Articles of Interest - March 7

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***SOCIAL MEDIA

Why We Post: A global study reveals how people fit social media into their lives  The Economist

The dark side of going viral that no one talks about  Washington Post

Controversial Calgary-based app Peeple launches Monday  Calgary Herald

We calculated the year dead people on Facebook could outnumber the living  Fusion

Meerkat Is Ditching the Livestream—And Chasing a Video Social Network Instead  Recode

How Facebook’s ‘App for Everything’ Could Revolutionize Media and Marketing  Contently

Colbert introduces FB alpha (video)  Stephen Colbert

How Snapchat Built a Business  Bloomberg

Quiz: Can we guess your age and income, based solely on the apps on your phone?  Washington Post

***THE INTERNET

The organisation that runs the internet address book is about to declare independence (subscription)  The Economist

Infographic: Email Is Eating More of Your Life Than You Think  Contently

Engineering the internet is too big a task for one outfit  The Economist

***TECHNOLOGY

See that Billboard?  It may see you too  New York Times

Retailers Experiment With Surveillance Tools Used by Police (Soon, a department store robot may be greeting you by name)  Bloomberg

What Comes After Apps (Apps now crowd our devices, but alternatives are in the works)  Wall Street Journal

***ART AND DESIGN

Cycloid Drawing Machine  (A virtual version of the classic Spirograph toy)  

MIT Scientists embraces a new chaos theory: Art  New York Times

***BIG DATA  

Future Of Big Data: Here's How Amazon, LinkedIn, Salesforce Are Reshaping Elite MBA Programs  Business Because

Growing demand for data analytics is reshaping elite MBA programs Business Because

The forces shifting the geospatial industry  IT ProPortal

Big Data Myths That Just Won't Die (1-You Need the Perfect Data Scientist)  Business.com

So exactly how does one start a career in machine learning?  Data Science Central

Child Advocate: Risk scores created by predictive modeling software can endanger children  Forbes

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Did you feed the bears?  Becoming (my blog)

***WRITIN’ AND READIN’

How Someone with Dyslexia may experience reading  Github

Become Your Own Writing Teacher  Chronicle of Higher Ed

“The Most Dangerous Writing App” Destroys Your Progress if You Stop Typing  Life Hacker

Social Sharing – Can You Write a Post People Trust Enough to Share?   Semrush

When robots write poetry  The Daily Dot

Coming Down from the Clouds: On Academic Writing  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LANGUAGE

French, Spanish, German ... Java? Making Coding Count As A Foreign Language  (Florida is poised to become the first state to allow computer coding to fulfill a foreign-language requirement in high school)  NPR

***LITERATURE

Jane Eyre and the Invention of the Self (Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel helped introduce the idea of the “modern individual”—a surprisingly radical concept for readers at the time)  The Atlantic

Gorgeous new covers for 100 great public domain books  BongBong

***SCIENCE & RESEARCH

Statisticians Found One Thing They Can Agree On: It’s Time To Stop Misusing P-Values  FiveThirtyEight

Can Science’s Reproducibility Crisis Be Reproduced?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

#IAmAResearchParasite (the need for quality data sharing) (opinion)  Science Magazine

Human-animal studies academics dogged by German hoaxers  (fooled by fake PhD student’s paper on role of alsatians in totalitarianism)  The Guardian

PLOS ONE retracting paper that cites “the Creator”  Retraction Watch

Many surveys, about one in five, may contain fraudulent data  Science Magazine

Evaluating a New Proposal for Detecting Data Falsification in Surveys  Pewq Research

How to Keep Bad Science From Getting Into Print (‘Irreproducible’ research is more often due to error than misconduct or fraud, but fighting it is vital-written by the Dean of Harvard Medical School)  Wall Street Journal

***RACE & GENDER ISSUES

Why Do Some Women Quit Science?  New York Times

How Does Gender Affect One's Willingness To Compete?  NPR

Our glass-ceiling index: Still a man’s world (Our index of the climate for working women now includes paternity leave)  The Economist

Researchers have found strong evidence that racism helps the GOP win  Washington Post

Female medical researchers hit a paper ceiling Stat News

Gender bias in open source: Pull request acceptance of women versus men (study)  PeerJ

The best—and worst—places to be a working woman   The Economist

My Brilliant (White Male) Professors (Study finds students are more likely to use certain words of praise when describing professors who are men or who are in fields with few female and black scholars)  Inside Higher Ed

***LEGAL ISSUES

A Plagiarism Scandal Is Unfolding In The Crossword World  FiveThirtyEight

***RELIGION

Wycliffe Associates Leaves Bible Translation Alliance over ‘Son of God’ for Muslims  Christianity Today

Jerry Bridges' Pursuit of Holiness Has Come to an End  Christianity Today           

Russian Faces Up to Year in Prison for Denying Existence of God  NBC

Churches Are Twice as Likely to Fear Refugees as to Help Them (Survey studies how American Protestants are engaging the refugee crisis, and why many are not)  Christianity Today

Women relatively rare in top positions of religious leadership  Pew Research

This college is launching a bachelor’s degree in gospel music, the first of its kind  Washington Post

‘It’s embarrassing to be an evangelical this election’  (opinion written by recent PLNU chapel speaker Jim Wallis)  Frost Illustrated

Don’t Take Your Kids to a Megachurch: An Open Letter to Andy Stanley (opinion)  Patheos

***RELIGION & POLITICS

Echoing Republican split, evangelicals divide over Trump  Associated Press

Evangelical Leaders Question Movement's Support Of Trump  NPR

What Wouldn’t Jesus Do? (opinion)  New York Times

God files for divorce from Republican Party  Religious News Service

***ECONOMICS

Microeconomists’ claims to be doing real science turn out to be true  The Economist

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA  

Study Finds Only 40% Of Digital Buys Going To Working Media  Media Post

Traditional TV Audience Ages, Big Chunk Of Viewers 65+  Media Post

***JOURNALISM

10 newsgathering and verification tools for newsrooms on a budget  First Draft News

'Spotlight' celebrates journalism that couldn't have happened in these countries without press freedom  Public Radio International

Forget 'Spotlight': There's a war against journalism  Philly.com

10 journalism movies that journalists love  Indy Star

Media Veterans Get in on the Nonprofit News Boom (American Media Institute staffs up)  Observer'

CUNY’s new Spanish-language journalism program, with big ambitions, opens for applications  Harvard's Nieman Lab

***FREE SPEECH

The Glaring Evidence That Free Speech Is Threatened on Campus  The Atlantic

Court strikes down student code prohibiting ‘distressing’ speech  Student Press Law Center

***JOBS

CV vs. resume: Here's how the two differ   USA Today

***PSYCHOLOGY    

Psychologists and massage therapists are reporting ‘Trump anxiety’ among clients  The Washington Post

***NEUROSCIENCE

Which Exercise is best for the Brain  New York Times

The magical thing eating chocolate does to your brain  The Washington Post

Couch potatoes may have smaller brains later in life  CBS News

***PHILOSOPHY

CUNY philosophy professor takes on Bill Nye (opinion)   Plato’s Footnote

Why are so many smart people such idiots about philosophy? (opinion)  Quartz

Philosophy’s True Home (The idea that philosophy was and still is isolated from other disciplines ignores much of its history-opinion)  New York Times  

