Cruces Sun-News about a decade ago.

That'd be fine if there weren't these classes to teach and research projects to finish. But there are.

So the blogging will likely suffer. As will the sleep and the family life.

But hopefully it will be a worthwhile journey once we are done.

Take That, Annual Review!

2008-10-21T08:49:00.003-05:00

From The Wall Street Journal:

Get Rid of the Performance Review!
It destroys morale, kills teamwork and hurts the bottom line. And that's just for starters.
By SAMUEL A. CULBERT
You can call me "dense," you can call me "iconoclastic," but I see nothing constructive about an annual pay and performance review. It's a mainstream practice that has baffled me for years.

To my way of thinking, a one-side-accountable, boss-administered review is little more than a dysfunctional pretense. It's a negative to corporate performance, an obstacle to straight-talk relationships, and a prime cause of low morale at work. Even the mere knowledge that such an event will take place damages daily communications and teamwork.
he alleged primary purpose of performance reviews is to enlighten subordinates about what they should be doing better or differently. But I see the primary purpose quite differently. I see it as intimidation aimed at preserving the boss's authority and power advantage. Such intimidation is unnecessary, though: The boss has the power with or without the performance review.

Read the entire piece here.

More Political Ads Publicity for Angelini

2008-10-15T07:38:00.004-05:00

See the interview of James Angelini, Ph.D., at the University of Delaware's UDaily.

“What I think the producers of these messages have to realize is that they cannot take it to the extreme that some political advertisements have gone over the past eight to 12 years,” Angelini said.

Spinoza on Perceived Reality

2008-10-14T12:09:00.003-05:00

From The Ethics, Nature and Origin of the Mind:

PROP. XLIV. It is not in the nature of reason to regard things as contingent, but as necessary.

Does this mean Spinoza felt that the default value was "true"?

Brandon Has a P300 ... and Lives to Tell

2008-10-12T15:35:00.006-05:00

For fun today in the lab, we decided to see whether we could measure EEG activity using our Coulbourn Instruments LabLinc V system.

So poor Brandon Nutting's forehead got scrubbed, we attached some sensors, and collected some data. We don't have a cap yet, so we were limited to the forehead.

Here you see Event Related Potentials to a 100 ms 70 dB audio tone with a 10 ms rise time.

There were 49 trials.

You can see a recognizable P300 component about 300 ms after stimulus offset. You can also see a N100 in the Fp1 component.

The black (F7) and red (F8) locations were collected at the sides of his forehead, and the blue (Fp1) location was collected at the left-center of the forehead.

You can check out the locations of the International 10-20 System here.

Thanks to Justin Keene and Wes Wise for helping this experiment today. In under three hours, we took the equipment out of the box, wrote the collection program, collected the data, reduced the data in MATLAB, and plotted it. Not bad for a Sunday afternoon.

(And, yes, Brandon and I are both wearing Indiana shirts. Go Hoosiers!)

Angelini in Newsweek: Startling Political Ads

2008-10-10T16:19:00.003-05:00

My co-author on a study of negative political ads was featured in an online Newsweek segment today. Read the comments of James Angelini, Ph.D., online, in a piece titled, Expertinent: The Biology of Negative Advertising.

The original research was published in the Journal of Advertising titled, Psychophysiological and memory effects of negative political ads: Aversive, arousing and well remembered, and a PDF of the research can be retrieved for research purposes here.

Tech Doctoral Student Pens Again

2008-10-09T10:15:00.003-05:00

In our doctoral program in the college of mass communications at Texas Tech University, we have one of the most prolific authors in America today.

Bob Schaller has authored more than 40 books, and that number continues to increase dramatically. It seems as if he writes a new book each week.

Mr. Schaller's latest book, Michael Phelps: The Untold Story of a Champion, is scheduled to be released Oct. 21 from St. Martin's; however some reports have the books on some shelves now.

The Phelps book was the subject of a Publishers Weekly cover story this week (see photo). This is an honor, and it reflects positively on both Mr. Schaller and the college.

Amazon.com has the mass market paperback for just $6.99 and available for preorder, and it is my understanding that this book will have many interesting insights filtered from the official Phelps biography.

Having read some of Mr. Schaller's work, I highly recommend it. I'll be buying my copy in a little under two weeks.

Congratulations, Bob.

Day of Good (Really) Meetings

2008-10-08T21:46:00.000-05:00

Today was mostly lost to meetings, but they were good ones.

I had coffee with a colleague who, despite having spent time at Michigan, is a very interesting guy. He even sparked a grant idea, which is never a bad thing.

Later I met with a psychophysiology colleague across campus who showed me how they do things in his lab.

It was fun to be an academic today.

I'm Glad $700 Billion Led to Stock Rebound

2008-10-06T06:39:00.001-05:00

Oh wait. It didn't.

Switch to Bond Investment in the Fall

2008-09-30T14:53:00.002-05:00

OK, so I won't really go into it here, but Black Monday 1987 was a pretty formative day in my life. It set some key values and ensured I would never be a stock trader.

Watching this current economic situation, not being an economist, listening to some economists arguing against the bailout, I have been wondering what we really should do. Smart people make a convincing case on both sides, and public opinion is on the no-bailout side.

Then I wondered, "What caused Black Monday in 1987?" So I fired up my old friend Wikipedia, and searched Black Monday 1987.

And the answer is not particularly interesting to me.

But I did note that it was: October 19, 1987.

I also noted that there is some disambiguation with Black Monday and Tuesday 1929, which were October 28 and 29.

And I thought: both in October. Hmmm.

And we're almost in October. Hmmm.

All three in the first five weeks of fall, which is like another word for crash.

So, I say damn you Autumnal Equinox!

March, heck! Beware the Ides of October.

PR Case Study: Don't Anger Comedians

2008-09-29T07:01:00.004-05:00

When I was undergraduate, we looked at a few case studies in a public relations course I took with Dr. Mac at NMSU. It seemed that when you looked at 60 Minutes ambushing a CEO, there was almost no way to look good.

However, when you expect to get grilled by a CBS program, you do not expect to get grilled by David Letterman.

This happened to Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain when he canceled his Letterman appearance purportedly to head back to Washington to discuss the Wall Street bailout.

As you can see, that angered Letterman, who felt that a vice presidential candidate should be able to step in.

However, when Letterman found out that McCain did not head back to Washington and instead was in a different CBS studio, taping an interview with Katie Couric. Letterman's jest toward McCain turned far more pointed.

It shows that comics who usually use their sharp wits can be more acerbic when they feel it is appropriate.

One has to wonder whether Letterman's widely reported rant is part of the reason the democratic candidate Barack Obama holds a large 8 percentage point lead (50% to 42%) according to Gallup's latest three-day tracking poll.

No matter how this election turns out, I think that "campaign suspension" decision and related handling of the press will be taught as a PR case study one day.

Real-Time Debate Emotion Fascinating

2008-09-27T09:09:00.004-05:00

Last night I watched much of the John McCain / Barack Obama debate on CNN.

During the debate, they had continuous response measurement data across the bottom of the screen. That tracked real-time emotional responses (positive versus negative) across the bottom of the screen with separate lines for Democrats, independents, and Republicans.

Having collected such data in the lab, I was at times more interested in the lines than the candidates.

It also reminded me what a complicated topic emotion can be. Consider the case when the candidate you like (i.e., a positive emotion) attacks the candidate you do not like (i.e., attacks are a negative emotion).

In order to be able to respond in real time, you have to parcel out the good from the bad. And in the end, these voters exhibited that pattern. When McCain attacked, the red line went up. When Obama attacked, the blue line went up.

The critical line, I suppose, was the green line for independents. That line consistently but slightly favored Obama.

In fact, I was pretty amazed that all three lines tended to be slightly higher (I don't have access to the statistics) for Obama than McCain. These were voters from swing state Ohio, so this trend may be indicative or may represent the small sample. There is no way to tell.

Another interesting trend was all three groups' reactions to McCain's repeated pattern of insisting to talk after Jim Lehrer tried to cut him off. It seemed that no matter what McCain said, all three lines stayed low, seemingly punishing him for violating debate etiquite. Again, there is no way to know what they were thinking, but it was a rather consistent trend.

I may tape CNN next time and watch on another network. I like to see the CRM data, but with limited cognitive capacity and all, it is difficult to fully process the arguments while simultaneously tracking three groups' opinions.

Howie Mandel Can Save Our Economy

2008-09-25T19:12:00.003-05:00

I thought, perhaps, you could use some levity amidst all this talk of $700 billion, financial bailouts, and potential great depression.

If this Weblog is famous for anything, it's for the formula I calculated for NBC's game show, Deal or No Deal. It is far and a way the most popular thing I have ever written, and a day does not go by without several people searching out my regression formula.

In fact, if you Google "deal or no deal formula" right now, this blog is the second thing that comes up. It was No. 1 for a long time, but Yahoo! answers has beat me out.

At any rate, when someone searches this page through Google and loads it, their IP address saves in my StatCounter file. I almost never look at it, and I did today.

And I saw: "treas.gov," which means that in the middle of all this talk of doom and gloom, some Treasury employee was Googling the formula for Deal or No Deal.

And it made me laugh.

Until I wondered: "I hope having the country go on the game show is not our real bailout plan."

