Best Practices for Blogs

Ok, I am new at this, so it figures that I am going to stumble my way to competence.  All the great content in the world isn't going to make this blog visually stimulating.  People like pictures, and they are more likely to remember a point that is made with an image than just text.  Several kind people have tried desperately to teach me this lesson in my PowerPoint decks, and it is only now starting to sink in.

Images help recall, apparently.  If you hear some information, after 3 days you will remember 10% of it.  If you see it in conjunction with a picture, that number goes up to 65%

(source: Najjar, LJ (1998) Principles of educational multimedia user interface design (via Brain Rules by John Medina, 2008), via Scott Sorokin)

You know what else people like?  Cute kitten pictures.  I just so happen to have a very pretty cat:

This little darling is my research assistant, and she performs such valuable functions as chewing on books and papers, walking across the keyboard, and drinking from/knocking over my water glass.

What you have here is a straight-up cheap trick, but it is also a test.  I have a feeling that posts including pictures of a kitten will get more traffic than a carefully thought out argument, but I would really like to be proven wrong.  Either way, this should fulfill a promise I made to my sister in Boston to get a picture of my cat online.

Plus, it should help people recall this blog.  Remember, our slogan is SEMiotic5 = kittens!