***STUDENT LIFE

5 facts about online dating  Pew Research

Strategies For When You're Starting Out Saddled With Student Debt  NPR

Students Enter Global Competition To Counter Extremism  NPR

3 Tips for Marketing to Millennials – When You’re Not a Millennial  Umbel

Study shows certain types of emails often go unread by students -- but social media isn't the reason why  Inside Higher Ed

Fixing The Freshman Year: Here's What College Sophomores Say  NPR

How the Great Generational Shift is Causing Transformation in the Very Nature of Employment  Gigaom

Outbreaks of norovirus and mumps hit college campuses around the country  Inside Higher Ed

Recent study attracting press attention says students use the app to make friends. Some experts doubt it  Inside Higher Ed

***SEXUAL ASSAULT ON CAMPUS

Students say Christian College assigned a 500-Word Essay as Punishment.. for Rape  Inside Higher Ed    

For Sexual Assault Victims, An Effort To Loosen Statutes Of Limitations  NPR

University of Texas System instructs its police officers to base sexual assault investigations in neuroscience  Inside Higher Ed

***HUMANITIES /STEM

Enough with trashing the liberal arts. Stop being stupid  Washington Post

Our current national mood may be revealing something missing in our educational agenda  (opinion)  Keith Evans  

***TEACHING

Rethinking online education (The first generation of online learning came with a lot of hype but didn’t fully deliver on its promise. What does the future hold?)  Medium

Why Do Colleges Still Use Grades?  Chronicle of Higher

Instructional Design: Demand grows for a new breed of academic  Chronicle of Higher

Report: Game-Based Learning Helps Students Develop Writing Skills  Campus Technology

did you feed the bears?

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A phone conversation with a four-year-old:

Did you feed the bears?

      What bears?

The bears under your bed.

      There aren’t any bears under my bed.

Oh, yes, their names are Teddy and Charlie. Teddy Bear and Charlie Bear.

      I’m going to go check.

      (a moment passes)

      There are no bears under my bed.

They must have gone to the bathroom.

      I’ll go see.

Don’t do that, they’d be embarrassed if you saw them.

      (a few more moments of discussion)

      I’m going to see if the bears are in the bathroom.

      (phone is dropped)

      The bears are in the tub. They’re taking a bath!

Life is filled with such interesting and remarkable things when you are four. The further we get away from that imaginative, amazing world, the harder it is to hear the voice of God in our lives and see his hand at work in the world around us. Hang on to the joy of a child.

Stephen Goforth

Articles of Interest

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***PSYCHOLOGY                           

The uniquely American appeal of Donald Trump’s favorite insult: You're not an extrovert  Washington Post

Does Your College Student Have a Problem with Addiction? (Steps parents can take to identify & treat drug and alcohol problems)  Psychology Today

What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team (New research reveals surprising truths about why some work groups thrive and others falter)  New York Times

***NEUROSCIENCE

Beam Me Up, Scotty? Turns Out Your Brain Is Ready For Teleportation  NPR

A Year Ago, The Dress Murdered the Idea of Objective Color  Wired

***PHILOSOPHY

Dear Immanuel — Kant Gives Love Advice to a Heartbroken Young Woman (1791)  Open Culture

***ETHICS

How Secular Are Secular Ethics?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Evolution of moral outrage: I’ll punish your bad behavior to make me look good  The Conversation

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Dealing with a Moody Man  Becoming (my blog)

Three Steps for Creating a New Habit   Chronicle of Higher Ed

***THE INTERNET

SEO: How Do You Solve A Google Problem Like Rick Santorum's?   NPR

***HUMANITIES /STEM

The Case Against Mandating Math for Students (algebra is overrated)  Chronicle of Higher Ed (subscription required for this story)  

***LANGUAGE

Linguists Not Exactly Wow About Facebook’s New Reactions  Wired

Linguistics could help future driverless cars cooperate better  The Stack

***LITERATURE

You’ve never seen your favorite books like this before  Washington Post

Where's The Color In Kids' Lit? Ask The Girl With 1,000 Books (And Counting)  NPR

***RACE & GENDER ISSUES

Blackflix: How Netflix's algorithm exposes technology's acial bias  Marie Clarie

Zuckerberg Furious With Employees For Erasing 'Black Lives Matter' Slogans  NBC News

English-speaking Asian Americans stand out for their technology use  Pew Research

Is speaking Spanish necessary to be Hispanic? Most Hispanics say no  Pew Research

Sense and Sensibility and Jane Austen's Accidental Feminists  The Atlantic

***FREE SPEECH

Apple May Use a First Amendment Defense in That FBI Case. And It Just Might Work  WIRED

Donald Trump says he wants to change Libel Law  Washington Post

***TECHNOLOGY

Service Launched to Help Universities Comply With ADA Web Site Regulations  Campus Technology

'Body Hacking' Movement Rises Ahead Of Moral Answers   NPR

A new wave of mobile technology is on its way, and will bring drastic change  Economist

Now You Can Type in Google Docs by Speaking  Wired

***IMAGES & DESIGN

Vertical video is becoming more popular, but there’s no consensus on the best way to make it  Harvard's Nieman Lab

Handy Chart Helps You Understand the Elements of Typography  Wired

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Your Social Media Accounts Are A Criminal's Best Friend (One California burglar tracked women using their Instagram locations)  Vocativ

Snapchat employee data leaked following phishing scam  The Stack

How to Keep Instagram From Taking Over Your Phone  Wired

So Social: How to create and use Twitter lists  Providence Journal

***BIG DATA  

Obama Set to Expand Sharing of Data between NSA to other American intelligence agencies   New York Times 

Child Advocate: Risk scores created by predictive modeling software can endanger children  Forbes

Obama set to expand data sharing between NSA and other American intel agencies  NY Times  

Of the many reasons that Big Data initiatives fail, here are seven  First Post

***RELIGION

How a Leading Christian College Turned Against Its Gay Leader  Time

Does Religion Matter In The Presidential Election? (Faith-driven voters are quite likely getting down on their knees to pray for their candidates)  Vocativ

U.S. religious groups and their political leanings  Pew Research

Who Are the Gay Evangelicals?  New York Times

Did Nike stop Steph Curry from putting scripture on his basketball shoes?  Snopes

***BUSINESS

Reports of the death of performance reviews are exaggerated (opinion)  Economist

***MEDIA  

Jeb’s Downfall Proves Political TV Ads Don’t Work Anymore  Wired

***JOURNALISM

“Rolling Papers:” The crazy experiment called weed journalism  University of Colorado Student Newspaper

Nearly Eight-in-Ten Reddit Users Get News on the Site  Pew Research

5 of the best: podcasts about data journalism  Online Journalism

How millennials read news; lessons from the Engaging News Project  Gatehouse

Wired Warns Four stories were plagiarized  Retraction Watch  

***JOURNALISM / SPOTLIGHT

November Post by a Member of the Spotlight team  Medium

Oscars 2016: Read about the Pulitzer-Prize Winning Journalism That Got Spotlight the Best Film Award  First Post