Brands, Clutter, Web 2.0, & Ambient Awareness

2008-09-24T18:37:00.003-05:00

There are some people in the world that I want to know what they're doing.

Not BFFs or anything like that. Just interesting people. So we're friends on Facebook, or I follow them on Twitter.

Since I'm a mass communications prof, I like to keep up with opinion leaders in the new technology field.

Today, one of the almost complete strangers that I follow on Twitter posted (or Tweeted, but I hate that word) this: "Tackling Social Media Strategy :: how do you use social media to create ambient awareness with journalists, publications & influentials?"

And I thought, "ambient awareness"? I was pretty sure I could figure it out, but I direct messaged her to see just what she meant, and she was nice enough to write back.

She pointed me to this awesome story by the New York Times.

Apparently those people about whom I want to know a little bit are those about for whom I have "ambient awareness." OK.

But does that translate to a company?

I talk a lot about Lovemarks (official site), so I know that we care a lot about the perceived personalities of brands. But do we really care about the companies?

I love Tide. But I don't much care what's going on at Tide right now. This may be different for a service company -- especially a Web 2.0 service company, such as Google or Digg. However, that's a pretty narrow sector of the economy to devise a marketing strategy for.

So if you were to reach out to me through the social networks, dear Web, would I care, or would it be yet evermore clutter in the advertising landscape?

So, do you care what's going on with the companies you love? Comment here!

Probably, only Tim will comment. But he has good things to say. So read his hopefully inevitable comment and leave a comment yourself.

Morning Is the Devil: It's in My Genes

2008-09-22T13:09:00.003-05:00

I hate mornings. Sure, they're beautiful. Sure, I like the quiet. Sure, it seems as if you should be up early.

But I hate it. I mean, I really, really hate it.

For the past year or so, I have used a light timer as an electric lamp. This is based upon some vague notion that by using light to wake up, I would help stimulate my circadian rhythm to be more of a morning person.

It doesn't help much.

This morning, I dialed my light timer back to 6:20 a.m. -- the earliest time of the semester.

A few minutes before 7 a.m., my wife yelled, "Your light has been on for an hour [exaggeration], are you ever going to get up?"

Ugh.

A few minutes later, I wandered into the kitchen, looked outside, and saw that it was still too dark out to water the grass.

Ugh.

Why in the world do people choose the make the world "happen" while it is still dark? I love the dark ... if I can watch it get that way. The other way around is just not natural.

So while eating my lunch today, I did some Googling. And I found a brilliant article from Slate, titled, "Can a Night Owl Become a Morning Person? A Slate experiment."

Deepa Ranganathan, I do not know who you are, but when it comes to daylight, we are kindred spirits.

And to the twisted sadist who made my kids' elementary school start at 7:45 a.m., I hope Satan makes you stay up until 3 a.m. every day because you're clearly one of those "morning people."

Remember This: Your Brain Is Cool

2008-09-21T09:51:00.000-05:00

I spent much of Friday night and Saturday in the office analyzing data for a study we conducted on in-game advertising (the lead author is Harsha Gangadharbatla, now of the University of Oregon).

During the course of the racing (car) game, participants drove under five billboards. They were not told anything about the billboards, and the idea was to check whether they noticed. We measured physiology to determine whether they were subconsciously noticing (they were), and we later measured their memory to see whether they actually stored the brand names.

First, participants were asked to freely recall the brands that they saw. Performance on this task was not especially good (16%). Later, participants were asked to recognize the brands among other brands in the same product category. Performance on this task was about 40%.

The main points of the study are pretty interesting; however, one little observationt that will not make it in the final paper was pretty interesting.

For each of the five brands, participants could either recall it or not. Furthermore, they could recognize it or not. Obviously, some people were more likely to pay attention to the driving (gamers, it turns out), and some people were more likely to pay attention to the billboards (nongamers, it turns out). Harsha knew this would be the case, but I did not.

For each brand, we could examine whether the probability it was recalled was related to the probability that it was recognized. Perhaps participants good at recall were simply good at recognition.

But this was not the case with our data. For each brand, the probability that it was recalled was significantly correlated with the probability that it was recognized. Furthermore, for each brand, the probability that it was recalled was most strongly related to its own probability of recall.

It could be the case that recalling Brand A was most strongly related to recognizing Brand B -- perhaps even by random chance. But this was not the case. In every case, A was most strongly related to A, and so on.

In many ways, this should be the case. But the fact that it was consistently the case suggests that our measurements of recognition and recall were indeed indexing how well these brands were encoded, stored, and subsequently retrieved from memory.

One kind of memory for each brand was strongly related to another kind of memory for that same brand and only weakly related (at best) to memory for other brands seen perhaps a minute before or after.

When you're trying to understand this limited-capacity attention and memory system of ours, such data are helpful.

Although this, too, will not make it in the paper, visual inspection of the physiological data (cardiac response curves) suggests that participants had an involuntary reflex associated with sensory intake for the brands the recognized but not as much for those that they did not recognize.

This tidbit is pretty awesome, but it will also not make the final paper due to how we analyze data. Although the most appropriate statistical test backs up the "story" told in the preceding paragraph, the highly specialized nature of that particular test makes it seem as if we are being disingenuous in looking for statistical significance. Thus, it is easier to omit than to justify.

All of this continues my respect and love for the human brain. What an amazing device.

Turn Radio Off for That Sweet Sound

2008-09-16T16:49:00.004-05:00

It may seem silly, but perhaps the best decision I have made of late is to drive to and from work with the radio off. Just silence. Me and my thoughts.

My Missouri colleague Paul Bolls did an entire media fast. I could not make it for a week. But having 20-30 minutes a day of silence is surprisingly refreshing.

It was very difficult at first. I can drive to work in under 15 minutes, and I must have automatically turned the radio on four or five times every trip.

It's nothing against the radio. It's just some small fight against the urge to be (media) stimulated every moment of every day. I think our brains have way too much background noise.

A little silence is golden.

My apologies to the Audio Prof.

Grass Seed, Floods, and Other Joys

2008-09-14T19:43:00.001-05:00

It seems that each promise to be a more regular blogger leads to fewer posts.

But I miss this thing, so I'll do better if for no other reason than to exercise my voice.

On Friday, Lubbock recorded the most rain it has ever had in a single day. It was a 100 year's flood.

I thought that had done away with all of my grass seed -- the watering of which has taken away from this blog.

Through some miracle, the Hydromulch survived the flood without an ark. I offer an ardent testimonial if you're on the fence about Hydromulch: awesome! And perhaps floodproof, too!

Self Publishing and the Marketplace of Ideas

2008-09-03T17:01:00.004-05:00

Well, I'm getting called out for not blogging. Shame on me, I guess.

I'm still thinking about on demand publishing.

I mentioned this last night to a well-published colleague, and he said, "The problem is that nobody reads it."

That's a match point, really. And it's eerily similar to my first thoughts about Weblogs. If everyone's speaking, who is listening?

Yet blogs are working. They are extremely influential. So much so that Procter & Gamble wanted to bring Mommy Bloggers to Cincinnati in order to influence these influencers.

So will a book that you write and publish yourself ever be read? For less than $700 (if I understand correctly), you can publish a book, register the copyright, and have it listed on online booksellers, such as Barnes & Noble.com.

Then it's up to the power of the Internet -- and if you're lucky, Oprah -- to get the book sold.

Unlikely, you say?

Well, on August, 25, 2008, I wrote about "On Demand Publishing," and today there are 5 ads on my blog for various publishing services. The Internet works.

If you have something people want to hear, they will find your content.

And rather than vanity publishing, this, to me, is the best case of the marketplace of ideas. Literally, you are not bound by an agent or a bookseller's notions of profitability. You are bound only by your ideas and your ability to come up with $500 to $700 in upfront capital.

If your idea sells, you will make back the initial investment and then some. If not, you paid perhaps $700 for the privilege of getting it off of your chest.

But the point is that the idea is out there. It is, quite literally, part of the marketplace of ideas. Some of the best ideas of all time were not popular at the time they were conceived.

Unpopular -- and even revolutionary -- ideas are just that: unpopular. If they're controversial, they are unlikely to sell many copies. Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is one of the great books of all time and sometimes referred to as "the most widely read philosophy book, ever" but was rejected by 121 publishers.

Pirsig persisted. How many others did not? Would the book had caught on if the advances of the digital press made on demand publishing earlier? I do not know.

But I think humanity must be better served when the questions begins with what people need to hear rather than what idea can be sold for a profit.

On Demand Publishing: Vanity or the Future

2008-08-25T15:40:00.003-05:00

Well, August 2008 will go down as one of my least prolific blog months ever. Too many things competing for too little time.

However, I just had a conversation with a colleague that has me once again thinking about alternative publishing.

Sadly, these syllabi will not wait. But I write this as an external Post-it note to remind me to revisit the issue soon.

In the meantime, check out Xlibris Book Publishing.

California Dreamin': On the Road

2008-08-17T10:32:00.004-05:00

Picturesque La Jolla, California.

I've not been a very good blogger in 2008. My irregular posting has led me, at times, to think about shutting it down altogether.

This has been an incredibly busy summer with classes, writing, and masters thesis. Still, there has been time for fun.

Last week was spend on a road trip with my dad, driving around Southern California.

