Cheap Talk is 3 years old today. It feels good. And I am very glad that you are reading.

I try to write three posts per week that are either original ideas or interpretations of research that involves a little original thinking.  These usually come Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday in the morning.  In the afternoon I post a link or a little thought for fun, nothing heavy.  On Thursday I try to revisit a theme, like Thoughts Left Lying Around, or post some reaction to something on another blog. And then on Friday I post the Sordid Links.

When I look back at all of the little ideas I have posted here I am pretty proud. Take a look at the vapor mill tag.  There are some real research ideas there, quite a few in fact.  It’s amazing to think that without this blog that many ideas would have just gone to waste.  (Assuming that blogging them is not a waste.) Makes me think that more people should write blogs.

There have been times when I wondered how long I am going to be able to keep this up.  This is not a current events blog, I don’t usually get material from the news, just thoughts that happen at random times and places.  Eventually I have to run out of those.  But there’s no sign of that yet.  I have a pretty safe stock of ideas written down that I flip through at night when I am sitting down to write.  I had one just today.

One bummer over the past year is that Google crippled Google Reader and as a result there has been a noticeable sag in the number of rss views.  We have over 3,000 subscribers through Google Reader but I think that a lot of people stopped using it after the downgrade.  There’s something new called Google Currents for mobile devices.  I set up Cheap Talk there but I don’t think many people are using that yet.  It’s pretty nice though, you should check it out.

I have three papers now that are based on ideas that would not exist if it were not for the blog.  That’s pretty cool.