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Can Technology Save Journalism?  Forbes

The Fading Newspaper  Bloomberg

***STUDENT LIFE

Joe Biden Asked Oscar Viewers to Fight Rape Culture on College Campuses   Mic  

Study: Millennials could help sway the election in these 10 states  USA Today

15% of American Adults Have Used Online Dating Sites or Mobile Dating Apps  Pew Research

Millennials Make Up Almost Half of Latino Eligible Voters in 2016  Pew Research

The cost of skipping class, by the numbers  USA Today

Fixing A Broken Freshman Year: What An Overhaul Might Look Like   NPR

The baffling reason many millennials don’t eat cereal   Washington Post

Millennials less confident about nation’s future, but so were their parents, grandparents when young  Pew Research

A new study says half of US students could be internet addicts  Quartz

***ACADEMIC LIFE

What is the best way to assess faculty activity?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***HIGHER ED

President Quits at Mount St. Mary's  Inside Higher Ed

Colleges say the Department of Education's guidance on campus sexual assault is vague and inconsistent  Inside Higher Ed 

University of Missouri fundraising takes $6 million hit in December as donors hold back funds  Columbia Tribune

Dealing with a moody man

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Men are rewarded in our society for ignoring their feelings, except for anger. When emotions overwhelm a man and tightly wrap around his gut, he certainly knows something is wrong--but he will struggle if he attempts to label those feelings or articulate the cause--especially when the emotions are still in play. Lacking control, he looks down on himself with disdain because he believes it's a flaw to be a man without control. As that tight ball of emotion begins to uncurl and subside, as he feels that he's gaining mastery of himself once again, he has the opportunity to gain a handle on defining the emotion he is experiencing.

But if a partner puts a spotlight on those emotions, while he's in that uncomfortable place, the man may try to hide even more. He's not in control of himself and thinks he should be. The spotlight makes that all the more obvious.  If she can restrain herself, it's possible to slowly draw the emotion-averse man out of his cave by building his confidence... by encouraging him to believe that he is able to handle the uncertainty. The passage of time, emotional space, and distractions often provide healing for him... and perspective.

Before the man moves completely away from that raw sensation in his gut, there's a brief period of realization where he can catch an authentic glimpse of himself and his emotional limitations. In that moment he can catch a glimpse of who he is--or go right back to repeat the cycle.

Stephen Goforth

avoiding the ditches

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Make your goal a readiness to deal with new and developing circumstances--instead of simply avoiding any possibility of failure by trying to control which circumstances you are willing to deal with. Chasing the latest fade (simply because it is new) or ignoring what’s going on around us (and thus becoming irrelevant to the conversation) are two extreme temptations. We can fall into these ditches in an attempt to avoid regularly thinking hard about life and deal with the uncertainty that surrounds us. To stay on the road of maturity, we have to allow for ambiguity and endure that nagging (and sometimes frightening feeling) about what may come our way.

Stephen Goforth

Articles of Interest - Feb 22

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***MEDIA

I have seen the future of media, and it’s in China  Fusion

Bulky Cameras, Meet The Lens-less FlatCam  NPR

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Cancer cons, phoney accidents and fake deaths: meet the internet hoax buster  The Guardian

What Will Facebook Be Like When Instant Articles Are Available to Everyone? (Answer: Bad)  New York Magazine

Instagram Adds Two-Factor Authentication to Secure Your Selfies  Tech Crunch

Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Big Bet That Facebook Can Make VR Social  Wired

Twitter’s Bold New Path Forward: A GIF Button  Wired

***BIG DATA  

Shopping for predictive analytics software? Here are 10 vendors you should know  Enterprise apps Today

Some planning suggestions before starting your first Big Data initiative  Data Science Central

Identifying the top 100 Big Data influencers and brands  Onalytica

***GRAMMAR

Punctuation in novels  Medium    

Me, Myself, I, and Yourselves Too (The use of the reflexive pronoun in a nonreflexive way)  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Prince Charles: literature gave me a passion for grammar  Telegraph

***LANGUAGE

Polysemy and Maturity: Should Harvard not using the term “House Master”?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

And the Winner Is . . .   Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LITERATURE

The complete guide to reading—and even enjoying—classic literature  Quartz

The 'Girl' In The Title of Recent Books  NPR

***RESEARCH                                            

Expensive Journals Drive Academics To Break Copyright Law  NPR

Librarians Find Themselves Caught Between Journal Pirates and Publishers  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Strategies for using Plagiarism Software in the Screening of Incoming Journal Manuscripts (Recommendations based on a recent Literature Survey)  Online Library

***RACE & GENDER ISSUES

Interactive: Demographics of More Than 400,000 Professors  (Find the racial and ethnic breakdowns of all types of professors at more than 1,500 colleges)   Chronicle of Higher Ed

Highlights from the USC report on entertainment diversity  Union-Tribune

Damning study finds a 'whitewashed' Hollywood  Union-Tribune

***TECHNOLOGY

Microsoft rolls out massive Outlook.com overhaul out of preview  Venture Beat

How to Not Lose Your Data if You Forget Your iPhone Password  Wired

Google Quietly Shutters Play For Education  Tech Cruch

BuzzFeed Is Changing the Way It Measures Its Popularity  Wired

***IMAGES

Winners of the 2016 World Press Photo Contest  The Atlantic

Paula Scher’s Insanely Detailed US Maps Elevate Data Viz to Fine Art  Wired

Art for Instagram’s Sake (Spectacular, immersive exhibitions are drawing huge crowds, but are they changing the museum experience?)  The Atlantic

***RELIGION

How Secular Are Secular Ethics?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

World treasure: UNESCO recognizes oldest surviving copy of Hebrew Bible  Fox News

Finding Jesus at Work (Why are more and more companies offering access to chaplains as an employee benefit?)  The Atlantic

What an evangelical theologian and his gay son can teach us all about respect and reconciliation  Oregon Live

Why satanists have given new horror movie The Witch their endorsement  Vox

David Javerbaum quits popular Twitter account @TheTweetOfGod  SoCal Public Radio

Queen Discusses Christian Faith In New Book ‘The Servant Queen And The King She Serves'  Huff Post UK

The Moral Threat of Bicycles in the 1890s  Jstor

***JOURNALISM

How J-Schools Can Train a New Generation of Fierce Fact-Checkers  Media Shift

The Associated Press is partnering with AMD for more virtual reality journalism  The Verge

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM / MEDIA

The Future Of News And Publishing  Tech Crunch

News Corp. Plummets as Profit Trails Estimates on Ad Revenue  Ad Age

Is the New York Times building a digital ark?  Journalism Prof

Whither Newspapers (Or Should That Be Withered)?