We brought bicycles and found riding trails along the Pacific coastline. We spend time at the beach, and we visited various university campuses, including Cal Tech, one of my new favorite places.

It was a great week for being a human; however, it was not such a great week for being a blogger.

The visit helped me set some long-term goals, and it helped me find some great places to take my kids on a next trip to California.

The last such trip I took with my dad was 1991. I'm hoping we won't wait 17 years next time.

Paris: "I'll See You at the Debate, Bitches"

2008-08-07T09:12:00.003-05:00

Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Adfunny videosFunnyOrDie.com

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Childish? Yes. Hilarious? Also yes.

Holy Cr*p! We Got That Big in 9 Years?

2008-08-06T18:51:00.002-05:00

The headline reads, "Linux Symposium Statistics T-Shirt Size."

Two graphs are presented for 1999 and 2008.

In 1999, the most common size was medium. In 2008, the most common size was XL.

In 1999, the least ordered size was XXL. In 2008, the least ordered size was small.

I think we're in trouble.

2000 Miles: A Long Time in the Making

2008-08-03T11:50:00.003-05:00

Today marked a milestone of sorts. I finally tallied 2000.0 miles on my bike computer.

It's taken far too long to get here. I eclipsed 1000.0 miles back in Bloomington, Ind. So it's been more than three years. That's less than 333 miles a year, which is horrible for a cyclist.

Sure, the figure is a little misleading. I rode my other bike for almost a year while my wheel was broken (average is up to maybe 500 miles a year). Then, when I finally starting riding my Trek again, I messed up the odometer, and the first few rides did not "count." Also, I rode a few on the trainer (a device that you mount the bike on to ride stationary) a few times, and those miles don't add up.

One of the reasons that I moved to Texas was to have a longer riding season. I have not done a very good job of that. Shame on me.

But, I have to admit, the elliptical in my climate controlled house looks a lot better when it's 50 degrees, but there is a 20 mph wind.

Still, in a climate such as this, anything less than 1,000 miles a year (less than 3 miles a day) is simply unacceptable.

Books, Writing, Writer's Block

2008-08-02T08:47:00.002-05:00

Almost every time that a week elapses between blog posts, I have no idea how it happened. Where does the time go?

I'm trying to write two books chapters that are at best mildly interesting to me now. That makes writing painful, or nonexistent. This weekend, sadly, is catch up time. As I told a colleague earlier this week, knowing that you can write on deadline is dangerous knowledge to have.

I have decided that summer teaching is the absolute devil. Wednesday will mark my last summer class (the final is at 8 a.m. on Friday ... blech!) for several years -- hopefully forever.

Manuscripts are becoming covered in dust as I prepare lectures and write exams. Although I enjoy teaching, summer rather saps the fun out of it. There is no time. And, truth be told, there's not enough time for students to learn. At least part of education should be about idea percolation. And there's no time for this during the summer.

On the side, I've been reading the brilliant Einstein biography by Walter Isaacson. If you're at all interested in science, this is a great read.

Off for a quick bike ride ... my lone break from writing this weekend.

Stop Reading This and Pick Up a Book

2008-07-27T09:57:00.001-05:00

What short attention span?

Read here.

Meat-Free Month: Day 13 Update

2008-07-24T08:37:00.003-05:00

I admire real vegetarians. Doing this for a month is pretty challenging; doing it for a lifetime would be more work than I have in me.

It's not hard in that I am just dying for meat (however I was not especially thrilled when my wife ordered the mixed grill at Olive Garden the other night). It's just that if I cannot have meat, I am pretty much not so interested in eating.

The vegetarian Phad Thai at Thai Pepper was really good, but I can hardly eat out every night. And I have to remember to ask someone what is the best kind of tofu to buy to make tofu stir fry.

Lunch is OK because of the Amy's line of vegetarian microwave meals. In fact, this is no problem. And I never eat meat for breakfast unless we're visiting someone or it's a special occasion, so this, too, is no big deal.

But dinner is starting to be a drag. I've eaten bean burritos about half of the time -- my wife was nice enough to make a nice black bean burrito last night. I'm also already tired of tortellini with spaghetti sauce.

So specific tofu suggestions would be appreciated. Apparently there are many different kinds with many different textures.

Diaper Sales Also Need Opinion Leaders

2008-07-22T20:31:00.003-05:00

From the print edition of the July 14, 2008, Advertising Age:

P&G relies on power of Mommy bloggers
Giant calls then the 'new influences'; will recruit up to 15 to headquarters

By JACK NEFF
jneff@adage.com
PROCTER & GAMBLE CO.'S Pampers is bringing as many as 15 top "mommy bloggers" to the company's Cincinnati headquarters later this month in what appears to be the company's biggest effort yet to reach online influencers.

That it's doing so with all-expense-paid trips could place P&G in a controversy similar to those that have confronted other marketers, such as Microsoft, in years past. But P&G sees the move as an emerging standard industry practice to inform bloggers, rather than buy their loyalty.

P&G should bring me to Cincinnati. I would enjoy being informed. I'd even give a research presentation gratis.

Gore Enlists Opinion Leaders on Energy

2008-07-20T09:26:00.003-05:00

An interesting story in this morning's New York Times caught my eye. Former vice president Al Gore is calling upon bloggers to help spread the word about his energy independence campaign at http://wecansolveit.org/.

Gore's group seems to be leaning upon a bedrock of communication theory, the two-step flow. Dating back to the 1940s, this body of research found that certain opinion leaders got a lot of information from the media, and those opinion leaders were then influential within the community. Thus, the media exerted a two-step influence on public opinion.

Gore's attempt is nonpartisan in nature, and at the very least, I hope that it gets people talking about something more meaningful. The current rhetoric in the presidential campaign is extremely hollow, especially the call on more drilling, which estimates show might lower gasoline costs by 2030! We'll have much bigger problems in 22 years.

Does Voting Republican Make You Fat?

2008-07-18T17:16:00.004-05:00

Or does being fat make you vote Republican?

I love maps. They catch my eye. The other day, I was passing through some site or another (I forget), and I saw a map of the most obese U.S. states. When I saw it, I thought it looked a lot like the results of the 2004 presidential election.

Then today, I saw a story about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention releasing new statistics on the most obese states.

So I wondered whether the states whose electoral votes went to George W. Bush were actually fatter than those who voted for John Kerry. Being a research type, I crunched the numbers.

Indeed, those residents of states whose electoral votes went to Bush are indeed more obsese (26.53%) than those states whose electoral votes went to Kerry (24.11%), t(49) = 3.22,
p = .002.

This is especially telling given that the Bush states contain the skinniest state, Colorado (18.7% obese).

Although the slightly more than 2% point difference may seem modest to you, the statistics suggest that there is less than one quarter of a percent chance of observing a difference this big (or bigger) given that there is no real difference between the states. And it suggests a difference of almost 10% between the states (i.e., 2% is about 10% of 20%).

Obviously my headline is misleading, as there is most likely no direct causal link between the two variables. However, the connection is an interesting one and likely points to a third variable that causes both obesity and Republican voting. The new story suggested that rural populations are likely to be more obese, and most Bush states are predominantly rural.

Glean what you wish from the data. I found them to be interesting.

Interesting Political Campaign

2008-07-16T17:24:00.002-05:00

Check out this page by Sean Tevis, who is running for state representative in my native state of Kansas.

It's an interesting campaign.

My Meat-Free Month

2008-07-16T10:51:00.004-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, we were having dinner with some friends, one of whom is a vegetarian.

We were grilling, and there was much teasing about her vegetarian hamburger. It was all good fun, but it reminded me of a time while at Kansas State when I went a week without eating meat just to see whether I could do it.

Although I succeeded, I didn't try very hard to eat a varied diet, and it was pretty miserable. Seven straight days of peanut butter and jelly for lunch make for a boring life.

Thinking about that week made me wonder whether I could make it a month without meat. Well, for reasons both good and bad, I am the kind of person that once that challenge makes it into my head, I am pretty much stuck trying.

So here I am on Day 5 of the Meat-Free Month. It hasn't been bad, and my wife has helped me find some more interesting things to eat.

However, there are some issues. For example, last night our air conditioner broke at home, and a repair person could not make it until today (I hope). So the house was hot, and it was ill-advised to cook and add to the heat. I needed to get dinner out quickly.

In such instances, vegetarian choices for fast food are slim pickings. As a friend recently told me, you pretty much have to choose between Taco Bell bean burritos and a veggie sub from Subway. And, seriously, I am into this, but I have no desire to eat lettuce and cucumbers in a piece of bread.

All the good fast food salads have chicken, and besides, there is not much protein in a salad.

File this under arbitrary thoughts, but I will provide occasional updates here. I think that it would be pretty difficult to make a life out of this. It's probably the best thing to do for myriad reasons, but for a kid who grew up in a BBQ mecca like Kansas City, the odds are long.

Fourth Estate Checks Tyranny from Other Three

2008-07-13T08:43:00.005-05:00

I believe in journalism. I believe in the Fourth Estate. I believe that there can be no open and free society without an active and vibrant press.

And I'm worried.

Because journalism looks quite ill. Gravely ill. It's always been a business about shedding light, but now there is not much business left. And without the dollars, the light goes out.

