Happy New Year 2009!

2008 was definitely a mixed bag, both on a personal and national level.  The question for 2009 is whether the good political news can beat out our bad economic state.  On a personal level I’m planning to finish up dealing with 2008 health discoveries, getting married, and maybe trying for a job government side.  Not sure what the latter will mean for the blog, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.  For now I want to thank all you readers, with special thanks to commenters and guest writers.  I love keeping this blog up, but it wouldn’t be much fun without an audience.

Here’s a few things I’m considering for the blog in 2009, if anyone has any requests or thoughts on my ideas, now’s a good time to speak up:

• More data runs.  I’m setting a goal for myself of running at least one regression, or similar analysis, a month.  More independently generated charts would be nice too.
• A resource for pointing to national and international data relevant to the blog.  I hear the citation manager Zotero may go social networky at some point, but absent that wikispaces may be the best solution there.
• More short posts, ones that don’t take too muh thinking or work.
• Making specializations more explicit, perhaps with things like China Friday’s or Transit Tuesdays.
• Surveys, although outside of Livejournal I’ve never seen an implementation I’m happy with.