Solving journalism’s hidden problem: Terrible analytics  Brookings

Gannett reports sharply lower revenue, earnings in Q4 report  Talking New Media

***STUDENT JOURNALISM

College Newspaper Video about the Bible Just Cost Ted Cruz's Communications Director His Job  Wired

The editor of DePauw's Student newspaper --the birthplace of SPJ--was fired (By the adviser. For violating SPJ's Code of Ethics. Even though SPJ says it wasn't a violation)  SPJ Network

These Startups Want To Create College Media Powerhouses  Huffington Post

***STUDENT LIFE

Students shooting video on campus leads to lockdown  Arkansas Online

Your high school study habits may not work in college, here's why  USA Today                             

***SCIENCE

Crisis in Physics: Missing Empirical Evidence  New York Times

Meet The Cops of The Scientific Method  CBC

***PSYCHOLOGY                           

Conversion therapy restricted in NY  The Threefold Advocate (John Brown University Student Newspaper)

Psychology's Replication Crisis Has a Silver Lining  The Atlantic

***NEUROSCIENCE

Making it up as you go along: how your brain freestyles (When your brain becomes ‘quieter’, remarkable things can happen. It’s time to go with the flow)   The Guardian

How Brainwaves Allow Paralyzed Musicians To Continue Playing  NPR

***PHILOSOPHY

Bringing Philosophy to Life  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Column: This is what happens when you take Ayn Rand seriously  PBS

Do We Cheapen Philosophy When We Use It as Therapy?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Philosophy in the Classroom (opinion)  The Advocate

***HIGHER ED

Wheaton College could face long-term fallout over professor controversy  Chicago Tribune

Fact-Check: Bernie Sanders Promises Free College. Will It Work?   NPR

Assessing, Without Tests (Survey finds Increased Use of Learning Outcomes)  Inside Higher Ed

The Moral Absurdity of Denying Financial Aid to Undocumented Students  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***HUMANITIES /STEM

A Rising Call to Promote STEM Education and Cut Liberal Arts Funding  New York Times

***TEACHING

A Plague of Plagiarism  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Study suggests acceptance of online education still lags among high school students  Inside

Study shows faculty members remain skeptical of digital course materials and generally unfamiliar with open educational resources   Inside Higher Ed      

Articles of Interest - Feb 15

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***SOCIAL MEDIA

Art in the Age of Big Data (Have technologies like Instagram and Pinterest made an artist out of all of us?)  The Guardian

Dear Mr. Know-It-All: Should You Delete Someone’s Facebook Account After They Die?  Wired

Twitter's returned boss has yet to turn it around  The Economist

How to Build a Twitter Following (and Why You Should a primer on tweeting for those who have never used the site or have underused it)  Chronicle of Higher Ed 

***SCIENCE

Reproducibility should be at science’s heart. It isn’t. But that may soon change  The Economist

What the discovery of gravitational waves means  The Atlantic

***TECHNOLOGY

Flash is dead, time to inform some publishers still dependent on it for their digital editions  Talking New Media

***BUSINESS

Most HR Data Is Bad Data (Managers are terrible at rating people's performance)  Harvard Business Review

***PSYCHOLOGY                           

Why people cheat (when people win against others, they tend to think they're better, or more deserving)  Washington Post

How People Learn to Become Resilient  The New Yorker

The Confidence Game: The Psychology of the Con and Why We Fall for It Every Time Economist

Exposed to a deluge of digital photos, we’re feeling the psychological effects of image overload  The Conversation

***NEUROSCIENCE

 New Clues to the Mystery of How Our Brains Keep Time  Wired

***PHILOSOPHY

Philosopher of the month: Plato  OUP Blog

***LANGUAGE

How Trump's use of words may be tied to his success  Nerdwriter YouTube video  

Fool ‘Ish’ Ways: a suffix that is taking on a life of its own  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***JOURNALISM

The thorny ethics of embedding with do-gooders  Columbia Journalism Review

Corrupt journalism doesn’t pay. Nor does abetting it  Washington Post

How Freelancers Can Create Their Own ‘Snow Fall’ For Free  Media Shift

Is John Oliver's Show Journalism?   NPR

How the Communist Party creates the world’s most-watched TV news show The Economist

Former student says journalism professor violated his free speech  Inside Higher Ed

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Journalism is a stressful career, but work doesn’t have to be miserable  Poynter

The Digital Dirt: How TMZ gets the videos and photos that celebrities want to hide  New Yorker

***STUDENT JOURNALISM

Protecting Student Journalists in a New-Media Era  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Newspaper Adviser Is Fired After Students’ Scoop Roils Maryland Campus   New York Times

Student Newspaper’s First Amendment Lawsuit Against University of Kansas Administrators Is Important Reminder about Need to Check Student Government Power  The Fire

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Cancer has ushered in new ways of being alive  Becoming

***THE INTERNET

How the Humble Index Card Foresaw the Internet  Popular Mechanics

***MUSIC & ART

Artists working with technology struggle to stay current  The Economist

Music Can’t Last Forever, Not Even on the Internet  Wired

Being Bilingual Changes the Architecture of Your Brain  Wired

***RESEARCH                                           

Researcher illegally shares millions of science papers free online to spread knowledge  Science Alert

***RACE & GENDER ISSUES

The ‘Jane Test,’ a New Way to Tell if Your Scripts AreSexist  Wired

Study finds Bias in How Male Students view female STEM students  Inside Higher Ed

Women considered better coders – but only if they hide their gender  The Guardian

Here's the presentation Google gives employees on how to spot unconscious bias at work  Business Insider

***BIG DATA  

Ted Cruz is mining supporters' personal data with #analytics--is voter surveillance by app the future of politics?  Associated Press

The Most Important Skill in Data Science: Mining and Visualizing your Data  Customer Think

Mistakes companies make approaching Big Data (#1-data is somehow opposed to intuition rather than enhancing it)  Wall Street Journal

***RELIGION

The leaders of Christianity's 2 biggest churches will meet for the first time in 1,000 years  Business Insider

The differences between the Catholic and Orthodox churches  The Economist

Church of England defends Richard Dawkins prayer tweet  BBC

Why are so many Christians biblically illiterate?  Fox News

Concern for Christians in the Middle East helps drive historic meeting between Catholic, Orthodox leaders  Pew Research

Death, the Prosperity Gospel and Me  NY Times

What the Death of Justice Antonin Scalia Means for Religious Liberty (The staunchly Catholic U.S. Supreme Court justice was known for his acidly conservative opinions, but ultimately, he prioritized the Constitution over the Church)  The Atlantic

Almost all U.S. presidents have been Christians  Pew Research

Why evangelicals are splintering and what it means for the GOP  LA Times

***STUDENT LIFE                             

Backgrounds and Beliefs of College Freshmen  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Have Millennials Made Quitting More Common?  Bloomberg

Survey: Nearly 1-in-10 Freshman plan to participate in campus protests  Inside Higher Ed

Among Millennials engaged in primaries, Dems more likely to learn about the election from social media  Pew Research

***HIGHER ED

Open letter to all students contemplating going to an evangelical college “Don’t let them ruin your life” (opinion) Pathos

Whither Wheaton: an evangelical college ponders its future  Religious News Service 

***HIGHER ED / MOUNT ST. MARY'S

Mount St. Mary's president says 'I'm not going to stop'  Baltimore Sun

Mount St. Mary’s University reinstates fired student newspaper adviser Student Press Law Center

How3 Crisis-Communications Experts Would Have Handled the Uproar at Mount St. Mary’s  Chronicle of Higher Ed

What's Up With the Mounts Saint Mary? (dissenting faculty members dismissed and trustees showing up at search committee meetings)  Inside Higher Ed

An Appalling Breach of Faith at Mount St. Mary's (Disrespecting students and trampling the rights of faculty members at the Maryland university contradict the mission of Roman Catholic higher education) (opinion)  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***TEACHING

A Piece of the Learning Puzzle  (How the "jigsaw classroom" can help students to see a subject in both piecemeal and broad ways)  Chronicle of Higher Ed

2015 Online Report Card - Tracking Online Education in the United States  Online Learning Consortium

Reaching Students Who “Don’t Need Writing”  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Study: Faculty Development has Demonstrable Impact on Student Learning 

Inside Higher Ed

The Self-Obliterating Professor premium (The best teachers create a world where they're no longer needed-subscription)  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***HUMANITIES / STEM

Building a Bridge Between Engineering and the Humanities (opinion) Chronicle of Higher Ed

Expect the best!