My wife forwarded me an article from Time magazine titled "The Nightly News, Not-for-Profit."

The newspaper industry is in a bad spot. Actually, run a correction on that statement — newspapers are in a "time to panic" spot. The business model is collapsing, ad dollars are disappearing, newsprint prices are at a 12-year high and the Internet is just giving news away for free. On July 2, the Los Angeles Times announced it was cutting more than one-sixth of its newsroom staff; the Tampa Tribune said it would cut 20%.

These are huge cuts just 11 years after I graduated with a degree in journalism. The work is just as important as ever -- even more important than ever given the current state of American affairs.

The Time article outlines that problem that investigative reporting is slow and minimally productive in terms of column inches. It's exactly investigative reporting that we need now.

The Internet has fueled the 24-hour-news cycle that makes it more important to have new news than to have solid news. I attribute most of the failings of journalism during the past decade to the rush to publish.

I firmly believe that Watergate could not have happened today. No editor has the resources to turn people loose for that long.

And bloggers are well meaning, but most are like me and have a day job that gets most of the attention. How many bloggers have time to do real in-depth investigative reporting?

We're in trouble if this ship sinks the rest of the way. And any talk of a new business model is just about that: dollars. The truth does not get mentioned very often.

As Duke University economist James T. Hamilton puts it, "Newspapers used to be owned by people who were willing to trade off profits for the notion that they were doing the right thing." And with profits disappearing, doing the right thing is becoming increasingly important.

Tech President Appears to Be Solid Choice

2008-07-11T17:29:00.004-05:00

Regular readers will know that Texas Tech's choice for a new president has been a topic of great concern for me.

Last week Tech announced the University of Missouri at Kansas City chancellor Guy Bailey has been named the sole finalist for the position (read news release here).

I do not know much about Bailey personally, but everything that I have read sounds very promising. He seems to have great potential as a president.

This bodes well for Tech's future and relieves a great deal of anxiety for me.

However, I still strongly oppose the process of a sole finalist. It is my conviction that multiple candidates must come to campus, and there must be dialog with the entire campus community.

In this case, the choice of a president is a bit like sausage: I like the end product, but I am not too fond of the way it is made.

Spending Time in Colorado with Family

2008-07-04T17:29:00.000-05:00

Sorry to have gone out-of-touch. Staying at a cottage in the woods with no Internet access.

Regular posts will resume next week.

Tech Board Expected to Name President Finalist

2008-06-30T16:28:00.003-05:00

Board of Regents
Special Called Teleconference Meeting
Lubbock, Texas
July 2, 2008

Abbreviated Agenda with Approximate Times

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

2:00 p.m. Call to Order Meeting of the Board.
Location: Board Room, Second Floor, Room 201, Administration Building

2:00 p.m Executive Session
Location: Board Room, Second Floor, Room 201, Administration Building

3:30 p.m. Following Executive Session, convene into Open Session, and Meeting of the Committee of the Whole and the Board
Location: Board Room, Second Floor, Room 201, Administration Building

3:30 p.m. Adjournment

From the full agenda, which was e-mailed, but from which I cannot copy and paste because it has Acrobat security enabled, the purpose of the executive session is:

Personnel matters: Consideration and discussion of candidates for the position of President of Texas Tech University -- Section 551.074

If you do any searching of the selection of university presidents, you will find that the exclusive practice is this naming of a single finalist. Thus, it is the de facto procedure in Texas. I am of the opinion that multiple finalists should be publicly named.

Secret Finalists Hurt Open Government

2008-06-29T15:38:00.001-05:00

The first university presidential search that I was ever aware of was during the 1994-1995 academic year at New Mexico State. Although I was far from involved, I was aware that finalists were being invited to campus. As I recall, forums with each candidate were broadcast on the campus PBS affiliate, KRWG-TV.

According to a LexisNexis search that retrieved an April 7, 1995, article from the Albuquerque Journal, there were four finalists: Joseph Charles Jennett, Herman D. Lujan, William C. Merwin, and J. Michael Orenduff.

The board of regents selected Dr. Orenduff, a man I would come to know and admire during my term as editor of the NMSU student newspaper, the Round Up.

After Dr. Orenduff left NMSU, the executive vice president served first as interim president, and by the time the next search was under way, I was leaving Las Cruces.

Many years would intervene before I seriously thought about a presidential search again. Even when Indiana University selected a new president while I was a doctoral student there, I was too busy to give it much thought.

Then, earlier this year, the revolving door of NMSU presidents began to swing again. Then NMSU-president Michael V. Martin appeared to be on the way out. According to a May 2008 NMSU news release, "NMSU President Michael V. Martin has accepted an invitation to be the sole finalist in Louisiana State University’s search for chancellor."

As an alumnus, I hated to see yet another president cycle through NMSU. However, the idea of a sole finalist bugged me. At the time, I thought that it seemed to be putting an awful lot of marbles in a single basket. Perhaps due to naivete, this "sole finalist" business seemed to be a one-time occurrence.

Not surprisingly, LSU hired the sole finalist Martin.

In February, our president, Jon Whitmore, had resigned. While Martin was a candidate for chancellor at LSU, Whitmore was a finalist for the presidency at San José State University.

Importantly, however, Whitmore was not a sole finalist or a secret finalist. He was competing for the job against Northern Arizona University Provost Elizabeth Grobsmith and Sonoma State Provost Eduardo Ochoa.

There was no secrecy and much transparency. As I had witnessed in 1995, all three of the finalists came to campus. They met with various constituencies, and stakeholders had the opportunity for feedback. The student newspaper, the Spartan Daily, did an excellent job chronicling the search. Thanks to their excellent advisor, Mack Lundstrom, they turned out some of the best on-deadline student journalism that I have ever seen.

However, Whitmore going to SJSU meant that Texas Tech needed a new president. As a faculty member, this is a time of some anxiety because Whitmore was a faculty-friendly president.

But I'm busy, and I haven't thought much about it.

Until the other day when I read, "Finalists for Tech president down to three" in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. OK, who are these people?

Here is the problem. You cannot know who they are. Their names are kept secret. There is no transparency. There will be no public forum for multiple candidates. There will be no input for the average taxpayer. Instead, Chancellor Kent Hance "will interview the candidates and hopes to recommend a president to the university system board of regents by the end of July," according to the A-J.

When I read this, I was in disbelief. Shocked. Turns, out that Texas law allows sole finalists. In the state of Texas, this process is as allowable and as legal as anyone could want. They are doing nothing wrong.

Except it's not right. I'm a free press guy. The most valuable thing I learned as an undergraduate was the First Amendment. I believe in the Fourth Estate. I believe that the other branches of government need to be watched. The public has a right to know.

Texas (and maybe Louisiana) should change this law. This kind of secrecy should erode public confidence, and it goes against the idea of open government upon which this country was founded.

Secret finalists will tell you that they like it this way better. They don't sully their names if they apply for a lot of jobs. They don't risk their reputations at their current institution. These are hollow arguments, and, to me, they do not pass the balancing act where one weighs efficient searches against open government. Only transparent government protects the citizenry.

And the protection goes both ways. No matter how diligent and earnest the search committee and the chancellor are, the sole finalist procedure will always have some resemblance to a back room deal.

A sole finalist is not a finalist. She or he is a president designate. I just cannot imagine that this is how Texas taxpayers want their money invested. The next Tech president will in all likelihood make more than a quarter of a million dollars a year. Shouldn't alumni, students, faculty, and staff have some say in that decision beyond a single delegate on a search committee?

As the law stands, the procedure is legal, acceptable, and probably even customary. Thus, my complaint is not with current committee or chancellor, as they are doing exactly what is expected. My complaint is with whatever governing body originally thought that this was a good idea.

This is a law/statute/code/or executive ruling that should be changed.

Transparency will not ensure a better president. I'm sure that this process selected Whitmore, and he was an excellent president. Furthermore, NMSU has open searches and seems to hire a new president every three years. I am sure that the regents will ultimately select an excellent president for Tech, and this university will continue the great progress that it has made.

However, I think that open government always makes for a better process.

A Game Theoretic View of Politics

2008-06-27T12:12:00.000-05:00

First, allow me to premise this by saying that I don't care what you believe, and I have no interest in telling you whether you are wrong or right.

Now that that's out of the way, here's something that I have been thinking about.

Liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, you likely believe what you believe. That is, you likely think that you are correct and the other side is wrong.

Further, you may sit around and wonder -- if you are so right -- why other people don't just come around to your point of view. You're right, after all.

So you might be perplexed that the latest Gallup poll shows a dead heat between John McCain and Barack Obama at 44% each. Surely one side is the best, so how can we be so completely divided?

Let's put that question on the shelf and talk about something completely different. Let's talk about the prisoner's dilemma -- a tool of game theory.

The basic idea is so familiar to television crime dramas that I won't spend much time describing it. Two people are caught by the police, accused of a crime, and separated. Each person is offered a deal if they rat out the other one. The best possible overall outcome is for both partners to stay silent. If either one of them takes the deal, called defecting in terms of the game, the one who defects goes free and the other is severely punished. If they both defect, then they both get much longer sentences than if they had both stayed silent, or cooperated in terms of the game.

So what do you do? Cooperation is the best, on average, solution. However you can try to help yourself at another's expense by defecting. Unless your partner defects.

