General / Site news
dmunger | February 5, 2007Greta has been promoted to the rank of full professor! Congratulations, Greta, you've completed your ascent of the mountain of academe:
When I mentioned this news to a friend at our Sunday pick-up soccer game, he asked me "so... what does that mean?" Good question.
First of all, it means she gets a raise. That's always a good thing, right? But it doesn't mean she gets tenure: at most schools, tenure accompanies the promotion from assistant to associate professor. Greta got tenure seven years ago. At Davidson, it means that she is eligible to participate in certain committees, with greater…
dmunger | January 26, 2007As you may have noticed, we've been experimenting with a new posting format at CogDaily. Previously, we posted a "news" post every morning that included brief analysis of one news item followed by a set of "in other news" links to other news items from across the Web. But many readers complained that they were reading CogDaily using an RSS reader, and didn't like having to come to our site in order to see the second half of these posts.
For the past week, we've broken news posts in two, posting a "news" item every morning, and placing the "in other news" links in a separate post every…
dmunger | January 23, 2007This seems like an interesting meme. I was tagged by Babel's Dawn, who asks the following:
What have you learned so far from visitors to your blog? To be aware of who I'm writing to: a very bright, sometimes expert audience -- though not always expert in the particular field I'm writing about. Also, that I'm a poor predictor of what will be interesting to my audience, so I'd better be doing my best no matter the topic.
If somebody offered to pay for a course (or more) for you, what would it be? Statistics. Definitely a gap in my knowledge there.
Are you satisfied with what you have achieved…
dmunger | January 16, 2007I noticed from last week's mega comment thread and also from the referrer log that many of CogDaily's visitors read the blog via Google Reader. Wondering what all the fuss was about, I tried it out over the weekend. It certainly seems to be a serviceable reader, very similar in appearance and function to Bloglines. However, when I gave it the full workout for the "In other news" segment this morning, it crashed my browser, so it's back to Bloglines for me.
This all got me to wondering: How do CogDaily readers access the site? I use three different methods to track visits to Cognitive Daily (…
dmunger | January 12, 2007Thank you to the dozens of readers who took me up on my offer yesterday to give a personal response to every comment or question. As of this writing, I've got two comments left to respond to, and at that point I'm going to declare the offer expired (no complaints--you had your chance! And I've got to analyze this week's Casual Friday results at some point). This post is now actually the most active post on the entire ScienceBlogs network, so thanks again for all your great questions!
If you haven't had a chance to read through the questions, I'd encourage you to do so -- there are plenty of…
dmunger | January 11, 2007Over the past year, CogDaily has had about 400,000 unique visits. During that same time, we've received 3,075 comments. Wow! We're humbled by those numbers. Yet simple division reveals that fewer than 1 in 100 visits actually results in a comment. There must be hundreds -- possibly thousands -- of visitors to this site who've never commented on a single post.
Today I'd like to change that, with a simple offer: Write a comment, and I will respond, thoughtfully. You can ask me any question, comment on any topic, and I'll write you a personalized response, in complete sentences. No question is…
dmunger | January 3, 2007
Last summer, we participated in the Donors Choose challenge, which enabled us to help kids learn science by contributing to specific projects to classrooms in need. With help from our readers, we raised over $2,500, and ScienceBlogs as a whole raised over $34,000. Today, we got our thank you!
Sixty ESL science books were sent to a classroom in Sam Houston Middle School in Garland, Texas. Here are some of the kids who got to use them:
We also received dozens of handwritten thank-you letters from the kids themselves! Here's one of my favorites:
Thanks to all who donated. If you missed…
dmunger | December 19, 2006ScienceBlogs is celebrating its first birthday with a wonderful portrait of the entire ScienceBlogs family. It's not quite a year yet (I think we were officially online on January 11, 2005), but if they're happy to celebrate early, so are we! Greta and I shouldn't be too hard to find in the picture -- but the artwork's a little misleading. Greta looks much better in person, and I look much worse!
It's been a fabulous year, and a wonderful group to work with. In addition to the bloggers, Katherine, Tim, Sarah, and the others who work tirelessly behind the scenes to bring you this site deserve…
dmunger | December 10, 2006I promised on Friday that I'd post an update on the half-marathon. First of all, I finished!
Here's a picture of me about 100 yards from the finish with my running partner (and co-author) Shireen Campbell:
I finished the race in 1 hour, 51 minutes, and 59 seconds. That works out to a pace of 8:33 per mile, which is three seconds slower what I was shooting for. Still, I finished in the top third of competitors, and in the top half of my age/gender division, so I'll take it! A few additional thoughts below:
Shireen finished 1 second ahead of me, and 12th out of 75 in her division. Way to go!…
dmunger | December 2, 2006Starting today, each week's CogDaily Research articles will be available in podcast form! We're working on making them available directly from iTunes, but for now, you can download them from the CogDaily blog.