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Expect the best at all times. Never think of the worst. Drop it out of your thought, relegate it. Let there be no thought in your mind that the worst will happen. Avoid entertaining the concept of the worst, for whatever you take into your mind can grow there. Therefore, take the best into your mind and only that. Nurture it, concentrate on it, emphasize it, visualize it, prayerize it, surround it with faith. Make it your obsession. Expect the best, and spiritually creative mind power aided by God power produce the best.

Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking

Babies learning to walk can teach you something

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A few years ago a group of American and Norwegian researchers did a study to see what made babies improve at walking. They discovered that the key factor wasn't height or weight or age or brain development or any other innate trait but rather (surprise!) the amount of time they spend firing during their circuit, trying to walk. These staggering babies embody the deepest truth about deep practice: to get good, it's helpful to be willing, or even enthusiastic, about being bad. Baby steps are the royal road to skill.

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code

 

Articles of Interest - Feb 8

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****SCIENCE

Simulating Scientific Sabotage, For Fun (a card game making light of the “wacky aspects of scientific research”) - The Scientist

Can the Placebo Effect Have Real Clinical Value? - Science Friday

****PSYCHOLOGY                         

Beware the rule-following co-worker, Harvard study warns - Washington Post 

Why so many straight women like to befriend gay men - Mashable

Social science: Online social networks do not change the fundamentals of friendship - The Economist

What people around the world mean when they say they’re happy - Washington Post 

4 creepy psychological tricks companies use to get you to buy things - Business Insider  

****NEUROSCIENCE

Trauma prompts the brain to focus on survival, not 'peripheral details' - CBC

Brain volume changes after cognitive behavioral therapy - Science Daily 

Brain scans to catch depression before it starts - FoxNews

Review of the book "Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body by Jo Marchant (opinion) - Washington Post

Listening to Music While Reading Complex Sentences Affects Musical Experience - Neuroscience News

***SOCIAL MEDIA

The definitive list of what everyone likes on Facebook (The most (and least) popular interests on Facebook, as revealed by its new Preferred Audience tool) - The Verge 

Twitter's timeline will soon show tweets out of order - the Verge 

Twitter Beefs Are Now Front Page News in The Boston Globe – Wired

***WRITIN’ AND READIN’

How to Prune Jargon From Your Popular Writing - Chronicle of Higher Ed

***GRAMMAR

Why 2015’s word of the year is rather singular - The Economist

Oh, Commas - Chronicle of Higher Ed 

The Fall and Rise of the Singular They - Slate's Lexicon Valley   

***LANGUAGE

Sarah Palin's English (her speeches on the campaign trail aren’t simple; they are actually incredibly complicated) - New York Times

***LITERATURE

Is Amazon Planning Hundreds Of Bookstores? Analysts Doubt It - NPR

Brash, worldly and wickedly funny, Eka Kurniawan may be South-East Asia’s most ambitious writer in a generation - The Economist

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Is One Braaaaaaainy Mashup - Wired

Is English literature since 1918 really such a man’s world? (A new book celebrating the best writing of the past century follows a well-worn script when it comes to equality) – The Guardian

The 10 Best First Dates In Literature - Bustle

What Would Shakespeare Make of Trump? - Chronicle of Higher Ed

The adoption of Greek literature by the Romans was more unlikely than it appears in hindsight – The Economist

Shakespeare’s Badass Quarto (On the trail of a centuries-old Hamlet mystery-subscription required)  - Chronicle of Higher Ed

#1000BlackGirls and the Importance of Diversity in Children’s Literature - JSTOR

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM/MEDIA

Patch Rebounds after Split from AOL - Wall Street Journal

Podcasts are gaining audience, but have yet to attract the biggest advertisers - The Economist

Why the NYT Is Looking to Cut Costs, Even Though It Turned a Profit - New York Times

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Unfocusing increases Creativity - Becoming (my blog)

Your reaction to this confusing headline reveals more about you than you know (The science behind why some people embrace uncertainty, and others don't) - Washington Post

Stanford psychologist explains why spacing out and goofing off is so good for you - Washington Post

Things to Say Instead of Sorry – Business Insider

***THE INTERNET

Google will start warning web users about deceptive download buttons  - The Verge 

***RESEARCH                                           

Bogus Iran-Based Journal Allows Up to 40% Plagiarism - Scholarly Open Access

Research quality declines with scientists’ age, study finds - Times Higher Ed

How can social media be used to increase article citation? - Sage Connection

***POLITICS

American Political Jargon - Bloomberg

Do Political TV Ads Still Work? - NPR

***POLITICS & RELIGION

Jesus reads Donald Trump and Ted Cruz: Jimmy Kimmel – Salon

Marco Rubio, an Evangelical Catholic? The dynamics of religious hybrids – KPCC podcasts

***RACE & GENDER ISSUES

How to stop the sexual harassment of women in science: reboot the system - The Conversation

Baylor faces accusations of ignoring sex assault victims - ESPN 

No, There Was No Debate About Removing An MLK Quote At The University Of Oregon (student newspaper story misunderstood) - Huffington Post

***LEGAL ISSUES

Judge Gives Monkey Second Chance to Sue for Copyright Infringement  - MotherBoard

***TECHNOLOGY

Why the iPad Is Going Extinct - New Republic

At Berkeley, a New Digital Privacy Protest (university installs data-tracking program with little notice or consultation)– New York Times

***BUSINESS

The fashion for making employees collaborate has gone too far - The Economist

***BIG DATA

Hadoop At 10: Milestones And Momentum - Information Week

Hadoop vs Spark. Which is superior? Better yet.. what if we used them both together? -Datamation

Projection: global Hadoop market to hit more than $84 billion in revenue in 5 years - Inside Big Data 

Who loves where Big Data analytics are going? Dictatorships and rogue nations - Forbes 

***RELIGION

Charismatic Christianity thrives among people on the move - The Economist  

Pentecostalism in South Korea - The Economist  

Oscar-Favorite 'Spotlight' Screens at the Vatican for Pope's Sex Abuse Commission - Yahoo News

While the government talks up family values, marriage break-ups are soaring - The Economist

Some Still Misleading America About Thomas Jefferson - History News Network  

German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his fight against the Nazis - Jerusalem Post

****PHILOSOPHY

Philosopher of the month: Plato - OUP Blog

***HIGHER ED

Practically all young people now go to school, but they need to learn a lot more there - The Economist

Low Income, High Graduation Rate (Two new studies suggest many colleges may be too quick to write off low-income students and community college transfers) - Inside Higher Ed

Wheaton of Illinois and professor it tried to fire over her statements about God reach deal under which she will leave - Inside Higher Ed

Questions Linger After Tenured Wheaton College ProfessorAgrees to Leave - TIME

***TEACHING

Unwarranted praise of student writing is counterproductive, but too much negativity is far more damaging - Chronicle of Higher Ed

****STUDENT LIFE                                                              

Ignore the moral panic about lazy, self-obsessed millennials. The world will be fairer when they run it - The Economist

Commitment for Millennials: Is It Okay, Cupid?