A single trial of prisoner's dilemma is not very interesting. Instead, human nature begins to reveal itself with iterated prisoner's dilemma. That is, two partners (opponents?) play the game over and over again. After each trial, each partner is given a sentence commiserate with who defected and who cooperated. You keep adding them up, and, as with golf, the player with the lowest score wins.

Although you may find it difficult to believe, there are actually contests centered around the iterated prisoner's dilemma. People program complex strategies into a computer to compete, because in the reiterated prisoner's dilemma, you know what your partner did on the last trial (and those that came before). You could program the "golden rule," for example, but I venute that you would lose a lot.

And it turns out that the best long-term strategy appears to be elegantly simple. They call it tit-for-tat. You cooperate on the first trial, and then you do whatever your opponent did on the last trial. The best long-term average is repeated cooperation, and if both partners cooperate until the end of the game, they are both assured the lowest possible long-term solution.

Actually, the algorithm is improved with the addition of occasional forgiveness so that you do not get stuck in an endless loop of defections.

However, in a population of computers (or people) practicing tit-for-tat, there develops an opportunity for a small proportion of the population to exploit their neighbors. I shan't bore you with the particular details -- and I cannot even remember where I read this -- but Wikipedia suggests that perhaps it was Richard Dawkins' brilliant book The Selfish Gene.

The idea is that with an entire population playing by one set of rules, an opportunity develops to exploit that system by playing by different rules. In the case of tit-for-tat; however, only a few rogue individuals can buck the system.

Returning to politics, it occurred to me that this relative homeostasis over time of political parties owes to some sort of equilibrium due to principles of game theory (admittedly not a novel idea).

That is, if the entire population was conservative (in the classical theoretical sense), for instance, there would be much hierarchy, tradition, and rule-governed behavior. This would create an opportunity for agents to exploit those rules. In such a society, agents that most valued sovereignty of the individual (i.e., classical liberalism) would be able to profit disproportionately.

The converse should be true, too. Look at Soviet Russia for example. When all wealth was to be shared equally, most people had no choice but to share. But for those that could establish a hierarchy and amass wealth (i.e., the politicians), they had wealth beyond compare.

In a parliamentary system, there are multiple constituencies that must form collaborations in order to achieve a majority or plurality. In our two-party system, we do something similar by courting certain sections of the population into the various parties (i.e., the bases).

Earlier this decade, "soccer moms" were all the rage and were expected to decide elections. There will be another key constituency this year.

If you look at the history of this country, neither political camp has dominated for too long. It seems to me that this is based in game theory. As the pendulum begins to swing one way, it creates a vacuum behind it. This vacuum then is an opportunity for some (likely) disenfranchised constituency. As they rush in to fill the vacuum, balance is restored. Several people have made a similar argument in Republicans' aggressive adoption of the evangelical community, for example.

Surely this idea is not new. It was new to me, and it seems at least plausible. Even if it implausible, it was fun to think about for a couple of hours.

Lapdog Journalism Wholly Unacceptable

2008-06-26T21:27:00.004-05:00

It's been several years since I earned my paycheck as a working journalist; however, I remember a thing or two about how it is supposed to be done.

Rule 1, it seems, it not to take a single source at face value. Check. Double check. Dig. Ask the other side. Ask a follow-up question. At any rate, here is what should not happen:

Anchor: There seems to be some controversy out at city hall.

Mayor: There is no controversy. Everything is great. We asked some people, and they, too, said it is great.

Anchor: Great. Now let's take a look at the weather.

I hope you see the problem. This is lapdog journalism. If this is the only service to be offered by journalists, then there is little need for the First Amendment.

Journalists should be watchdogs. They should ask the questions that the public cannot. They should hold public officials accountable. They should not, however, simply roll over.

Yet I've seen too egregious instances of lapdog journalism this week alone in Lubbock.

Sad.

Texas Education: Do Funds Equal Productivity?

2008-06-25T07:58:00.000-05:00

In a recent post, I compared the number of programs in Texas and California public institutions of higher education that were ranked nationally in terms of faculty productivity by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

According to the Chronicle, the University of Texas at Austin has 28 ranked programs, and Texas A&M University has 14 ranked programs. For those of you scoring at home, that is a ratio of exactly 2:1.

Upon seeing those figures, my colleague wondered aloud whether that ratio was a result of the state's Permanent University Fund, which funnels royalties from oil deposits to the state's two largest university systems (apparently that was a change in 1984; before that, money went only to the two flagship schools).

However, the money is not divided equally. UT gets 2/3 of the money. That means that UT gets $2 for every $1 that A&M gets (Texas Tech gets none despite much of the oil reserves being in West Texas).

Again, the ratio is 2:1, exactly the same as the number of ranked programs.

As my colleague did, one cannot help but speculate (but it is just that -- speculation) whether these two ratios are causally linked.

Comparing California, Texas Higher Ed

2008-06-23T18:53:00.006-05:00

Updated: 9:53 p.m., June 24, 2008 (see below)

A former mentor and colleague pointed me to these faculty productivity rankings by the Chronicle for Higher Education.

The same former mentor also talked about how Texas (population 23,507,783) higher education compares to California (population 36,457,549) higher education. That is, how do the two most populous states stack up?

As an imperfect measure of university quality, let's look at the institutions listed by the Chronicle. How many public programs are nationally ranked in terms of top faculty productivity? There is a problem of apples and oranges, as Texas has separate listings for medical schools, and California does not. In the interest of fairness, I will include all Texas public institutions including the medical schools.

Texas
University of Texas, Austin -- 28
Texas A&M University -- 14
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston -- 6
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas -- 3
Texas Tech University -- 3
University of Houston -- 2
University of Texas Medical Branch -- 2
Sam Houston State University -- 1
Texas A&M, Kingsville -- 1
University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth -- 1
UTEP -- 1
(Private school Rice has 6 ranked programs)

That gives Texas a grand total of 62 ranked programs at public universities including medical schools. How does California stack up? With 50% more population, California should have about 93 ranked programs if the two states are equal.

California
University of California, Berkeley -- 59
UCLA -- 41
University of California, Davis -- 21
University of California, San Diego -- 19
University of California, San Francisco -- 16
University of California, Santa Barbara -- 11
University of California, Irvine -- 8
University of California, Riverside -- 6
San Diego State University -- 5
University of California, Santa Cruz -- 1

It turns out that California has 187 ranked programs -- more than three times the state of Texas. Fifty percent greater population translates into 300 percent more ranked programs.

The top two Texas programs have 42 ranked programs. The top two California programs have 100. The top two Texas programs have 96,236 students, according to Wikipedia. The two top California institutions have just 71,564 students, also thanks to Wikipedia. More than double the ranked programs spread among 14,000 fewer students.

I make no inferences here, but rather I leave them to you, the reader. In terms of objective productivity, my California compatriots far outpace me and my Texas colleagues.

(Meant to be humorous) It brings to mind the current California Dairy Board advertising campaign: "Great milk comes from happy cows. Happy cows come from California."

Update: This page is getting a good deal of traffic from a blog by the Texas Faculty Association. Although I am all for a good crusade, this was not the crusade that I had intended. The quip about California cows was meant to be a throwaway at the end. Instead it can quite logically be read as me saying Texas faculty are unhappy.

This may be the case; however, it is at best a hypothesis. There is clearly a cause for the disparity outlined in these data, but it assuredly boils down to something more complex than faculty satisfaction. I have zero data concerning the relative happiness of the respective faculties.

With the current economy and the price of oil, one could make a not-so-bold prediction that Texas universities will soon make up much ground on their California counterparts. Texas' budget future looks far more rosy than that of California. When you combine Texas' oil and gas revenues with how long California took to come out of the last recession, it's a great time to be in Texas.

As a resident of Texas -- and a faculty member in Texas -- I found these data to be interesting. However, I did not intend to slight the state of Texas. Trust me. I live here, and I know better.

It is worth understanding why this disparity exists. But a throwaway quip should not be interpreted for my estimate of the answer. It remains an empirical question.

* Population estimates for 2006 courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau here and here.

In-Game Advertising Not So Bad

2008-06-18T15:27:00.001-05:00

From Mediaweek.com:

IGA: Most Gamers Cool With In-Game Ads
Ads pack more wallop for brands than ads appearing in traditional media

June 17, 2008
By Mike Shields
The vast majority of gamers are fine with seeing ads placed within video games, and those ads pack more wallop for brands than ads appearing in traditional media, according to comprehensive new study released by top vendor IGA Worldwide.

IGA, which works with game publishers such as EA and Activision to insert both permanent and rotation ads within video games played via an Internet connection, last year tapped Nielsen BASES and Nielsen Games to conduct a in-depth six month examination of the impact of in-game advertising using traditional brand effectiveness measures such as awareness and recall.

The report, Consumers’ Experience with In-Game Content & Brand Impact of In-Game Advertising Study, includes responses from nearly 1,300 gamers surveyed using IGA’s proprietary software while playing games in their homes, with participation from the advertisers Taco Bell, Jeep and Wrigley.

What Me Worry? 400% Inflation in 10 Years

2008-06-16T07:32:00.004-05:00

CNNMoney.com reports that Saudi Arabia is concerned high oil prices will eventually dampen the world's appetite for oil.