Click here to download the December 2 Cognitive Daily podcast (AAC format)
Click here to download the December 2 Cognitive Daily podcast (MP3 format)
We're committed to podcasting the reports on peer reviewed research we've covered each week (they'll appear here each Saturday), so if you don't have time to read them online, you can listen while you exercise or commute to work.
In the…
dmunger | November 10, 2006Quick question for those more computer-savvy than I am. Can you help me divide readers into five roughly equal groups (it's for this week's Casual Friday). In the past, I've relied on the "what month is your birthday in" question, but it won't work when I need five groups.
Surely there's a simple javascript out there that would automatically return a random number from 1 to 5. I've done a few searches, but most of the scripts I could find have been too complicated, requiring user input. I just want the number to be automatically generated according to my specifications.
If you know how to do…
dmunger | November 1, 2006As I was scanning the internet this morning for news articles and blog posts to comment on, I came up with four good candidates. I spent the next 30 minutes trying to decide whether to write a post discussing a single article (like this), or just write a sentence or two about each post, with links to all of them (like this).
It occurred to me that I actually have no idea which type of news post CogDaily readers would prefer to see. So, in typical Cognitive Daily fashion, I decided to make a poll.
One point about the last poll option: the research reports require significantly more effort, so…
dmunger | October 12, 2006Since I mentioned here that I took a backpacking trip to the Great Smoky Mountains last weekend, I might also mention that I'm writing a tongue-and-cheek description of the trip, with some pretty good photos, over at Word Munger. The first installment is up now. (Language may be NSFW)
dmunger | October 6, 2006I'm headed to the Smoky Mountains tomorrow at noon, so if you'd like to see your blog post included in Monday's Encephalon neuroscience carnival, you'll need to submit it by tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. EDT!
So, send me your astounding, astonishing, or astute neuroscience posts and I'll collect them into one convenient post for your perusal. You can send your submissions here or directly to me (remove dashes). Just be sure to include "Encephalon Submission" in the subject line.
dmunger | October 4, 2006The Encephalon, a collection of the week's best neuroscience and psychology posts, will be arriving at CogDaily on Monday, October 9. Since I'll be hiking in the Smoky Mountains on that day, I'd like to request that you send in your posts a day early. I'll try to include everything I receive by 8:00 a.m. EDT on Saturday, October 7. I'm headed for the mountains by noon on the 7th, so that deadline is quite firm.
So, send me your brilliant, insightful, or at least entertaining neuroscience posts and I'll collect them into one handy post for your week's fix. You can send your submissions here…
dmunger | October 2, 2006BPS Research Digest is running an interesting series this week: they've enlisted an impressive list of psychology bloggers to write about their favorite psychology journal article from the past three years. First up is our entry. Here's an excerpt:
Helene Intraub's 2004 Cognition paper "Anticipatory spacial representation of 3D regions explored by sighted observers and a deaf-and-blind observer" is the one we'd like to nominate as our favorite of the past three years. In a remarkable set of experiments, Intraub extends the phenomenon of boundary extension to a new modality: touch.
. . .
The…
dmunger | July 14, 2006The whole Munger family will be heading out of town for the next three weeks. Fortunately, there should be plenty to keep you occupied here while we're gone. We've written up a few posts in anticipation of the trip, and they've been scheduled to appear intermittently while we're gone.
In addition, we've gone to the archives and found some of our all-time greatest hits, which are scheduled to pop up a couple times a week. If you started reading Cognitive Daily later than, say, May of 2005, there'll certainly be something here that's new to you. Finally, I'm going to try to post a few smaller…
dmunger | July 3, 2006Our Donors Choose Challenge, as you can see from the icon to the left, is now fully funded. Thanks so much to all the generous donors! We raised $2,169.13 to help kids learn about science and the arts.
Here's the ScienceBlogs total amount raised as of about 14 hours ago:
Total donations: $22,554.38
Amount matched by SEED: $10,000
Completion bonus from DonorsChoose: $1447.30
Total raised: $34,001.68
As promised, Greta and I have donated $217 to our challenge, matching 10 percent of the total amount donated. Because our challenge goal was attained, these projects will also get an additional 10…
dmunger | June 30, 2006The next Encephalon neuroscience carnival will be published on Monday, July 3, at The Neurophilosopher.
If you have a blog post or article to contribute, send your submissions to encephalon.host@gmail.com.
dmunger | June 30, 2006In just one day, we've funded nearly one third of the amount required for "The Shocking Simplicity of Electric Circuits" project. We can give these kids the passion for science with just a few more donations -- and today is the last day of our challenge. So if you just haven't gotten around to donating, now is the time to do it.
Let's end this challenge with a bang and get this project fully funded. And if you've already donated, please let me take this opportunity to thank you for what you've done. This kind of support not only inspires the kids, but the teachers as well, because they know…