***HUMANITIES /STEM

What Is The Value Of An EducationIn The Humanities? - NPR

***SEXUAL ASSAULT ON CAMPUS

Alabama student paper devotes issue to sexual assault - Crimson  

A Closer Look at 7 Common Requirements in Resolved Federal Sex-Assault Inquiries (subscription) (As Title IX complaints have multiplied, the government has issued more expansive mandates for the colleges it has investigated)

How (not) to manage a PR crisis on campus (school slow to respond to campus crime) - CBC

 

Give people you don’t know a fair chance

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When you look at a person, any person, remember that everyone has a story. Everyone has gone through something that has changed them, and forced them to grow. Every passing face on the street represents a story every bit as compelling and complicated as yours. We meet no ordinary people in our lives. 

Renee Jones (read more here)

Articles of Interest - Feb 1

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***SOCIAL MEDIA

How Two Guys Built the Ultimate GIF Search Engine - Bloomberg

Snapchat: Not just for kids anymore (subscription) - The Week magazine

The End of Twitter - New Yorker

One Billion People Now Use Whats App – Wired

****PSYCHOLOGY                         

New Clues to How the Brain Maps Time - Quantam

Best apps... For mental health therapy (subscription) - The Week

Psychologists have found that a spiritual outlook makes humans more resilient to trauma – Quartz

****PHILOSOPHY

Concordia philosophy professor publishes book on religious diversity – The Concordian

***PERSONAL GROWTH

The day pain died.. Oct. 16, 1846 - Becoming (my blog)

***BIG DATA

Here's a nice summary of what's at stake in the practical ethics of machine intelligence - Fast Forward Labs

Crisis in Intel education (the intellectual acumen of the national security community is rapidly declining) - Vice News

How Big Data is changing disruptive innovation - Harvard Business Review

***GRAMMAR

Them, Themself, and They - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Samuel Johnson's great English Dictionary of 1755 (prescriptivism v descriptivism) - The Economist

***LANGUAGE

How‘-Phobic’ Became a Weapon in the Identity Wars - New York Times

This Little Red Book Confronts Sexism in the Chinese Language – Wired

***LITERATURE

Taking Literature to the Streets (From vending machines to coffee sleeves, a number of projects around the world are using guerrilla marketing tactics to promote) – The Atlantic 

***JOURNALISM

6 Quick Ways to Spot Fake News - Snopes

A Code of Ethics for Journalism Nonprofits – The New Yorker

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Politico implodes - Washington Post

Crowdfunding enables diverse new frontier for journalism projects - Pew Research

***RACE & GENDER ISSUES

Researchers have found a major problem with ‘The Little Mermaid’ and other Disney movies - Washington Post

Study finds "driving while black" really is a crime in Florida - Vox

Vice launches a paid summer fellowship for “underrepresented communities” – Harvard’s Nieman Lab

Does diversity look different at a Christian university? – Inside Higher Ed

Representative Barbies - Jstor

***SEXUAL ASSAULT ON CAMPUS

White House launches a cappella contest to combat campus assault - USA Today 

***FREE SPEECH

A statement at the heart of the debate over academic - Economist

***LEGAL ISSUES

Copywrong: Students often clash with administrators over copyright law - Student Press Law Center

Freedom ofInformation Acts (The Idealist puts Aaron Swartz’s legacy at the center of the copyright debate) – Bloomberg Businessweek

Why Colleges Hide Behind This One Privacy Law All The Time - Huffington Post

***DESIGN

The ‘Memoire’ Typeface Changes Like a Memory as You Use It - Wired

***RELIGION

5 key findings about faith and politics in the 2016 presidential race - Pew Research

Alabama pastor on Syrian refugees: ‘God gave us specific instructions to destroy these people’ – Yellow Hammer News

***STUDENT LIFE                                              

Millions of young people in U.S. and EU are neither working nor learning - Pew Research 

United States of Adderall – Huffington Post

This infographic shows how big the student loan bubble is going to grow - Business Insider

***HIGHER ED

The crisis in intelligence education (the intellectual acumen of the national security community is rapidly declining) - Vice

Inside the secret gay movement at one of America’s most homophobic colleges - Fusion  

Wheaton Professor Claims White Privilege & Sexism Are Behind Larycia Hawkins Controversy - Patheos

***HUMANITIES /STEM

Feeding English Majors in the 21st Century (A new course teaches undergraduates in the humanities how to market themselves for the new economic normal) - The Chronicle of Higher Ed

Computer Science, MeetHumanities: in New Majors, Opposites Attract (Stanford University sees such integration as a way to bring in students who are drawn to the arts but feel that they need computing skills for their careers) - The Chronicle of Higher Ed

****ACADEMIC LIFE

Are Academics Disproportionately Gay? – Inside Higher Ed

Academics Get Real (Adjuncts and tenure-line faculty members unite on Twitter under #realacademicbios to pull back the curtain on their emotional lives) – Inside Higher Ed

#Delete AcademiaEdu or Don't? (Controversy about Academia.edu considering charging users to promote their work illustrates the delicate subject of the role money plays in scholarly publishing) - Inside Higher Ed

***TEACHING

The Limits of Facts in Teaching - Chronicle of Higher Ed

 

 

 

 

Articles of Interest - Jan 25

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***SOCIAL MEDIA

The fastest-growing ‘news’ site of 2015 was an obscure content farm for moms - Washington Post

Nearly Half of Twitter’s Senior Leaders Are Leaving – Wired

4 ways to tell if a picture was Photoshopped just by glancing at it – Tech Insider

Nielsen Will Now Use Your Facebook Chatter for TV Ratings - Wired

***BIG DATA  

Automating Legal Advice: AI and Expert Systems - Bloomberg

Google's new free, 3-month course on Deep Learning - The Verge

Here's a nice summary of what's at stake in the practical ethics of machine intelligence - Fast Forward Labs 

Need a simple explanation of Hadoop for the uninitiated? - Smart Data Collection

How Big Data is flatting the #music industry as algorithms replace talent-scout bar crawls with data-created music - Dataconmy

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Ultimate Reality - Becoming (my blog)

***WRITIN’ AND READIN’

The 20 Most Influential Academic Books of All Time: No Spoilers - Open Culture

Scholars Talk Writing: Ideally you want to be an id on the first draft and a superego on the second' - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Ursula Le Guin Gives Insightful Writing Advice in Her Free Online Workshop - Open Culture 