Really? No kidding.

Although the move by Saudi Arabia may provide some short-term savings -- especially since much of this price increase is based upon rampant barely fact-based speculation -- a small dip in prices will not deter the march toward alternative sources of energy.

In other CNNMoney.com news: Honda rolls out fuel cell car.

Happy Father's Day, Dad

2008-06-15T09:28:00.003-05:00

A photo from Bloomington, Ind., in May 2005. Where does the time go?

Wish we could be with you today!

Do Social Interactions Make Us Happier

2008-06-10T10:20:00.002-05:00

The other night, I was laying with my 4-year-old just after reading a goodnight story.

I thought about the day she would have the next day. She'd wake up when she wanted, eat breakfast, play, eat lunch, play, eat dinner, play, watch some TV, have dad read to her, go to bed.

It's a pretty nice life. It will get hectic in a few years when she has crushes, enemies, etc.

But it made me wonder? Do these kinds of social interactions (i.e., finding friends) actually make out lives better?

From ICA, Moving into Theses Phase

2008-06-07T21:40:00.002-05:00

From ICA in Canada to moving and summer teaching ... now to master's theses.

Three of my students are defending this month. First was Nikki Siegrist (right) on Friday.

Her thesis was titled The effects of dialect on the cognitive processing of print advertisements.

Congratulations, Nikki!

Canada, Moving Lead to Slacking Blogger

2008-05-30T14:59:00.003-05:00

Sorry I have been a lazy blogger.

Here is a photo with several of the graduate students in my lab in Montréal, Canada.

Toys from Google Labs: Finding Sets

2008-05-18T10:33:00.003-05:00

I stumbled across a toy under development at Google, Google Sets. If I am reading things correctly, this particular tool must not be under very active development because I believe its inception date was 2002.

At any rate, the basic idea of the tool is to enter up to five search terms, and the algorithm will attempt to make either a Small Set (15 items or fewer) or a Large Set from those items.

For example, if you enter titles of reality television shows, it returns more reality shows.

However, it appears to be a bit useful for stalking.

I entered my name and the names of two former colleagues, "samuel bradley", "yongkuk chung", and "mija shin". If you do that and click Large Set, you get a pretty nice list of my former colleagues in the Institute for Communications Research at Indiana University.

Cool ... and spooky.

Put Corn Down and Slowly Back Away, Americans

2008-05-15T07:41:00.004-05:00

Gasoline is, like $800 a gallon, and I eat approximately 1 lb. of corn every 30 seconds.

The population continues to grow. I admit it. I am worried.

Read more in the New York Times.

Thanks Wendy and/or Wes.

Just Wait until They Try Skype

2008-05-14T08:12:00.003-05:00

From CNN.com:

Landlines go dead as more users rely on cell phones
WASHINGTON (AP) -- For nearly three in 10 households, don't even bother trying to call them on a landline phone. They either only have a cell phone or seldom if ever take calls on their traditional phone.

The federal figures, released Wednesday, showed that reliance on cells is continuing to rise at the expense of wired telephones. In the second half of last year, 16 percent of households only had cell phones, while 13 percent also had landlines but got all or nearly all their calls on their cells.

Personally, we're using Skype at home.

Invisible Social Forces in Name Popularity

2008-05-11T12:46:00.000-05:00

How do people name their kids?

Often people name a new baby after some relative or friend of the family.

However, in the mass media era, naming children has an often unnoticed social component.

I have four daughters, and we went through a different process in naming each of them.

The source of the names, however, interests me each year when the Social Security Administration releases their top names.

They have a very nice Web site where you can track the popularity of names over time. For me, this is particularly fascinating process. For each of my first three daughters, we selected a name that was trending upward.

In the above figure, I have tried to denote the year we picked the name with a vertical black line. However, keep in mind that we would have been looking at SSA data from the year before. We did not know what names would be selected in 2000, for example.

The fourth and final kid's name does not fit the pattern -- it has been stable for a few years -- however, we really picked that name in 2000. It was an alternate for the second kid. And back then it was very much trending upward.

Now let me try to let you in on our basic algorithm. We tried to pick names where they would not have three other kids in their class with the same name, but not so uncommon they would hate us ("Hi, this is my daughter, Rihanna").

Somehow other people must have been having similar thoughts, whether or not those parents' intentions were conscious.

These curves really do fascinate me. With very little deviation, these names became increasingly popular each year. That's an interesting social phenomenon in a country of 300 million people.

Somehow this reminds me of Adam Smith's invisible hand working its way through society.

I'd be interested in your thoughts.

Perish the Published: Making Texts Affordable

2008-05-06T16:28:00.002-05:00

From the New York Times:

EDITORIAL
That Book Costs How Much?
Published: April 25, 2008
Colleges and universities will need to embrace new methods of textbook development and distribution if they want to rein in runaway costs.

Artificial Intelligence: My Current Passion

2008-05-04T09:48:00.000-05:00

Reading some social network site or the other, I saw that colleague James Angelini said it has been a year since his graduation ceremony at Indiana University.

That means that it's been three years since my own graduation. It may not seem like that long, but it seems like an eternity to me.

It's been a great three years at Ohio State and Texas Tech, but one part of my brain has not received much attention: computational modeling.

My love for these models flourished at Indiana's program in cognitive science. That program is among the handful of top programs in the world, and it marked the three greatest intellectual years of my life.

I'm slowly working on a project with Tim Laubacher, former OSU master's student and current Columbus, Ohio, advertising executive. This is the first new computational idea in a while, and it is quite exciting.

Nonetheless, I am reminded of he dormancy of this part of my brain on days such as today when I open the New York Times to read:

TECHNOLOGY

Pursuing the Next Level of Artificial Intelligence

By JOHN MARKOFF

Published: May 3, 2008

Daphne Koller’s work has led to advances in artificial intelligence that can be used to predict traffic jams, improve machine vision and understand the way cancer spreads.

Ah, I wish that I were doing work such as this!

Cool Colleagues: My Friends in Columbus

2008-05-02T18:37:00.003-05:00

A creative approach to work

Dublin ad agency's outside-the-box policies aimed at inspiring workers

Friday, May 2, 2008 3:23 AM

By AMY SAUNDERS

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

At Dublin advertising agency b&a, employees are allowed to drink on the job, Hula-Hoop in the conference room and return from vacation whenever they feel like it.
As a result, they come to the office, behave responsibly and do their work. Really.

"Why wouldn't they?" asks principal and founder Jack Buchanan. "They have a job to do."

My Family When I Am at Work

2008-04-29T12:07:00.003-05:00

Most of the people who helped run the lab this year.

From left, Harsha Gangadharbatla, Brandon Nutting, Nikki Siegrist, Wes Wise, Jessica Freeman, me, Kelli Brown, Justin Keene, Wendy Maxian, and Glenn Cummins.

Wreck 'Em!

Poor Miley: Did Vanity Fair Exploit?

2008-04-28T12:34:00.003-05:00

Photo courtesy of Vanity Fair magazine.

Poor Miley Cyrus. You might know her as Hannah Montana.

I have four daughters, three of whom are of television viewing age. So I know Hannah Montana.

Now some risque pictures in Vanity Fair magazine have raised eyebrows.

Until now, many parents were pro-Cyrus because the 15-year-old didn't dress like, well, a whore.

These new pictures will surely shock some of our more Puritan residents. From the behind-the-scenes shot published early online, they're not that crazy.

That is, there are no Janet Jackson-esque style wardrobe malfunctions.

For one, Cyrus was posing for renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz, and there was surely pressure to push the envelope a little bit. They are in the business of selling magazines, after all.

But Cyrus also has the pressure to stay relevant to her fans. She cannot be a little girl forever. Her fans are getting older every day, too. And that wholesome image loses traction over time.

Britney got breast augmentation before she was legal. These pictures hardly cross that line.

Perhaps they show the evolution of a young woman.

The public opinion backlash will be interesting to watch.

Blog Falls Behind at Semester's End

2008-04-25T18:04:00.002-05:00

AUSTIN, Texas -- I am in the state capital presenting research to colleagues.

Life is crazy busy, and the blog has fallen behind on the priority list.

Next week will, hopefully, be better.

Propaganda Sadly Alive and Well in America

2008-04-20T09:30:00.005-05:00

When I started my journalism career, I attended a lunch paid for by Memorial Medical Center, then the sole hospital in Las Cruces, N.M. I was flat broke at the time, and my wife was pregnant with our first child. Nonetheless, after the event, I wrote a personal check to MMC to pay for the lunch to avoid any appearance of impropriety.

The evidence suggests that one cannot believe a single word ever uttered by a military analysis on U.S. television news since before the start of the war in Iraq.

Critics will write this off as bashing by the liberal media. But if you take the time to read all 11 pages of this story, I cannot imagine how you fail to be moved. Everything that is good and sacred about the First Amendment is brought into question herein.

From Sunday's New York Times:

Message Machine
Behind Military Analysts, the Pentagon’s Hidden Hand
By DAVID BARSTOW
Published: April 20, 2008
The Pentagon has cultivated “military analysts” in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the Bush administration’s wartime performance.