***LITERATURE

The Open Syllabus Project Gathers 1,000,000 Syllabi from Universities & Reveals the 100 Most Frequently-Taught Books- Open Culture

A doctor’s mission: Showing why literature matters to medicine – Dallas Morning News

***RESEARCH                                           

Yahoo Releases Largest Cache of Internet Data - Wall Street Journal

***RACE AND GENDER ISSUES

Prominent Medieval Scholar’s Blog on ‘Feminist Fog’ Sparks an Uproar - Chronicle of Higher Ed

***FREE SPEECH

Digital rights non-profit argues against banning anonymous speech platforms like Yik Yak - Student Press Law Center

Watch What You Say: How fear is stifling academic freedom (subscription) - Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LEGAL ISSUES

Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law - Slate

Florida appeals court reverses order to ‘unpublish’ information – Columbia Journalism Review

****SCIENCE

Quantum Links in Time and Space May Form the Universe’s Foundation – Wired

****PSYCHOLOGY                         

Even Facebook can’t help you have more than 150 real friends - Washington Post

Florida Governor Wants to Know why all Pscyhology Majors aren’t Employed - Inside Higher Ed

Lumosity to Pay $2M to Settle FTC Charges Over 'Brain Training' – NBC News

****PHILOSOPHY

When Philosophy Lost Its Way – New York Times

***TECHNOLOGY

The Way You Buy and Use Apps Is About to Change Big Time - Wired

***HISTORY

The history of the world, as you’ve never seen it before - Washington Post

***MEDIA

Nielsen To Use Facebook And Twitter In New Social TV Ratings - NP

***JOURNALISM

MU professor Melissa Click, who called for ‘muscle’ to remove reporter, charged with assault - KansasCity.com

How well do you speak Journalism Jargon? - Contently

A new data journalism tool – and a new way of reporting uncertainty - Online Journalism Blog

What journalists get wrong about social science, according to 20 scientists - Vox

How Data Journalism is Impacting the Industry – CTOvision

Are intelligent agents the beginning of the end for journalism as we know it? - Phys Org

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

A News Team Was Fired For Reportedly Playing Cards Against Humanity At Work - Buzz Feed

TVNZ presenter accepts apology from pregnancy critic - The New Zealand Herald

Pew: $6.3M raised for journalism projects on Kickstarter in 6-year period – USA Today

The New York Times celebrates 20 years on the worldwide web, as newspaper business prepares for more challenges ahead – Talking New Media

***STUDENT JOURNALISM

College newspaper playing major role in FBI investigation into Kent State professor’s ISIS ties - Fox8

****STUDENT LIFE                                                      

Mizzou is Encouraging Students to Report Anyone Who Makes Fun of a Classmate - National Review

21 Pictures People Not In College Will Never Understand - BuzzFeed

Campus Backlash over College President’s Plan to get ride of at-Risk Freshmen: Drown the Bunnies - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Generation Uphill (The millennials are the brainiest, best-educated generation ever. Yet their elders often stop them from reaching their full potential) - The Economist

****JOBS

6 LinkedIn tips to help maximize your job search - USA Today   

****ACADEMIC LIFE

 Professor Says She Was Fired Unconstitutionally For Cursing - Huffington Post

Fired LSU Professor’s Lawsuit Challenges Federal Title IX Guidance - Chronicle of Higher Ed

***HIGHER ED

Ed Dept to publish a list of religious colleges that have received Title IX exemptions - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Undergraduate success linked to meaningful interaction with professors, studying a variety of fields and having classroom talks that go to issues of ethics and life - Inside Higher Ed

***TEACHING

Confessions of a MOOC professor: three things I learned and two things I worry about - The Conversation

TurnItIn Expands Beyond Plagiarism - Inside Higher Ed

***SEXUAL ASSAULT ON CAMPUS

How A Stanford Student Accused Of Assaulting Multiple Women Graduated - Huffington Post

Survey: 21% of Undergraduate Women Have Been Sexually Assaulted in College - Bureau of Justice Statistics

How Much Should a University Have to Reveal About a Sexual-Assault Case? (how universities misuse FERPA) - New York Times

***RELIGION

Americans may be getting less religious, but feelings of spirituality are on the rise - Pew Research

In Defense of Theology - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Why Trump Is Winning Over Christian Conservatives - TIME

 

Sailing into Adventure

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Three Englishmen decided to sail across the English Channel on a whim and a 7-foot dinghy in May of 2011. Eleven hours later they greeted rescuers with cries of “Bonjour,” thinking they had reached the coast of France. But the trio had traveled just two miles from where they had launched their tiny boat. One of the rescuers told the media that the smallest of waves might have capsized them.

It’s easy to laugh at the young men. They only brought a single paddle with a bottle of wine on their big adventure. Yet how often we are likewise adrift, thinking only of the fun we'll have during our journey, unaware we are going nowhere?

Stephen Goforth

When we’re anxious, things smell bad

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When we are tense, two parts of our brains that normally keep to themselves wind up talking to each other. The result? Researchers say that normally neutral odors become olfactory offenses. And it gets worse the more stressed out we get. A University of Wisconsin-Madison study found the offensive smells make us even more anxious creating a vicious stinky cycle. Details are in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Stephen Goforth

the audience effect

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The effort of communicating to someone else forces you to pay more attention and learn more. You can see this audience effect even in small children.

In one of my favorite experiments, a group of Vanderbilt University researchers in 2008 published a study in which several dozen 4- and 5-year-olds were shown patterns of colored bugs and asked to predict which would be next in the sequence. In one group, the children simply repeated the puzzle answers into a tape recorder.

In a second group, they were asked to record an explanation of how they were solving each puzzle.

And in the third group, the kids had an audience: They had to explain their reasoning to their mothers, who sat near them, listening but not offering any help. Then each group was given patterns that were more complicated and harder to predict.

The results?

The children who didn’t explain their thinking performed worst. The ones who recorded their explanations did better—the mere act of articulating their thinking process aloud seemed to help them identify the patterns more clearly. But the ones who were talking to a meaningful audience—Mom—did best of all. When presented with the more complicated puzzles, on average they solved more than the kids who’d explained to themselves and about twice as many as the ones who’d simply repeated their answers.

Researchers have found similar effects with adolescents and adults.

Interestingly, the audience effect doesn’t necessarily require a big audience. This seems particularly true online.

Clive Thompson, Smarter Than you Think

Articles of interest - Jan 18

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***THE INTERNET

Sadly, the Internet Isn’t Making the World a Better Place - MIT Technology Review

****SCIENCE

Vial and Error: Science’s wonders are oft built on blunders - Chronicle of Higher Ed

String Theory Meets Loop Quantum Gravity (Two leading candidates for a “theory of everything,” long thought incompatible, may be two sides of the same coin) - Quantam Magazine

****PSYCHOLOGY                         

Many Black Students Don’t Seek Help for Mental-Health Concerns, Survey Finds - Chronicle of Higher Ed

How the sound of your own voice can affect your mood - Vox

The Joy of Psyching Myself Out (Is it possible to think scientifically and creatively at once?) - New York Times

Can a brain scan uncover your morals? - The Guardian

****PHILOSOPHY

Plato’s Cave Allegory Animated Monty Python-Style - Open Culture

 ***PERSONAL GROWTH

Controlling Emotions - Becoming (my blog)

How to Take Advantage of Boredom, the Secret Ingredient of Creativity - Open Culture

***GRAMMAR     

Our National Anthimeria - Chronicle of Higher Ed

So They Say: Fallout from the expansion of "they" - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Everyone Uses Singular 'They,' Whether They Realize It Or Not - NPR

***LANGUAGE

The case of the missing “u”s in American English - Quartz

The totes amazesh way millennials are changing the English language - Washington Post

***LITERATURE

On Oscar Wilde and Plagiarism - Public Domain Review

An Introduction to the World of Haruki Murakami Through Documentaries, Stories, Animation, Music Playlists & More - Open Culture

What Your First Fictional Crush From Literature Says About You – Bustle

***MUSIC & ART

Download 650 Soviet Book Covers, Many Sporting Wonderful Avant-Garde Designs (1917-1942) - Open Culture

All of Bach is Putting Bach’s Complete Works Online: 100 Done, 980 to Come - Open Culture

Will Big Data Write The Next Hit Song? - Datacomony

***RESEARCH                                           

Wikipedia at 15: Millions of readers in scores of languages - Pew Research

Excuses for Plagiarism by Researchers - Retraction Watch

Fake study on moms’ kisses risked sowing confusion just for a laugh - Stat News

The Most-Edited Wikipedia Pages Over The Last 15 Years - FiveThirtyEight

At 15, Wikipedia Is Finally Finding Its Way to the Truth – Wired

The scholarly database JSTOR, recognizing its role as a starting point for research, sees major growth in its ebook program – Inside Higher Ed

***RACE AND GENDER ISSUES

A new survey explains one big reason there are so few women in technology - Vox

Female professors are woefully outnumbered at med schools nationwide - Stat News

When Teamwork Doesn’t Work for Women (In economics, women don’t get full credit for work done with men, says a new study) - New York Times

***HISTORY

7 Little-Known Martin Luther King, Jr. Facts You Weren't Taught in History Class - Mic

***MEDIA

Media, Journalism and Technology Predictions 2016 - Digital Newsreport

Four Keys to Creating a Great Audio Interview - Orbit Media

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Twitter is not broken, and they should stop trying to fix it - Vox

Please watch this video before deciding whether Instagram fame is right for you - Washington Post

Death Hoaxes, Like-Farming, and YouClickbait? Likebait? Why it matters - Snopes

I Found Out My Secret Internal Tinder Rating And Now I Wish I Hadn't - Fast Company 

How to Build an Empathetic Social Media Strategy for Times of Tragedy - Moz

The White House Is Now on Snapchat (And Every Other Platform) - Wired

Periscope Now Drops Live Video Into Your Twitter Timeline 

Hey Millennials, Your Mom Is About to Follow You on Snapchat - Wired

***BIG DATA  

A suite of easy-to-use web tools for beginners that introduce concepts of working with data - Data Basic

5 major data analytics missteps beginners make - Information Management

Favorite 2015 books for data science beginners, machine learning resources, managing data projects - FastForward Labs

Does MIT's advances with the Data Science Machine change the human element in the Big Data process? - - Dataconomy

8 open source Big Data mining tools some suitable for beginners-some remarkably robust for the pro - DataMation

FTC: concerns over how you handle Big Data related to discrimination & privacy - Computer World

A look inside the Facebook algorithm, the human element behind it and the place of user control - Slate

The Secret Weapon of Predictive Analytics: Contextual Integration - Data Informed

I asked a computer to be my life coach. Personal #analytics gets a workout - NPR

How ‘The Revenant’ — and Big Data — Will Change Movies Forever – Yahoo Tech

***RELIGION

Division Over Social Issues Threatens Global Split Among Anglican Churches - NPR

Are Trump's Values Consistent With Evangelicals? - NPR

The Duggars: Sexual Abuse in the Christian Homeschooling Movement - Jstor

New charges against allege Bill Gothard sexually abused women – Washington Post

Trump: Christianity 'under siege' - The Hill

Supreme Court to Consider Churches’ Rights to State Grants (Justices to review whether funds must be offered on same terms as for secular groups) – Wall Street Journal

Christian denominations grapple with graying clergy, ways to appeal to the young – Houston Chronicle

***JOURNALISM

Fifty Years of FOIA: As the Freedom of Information Act turns 50, journalists are innovating new ways to use the law - Harvard's Nieman Lab

Here are some more predictions for journalism in 2016 - Harvard's Nieman Lab

Snopes' Field Guide to Fake News Sites and Hoax Purveyors - Snopes

The Problem With Journalism Is You Need an Audience - Gawker

Journalism in the movies – Financial Times

Is Making a Murderer ‘Advocacy Journalism’? – The Wrap

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Al Jazeera America is closing because ‘our business model is simply not sustainable…’ - Poynter

****JOBS

5 tips for facing your networking fears - Biz Journals

Code School Udacity Promises Refunds if You Don’t Get a Job - Wired

***SEXUAL ASSAULT ON CAMPUS

Being A Sexual Assault Survivor In College Often Comes With Huge Bills (Experts are noticing the Education Department is increasingly ordering colleges to include financial remedies for victims) - Huffington Post

How 46 Title IX Cases Were Resolved  - Chronicle of Higher Ed

****STUDENT LIFE                      

Pretty Girls Make (Higher) Grades - NPR

The Number Of College Students Seeking Mental Health Treatment Is Growing Rapidly - Huffington Post

***HIGHER ED

Oregon Cancels Branding Contract, Will Spend Money on Academics 

The 13 Best ‘Onion’ Stories About Higher Education

5 Ways Elite-College Admissions Shut Out Poor Kids – NPR

Can Statements Faith Be Compatible Academic Freedom – Inside Higher Ed

Wheaton College and creationism (opinion) – Patheos

***TEACHING

Small Changes in Teaching: The First 5 Minutes of Class - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Communicating with Students: A Suggestion About Email - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Mapping a MOOC Reveals Global Patterns in Student Engagement - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Can Teaching Methods Be Patented  (Experts attempt to make sense of Khan Academy's patent application for A/B testing in education -- and whether it can even be patented) – Inside Higher Ed

seeing who's a winner

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What matters most in a music competition—the music, right? Before you answer, consider this study: Some volunteers were asked to guess which performers won classical music competitions after listening to audio of the contest. Others were given audio and video of the performances. A third group got the video with no sound. Despite not hearing a note, the last group, going off of video without audio, guessed the winners better than the volunteers who could actually hear the performances. These volunteers were not just music fans—they were amateur and professional musicians. Both these volunteers and the actual judges of the contests allowed the visual image to outweigh the music itself when judging its value.

Researcher took the study one step further by trying to figure out what made the difference. If you think it was the attractiveness of the performer, think again. The social cues related to passion and creativity provided the biggest indication as to which performances would be judged award winning.

Often what we say we value (in this case, the music itself) takes a backseat to what we really value (the performer's visual presentation flare and appearance).

Details of the study are in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. You can read it here.

Stephen Goforth