TV Keys Happiness; World End Surely Near

2008-04-20T08:48:00.002-05:00

From Gallup's: TV Ownership May Be Good for Well-Being: Benefits of TV ownership largely independent of income

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In most countries the world over, Gallup data show that people who have televisions in their homes report greater well-being than do those who do not have televisions in their homes.

When asked where they currently stand on a "ladder" scale on which "0" indicates the worst possible life and "10" indicates the best possible life, people with televisions in their homes report mean scores about one step higher than those without televisions report. Relative to people living in households without televisions, those with televisions also say they are more optimistic about their futures.

...

The beneficial effects of owning a TV hold up even after taking into account many of the desirable things that often go hand in hand with TV ownership, including wealth and access to electricity and running water. Even when comparing people with identical incomes, TV owners still enjoy higher levels of well-being and optimism. That is, in country after country, when equating TV owners and non-owners for income, TV owners still felt better about their current lives and their likely futures.

Really, I have not much to say here. Although Gallup used control variables, I am sure that they failed to measure all of the relevant possible confounding variables.

Nonetheless, this kind of makes me sad in my heart.

My Life's All a Twitter

2008-04-16T10:59:00.002-05:00

The devil made me do it, really.

I have added another social networking site to my life.

The devil, by the way, is named Tim Laubacher.

I called him out in a blog post yesterday for not using Facebook or MySpace.

His retort suggested that he was, indeed, using Twitter, which appears to be a stripped-down social networking site that has only status updates.

In my never-ending quest to learn more about "new" media, I signed up for Twitter. You can now follow me there if you are deathly bored and care what I am up to.

You can also follow me via Twitter on the little box in my sidebar (likely down and to the right).

I'm still not sure how this helps my life, but it has caused me to learn how to update my Facebook status using SMS text messages, so that is a bonus.

Juno Blankets Social Networking Sites

2008-04-15T10:44:00.003-05:00

The released-today DVD Juno is on my mind ... especially since there was an ad on MySpace this morning and a free Juno "gift" to give on Facebook this morning.

Apparently social networking site users are the target market.

Advertising executives such as Tim Laubacher would never know about this since they have an irrational phobia of social networking sites.

Affordable College: Just around the Corner

2008-04-13T11:13:00.000-05:00

My educational career -- as with so many facets of my life -- is full of starts, stops, and direction changes.

At the end of the day, I am very happy about where I sit professionally, so those fits and starts were worth it. Garth Brooks sings a song with the line, "Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers."

I'm not sure about all that, but I do believe in the sentiment. We're often better off for not having gotten what we originally wanted -- especially if we are able to use the process as a learning experience.

Reading today's New York Times online, I ran across a story titled, "Fewer Options Open to Pay for Costs of College."

The story caused me to reflect upon my own education, which has spanned from community colleges to the Ivy League. I started college as a pre-medical student, and I ended with a joint Ph.D. in mass communications and cognitive science from a Big Ten research university (Indiana). The journey has been anything but linear.

After I was done with high school (itself a tale for another day), I worked at my family's advertising agency in Kansas City for a time before college. I was also part of another brief family business venture. Then one day, I decided it was time for college.

Close to two decades have passed since that day, but I can remember driving down a particular stretch of highway talking it over with then-girlfriend, now-wife, Emily. As she has always been, she was supportive.

I wanted to attend the University of Kansas, but the admissions deadline for Fall 1991 already had passed. So I enrolled at Johnson County (Kan.) Community College.

As with so many happenstance events in my life, luck followed me to JCCC. It's one of the top community colleges in the country, and I cannot imagine a better first semester in college. Rather than massive lecture halls, I took introductory courses in small groups with dedicated teachers.

Early in spring semester 1992, my dad was offered -- and accepted -- a new job in Phoenix, Arizona. That July we moved to Phoenix. Once again, my timing was off, and Emily and I had missed the deadline to apply to Arizona State University.

It took a little bit of searching (remember no Internet then), but we discovered that Paradise Valley Community College was a little more than 4 miles from our north Scottsdale home, whereas ASU was more than 15 miles away. In addition, tuition was half price at PVCC.

Although we intended to transfer after a year, we simply enjoyed PVCC too much to leave. We had great instructors, the campus was brand-new, and we didn't seem to miss the big-time athletics typical of universities such as Indiana, where I would eventually earn my doctorate.

We completed the first two years of our undergraduate education with no class more than (I estimate from memory) 29 other students. Many of our instructors were still working on their doctorates, but they seemed genuinely interested in teaching. I never once sensed that I was an obligation keeping a professor away from research.

During these two years, Emily and I paid the bulk of our own tuition, and we did so with minimal student loans. I got at least one scholarship along the way, and there probably would have been more had we taken time to apply.

Fast forward to Fall 2001 when I started doctoral work at Cornell University, one of eight Ivy League universities. I took one joint seminar in psychology that mixed graduate students and upper-division undergraduates. So I got a first-hand peek at Ivy League undergraduate education.

I no longer have exact numbers, but tuition at Cornell was dozens of times greater than Paradise Valley. Yet there is no way that the education was dozens of times better. In many cases -- especially large lecture halls -- it surely was worse.

Yet the Ivy Leagues remain the gold standard, and two-year colleges are the pariah of higher education. If you open almost any issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, you will find some variation of an article addressing this status difference of two-year schools.

To me it seems ludicrous to read that article in the same week that the New York Times talks about the difficulties paying for education.

I am a professor at Texas Tech University. Thus I have some vested interested in recruitment to Tech. But I would have a difficult time encouraging a high school senior to attend a university of this size (nothing about Tech in particular).

If you want to be a famous academic, then it would really behoove you to study with the top researchers in the field. This is most easily accomplished at the Ivy League schools, but top public institutions, such as University of Texas and The Ohio State University also have more top scholars than mid-size universities.

You get what you pay for. Tuition at OSU is close to double Tech's rate. So does this position the mid-size four-year university (such as Tech) as the bargain choice? No. Because 360 miles southwest of here lies New Mexico State University, where Emily and I eventually earned our bachelor's degrees. Tuition there is about half what it is here.

And your neighborhood community college tuition is about half of NMSU.

The main difference between Tech and NMSU? Tech's football team wins more often. And sadly -- and without realizing it -- this is how too many high school students choose a university.

Murray Sperber outlines this case brilliantly in the book, Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education.

I attended two of the better community colleges in the nation. Both were a result of missed deadlines. But both were great choices. My wife and I got excellent educations, and we did so with a minimum of student loan debt (that came from graduate school).

I feel for families who struggle to pay for college. This may be a real concern for me one day, as I have four kids. But perhaps I worry more for the family who goes into massive debt for 6 Saturdays in the fall, when Junior can watch the home team. Because undergraduate education need not necessarily be tied to Beer and Circus.

Instead affordable education -- and small class size -- is probably just around the corner. Sure, the Greek life will suffer, and the student union probably is a bit smaller. But you'll save thousands and probably learn more. And I think that is supposed to be the goal.

I Love Spring; I Hate Spring

2008-04-10T11:52:00.001-05:00

Why does this beautiful weather have to come at the craziest time of the academic year?

So much sunshine outside. So much work to keep me inside.

Home Town Ends 20 Year Title Drought

2008-04-08T11:29:00.000-05:00

I have a very weird relationship with televised sports.

Mostly, I hate watching sports. This is because I am insanely competitive, yet I can do nothing to influence the outcome of a sporting event.

So watching a favored team play is much like laying on a bed of nails, or at least that is what I imagine. It hurts.

During most high-pressure sporting events, I just keep thinking "I want this to be over. I just want to know who wins." I also yell, scream and occasionally throw things. And I don't drink much, so I cannot even blame the beer.

Really I hate the anguish.

But I watch anyway.

The search function on this blog does not work as well as I like, but I am sure that I have told this story before (one part here). Growing up, I attended Pembroke Country Day School in Kansas City, which later became The Pembroke Hill School. The school is located, literally on State Line Road in Kansas City, Mo. However, I used to park my car in a school parking lot located across the street in Mission Woods, Kan.

Since it's a private school, students come from both sides of the state line. This created an intense rivalry between fans of the Missouri Tigers and the Kansas Jayhawks. If there were any fans of the K-State Wildcats (where I would subsequently earn a master's degree), I was not aware of it at the time.

Parsing my allegiance is no easy task. I was born in Missouri, but I came home from the hospital to Kansas. My first driver's license was in Kansas, as was my first job. I earned my first college credit in Kansas, and if not for a complete lack of talent, I once intended to walk on to the KU football team.

So, mostly I am a Kansan. And I grew up a Jayhawk hoops fan.

The blossomed, not surprisingly, in 1988 when KU won the national title at home at Kansas City's Kemper Arena.

This national title came fewer than three years after the Royals won the world series.

It was a good time to be a teen-age sports fan in Kansas City.

Little did I know that it would begin a drought of two decades.

By my account, the Chiefs have suffered early playoff defeats after three 13-3 seasons. The Royals have won about 12 games since 1985, and Kansas State found a way to will themselves out of the national title game in 1998.

Derrick Thomas died following a stupid no-seatbelt automobile accident.

The NCAA left town.

Buck O'Neill got shafted by the baseball hall of fame.

And Roy. Oh, Roy.

Roy's a whole separate chapter of therapy.

Roy found new ways to break hearts in Kansas. He cried every March. And despite conference titles, Final Four appearances, and an embarrassment of McDonald's All-Americans, the NCAA title evaded Roy.

I was living in Manhattan, Kan., in 2000. That was the first time the University of North Carolina came calling. For what seemed like an eternity, I was glued to the Internet. Would Roy stay or would Roy go?

He stayed. And he said he'd retire a Jayhawk. Retire. His word. Not mine.

Three years later, he bolted after another of his Kansas teams choked to Syracuse in the 2003 title game.

If you're not from Kansas City, you'll never understand. Or maybe you will. Maybe you're from someplace you love that other people make fun of. Maybe you've explained 100 times that, yes, the streets are paved.

Kansas City is not No. 1 in a lot of things. Barbecue, yes. But we have Kansas Basketball. The first coach was the guy who invented the game. Invented! James Naismith if you're scoring at home. He was followed by Phog Allen. Dean Smith played there. Many others.

So when Roy jilted Kansas, I cannot quite explain the emotion. I felt the ultimate betrayal.

Follow the logic.

Dean Smith was a Kansas boy. He played at Kansas. He got a job coaching at North Carolina. He built his own program. When Kansas called, he said "no."

Roy Williams was a North Carolina boy. He played at North Carolina. He got a job coaching Kansas. He built his own program. When North Carolina called, he should have said "no."

But he didn't.

And it would have hurt if he had left in 2000, but he said he was going to "retire" at Kansas. No one forced him to say that. And one thing about how I was raised in Kansas City: I was taught that my word meant something.

Even worse was watching Williams win the title at UNC in 2005. I even watched in person when Roy came to town and beat my Indiana Hoosiers.

Some of that pain was exorcised when Kansas punished North Carolina in the 2008 national semifinals. For a long time against Memphis, I thought that revenge against Williams was going to have to be good enough. The Jayhawks seemed content to have exorcised a few demons.

Every call seemed to go against Kansas until Joey Dorsey fouled out. Then Mario Chalmers hit the 3 that no Jayhawk will ever forget to send the game into overtime after being down 9 with just more than 2 minutes remaining.

Overtime had its drama after KU built a small lead. There was failure to block out after a free throw (Lou Henson was surely thinking of 1989 if he was in attendance). Then a slip out-of-bounds. Really? An elite collegiate athlete, and all you have to do is remain vertical, but no?!?!?!?

In the end, the 20 year drought ends. Kansas wins its 3rd national title, and my home town's drought is over.

This might even be worse, however. I went into Monday's game assured that there was no way a Kansas City area team could win. They never did.

Now my hopes are up.

The Royals are off to a fast start. How soon until they end my sure-to-be-short-lived optimism?

Oil Prices Drop, Gas Follows ... or Not

2008-04-07T09:53:00.002-05:00

This morning I read on CNN.com that oil prices have dropped considerably since Friday.

So, of course, I saw a change in prices at the pumps on the way to work.

No.

Wait ... what?

That's funny because when I read a story about the price of oil going up, the pumps always show an immediate increase.

Nah, those gasoline folks aren't unethical scum. Not at all.

Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk: On to Title Game

2008-04-05T22:16:00.002-05:00

I won't go into the details of my history as a Kansas basketball fan tonight.

But it is sweet to see traitor Roy Williams suffer defeat!

Value Menus: Bad Health and Bad Business

2008-04-01T21:37:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking about food advertising a lot lately. Bad thoughts.

On Saturday I moderated a panel on Food and Diet Advertising at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Advertising in San Mateo, Calif. Five excellent papers were presented, and the picture is grim.

Recently former Indiana colleagues of mine from Indiana University performed a large-scale content analysis on food advertising.

In May, my lab group and other Texas Tech colleagues will present research on rural Hispanics and diabetes at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association in Montreal, Canada.

During that research project, we learned that fast food value menu items were a substantial cause of problem. Unfortunately for public health, value menus solve two problems: time and money.

You can eat quickly and inexpensively on the dollar menu. Unfortunately, it's bad for your health.

All of which is a long introduction to explain the joy I had today when I opened the Advertising Age that came in the mail to see the headline "Value Menus Cost Operators Dearly: Burger King franchisee in New York shutters stores, blames dollar offerings."

Thousands of people will die prematurely -- and society will pay countless dollars in public health bills -- because of these value menus. I am glad to see that value menus are becoming bad business for the franchisees.

I Absolutely Love Northern California

2008-03-30T02:13:00.001-05:00

Thank you, Half Moon Bay, California, for existing.

I enjoyed visiting you today.

Headed to California to Talk Advertising

2008-03-26T08:00:00.002-05:00

I'm headed to the annual meeting of the American Academy of Advertising in San Mateo, California today.

There, members of the Texas Tech team will present research on:

Straight Eye for the Queer Ad: Stop, Look, and Dislike
James Angelini, University of Delaware
Samuel Bradley, Texas Tech University

Love is in the Heart: Physiological Responding to Preferred Brands
Wendy Maxian, Texas Tech University
Nikki Siegrist, Texas Tech University
Wes Wise, Texas Tech University
Jessica Freeman, Texas Tech University
Kayla Altman, Texas Tech University
Samuel Bradley, Texas Tech University

Physiological Responses as a Measure of Effectiveness of Brand Placements in Video Games
Harsha Gangadharbatla, Texas Tech University
Samuel Bradley, Texas Tech University
Wes Wise, Texas Tech University
Brandon Nutting, Texas Tech University
Kelli Brown, Texas Tech University
Wendy Maxian, Texas Tech University
Nikki Siegrist, Texas Tech University
Lakshmi Tirumala, Texas Tech University

Gender, Arousal, and Presence as Predictors of Recall of Brands Placed in Videogames
Harsha Gangadharbatla, Texas Tech University

Hope to see you there!

Great Advice on Publishing Academic Books

2008-03-24T11:10:00.003-05:00

I love when I read clever things, and Rachel Toor's article on the relationship between dissertations and academic publishing was especially insightful. The piece was published in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Last summer, I was asked to lunch by an acquaintance from another university, an assistant professor whose tenure clock was running down. She wanted some advice about publishing.

She explained that she had a year to get her dissertation turned into a book. Or else. Being an assistant professor had taken more time and energy than she had expected and now here she sat, with a year to get a book written, accepted, and into production at a good press.

Tortured Souls of Great Writers, Artists

2008-03-23T17:05:00.006-05:00

UPDATE: Several typos fixed. Ugh.

To write about the range of human emotions, an exceptional writer must have been reduced to the ground in pain and soared among the clouds in ecstasy.

This has been my working theory for years, and I am sure it owes to some intellectual antecedents that I no longer recall. My apologies to those forgotten inspirations.

My case in point has always been Ernest Hemingway. The quintessential American author suffered from alcoholism, bipolar disorder, and eventually took his own life with both barrels of a double-barreled shotgun at age 61.

Writers -- indeed many great artists -- don't seem to be a happy-go-lucky sort. Tortured souls such as Vincent Van Gogh typify the extremely gifted far better than the ever-optimistic Bobby McFerrin.

I was reminded of my theory today as I read the headline "Harry Potter author: I considered suicide" on CNN.com.

[Although] the 42-year-old has spoken before of her battle with depression, it was the first time she had admitted that she contemplated suicide, the newspaper said.

It was then that [J. K.] Rowling began writing the first Harry Potter book, which was eventually published in 1996.

Sadly, it seems, the pain of mental illness drives the creative engine.

It is, I suppose, like method acting taken to the painful extreme. In order to write words that resonate with the lows experienced by the average reader, you must have spent a great deal of time exploring those low places. You must know the shadows of the low places. They must be a part of you. And they must haunt you.

The formula is familiar. Creativity. Greatness. Pain. Depression. Alcohol. Drugs. Rather than hippie indiscretions, these analgesics mask the pain. Creative minds often find a way to self-medicate in order to shut out the darkness.

Although the pain may be numbed, the underlying problem often is made only worse.

I hope that Rowling's days of depression are behind her. She sought proper help for her depression, and luckily the science that helped her has advanced beyond the electro-convulsive therapy that may have descended Hemingway into another circle of hell.

In the meantime, we warm ourselves in the greatness of pained souls only to lose them too soon.

Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Michael Hutchence, Hunter S. Thompson, Spalding Gray, Virginia Woolf.

They either died by their own hands or an accidental overdose. The list is so much longer. The list includes people such as Paul Tilley, the DDB creative chief who fell to his death in February.

I've watched friends who are great talents and writers suffer with depression and mental illness. Sadly, at least one such friend died by his own hand. Another came dangerously close.

There is no cure to link between creativity and emotional pain. Indeed, I believe they are forever fused in a causal link. We can only try to recognize depression and mental illness and reach out to those about whom we care. We can try to reduce the stigma of mental illness and related treatment.

Most people who pick up a pen struggle to rise above mediocrity. Finding the right word is a difficult task, and my words here hardly do justice to the great names listed above. The ability to find the right word is an insight into the human condition. Sadly that insight too often comes from a great deal of pain.

U.S. Free Speech Continues to Take Beating

2008-03-23T10:53:00.002-05:00

From today's New York Times:

EDITORIAL

The Supreme Court and Indecency

Published: March 23, 2008

The Federal Communications Commission has used its new expletives policy to turn itself into a roving censorship board.