If you have strong analytical skills that might be applicable in a number of disciplines, it is very much worth considering the strength of the competition. It is often possible to make a profit by being pretty good at prediction in fields where the competition succumbs to poor incentives, bad habits, or blind adherence to tradition—or because you have better data or technology than they do. It is much harder to be very good in fields where everyone else is getting the basics right—-and you may be fooling yourself if you think you have much of an edge.

Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise

September 23, 2016

Finding my Keys

September 23, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

I was running late for work and was frantically searching for my keys. I would be working my 7th overtime shift in 7 days. I knew I wasn't thinking clearly. Where were my keys? I gave up, picked up the spare keys to the house and car and decided I'd find the real ones later.

When I got off of work, I decided to clean the entire apartment while looking for the keys. That way, when I found them, instead of being upset at wasting a lot of time, I would have the keys along with a clean apartment.

As the cleaning proceeded, I got to thinking. What if I carelessly dropped them while working outside? Someone could find them, see my car on the property and take it. Or steal everything while I was at work. Hours went by, midnight came, and no keys. I had to get to bed.

Just before retiring, I started toward the trash. I took it out every Sunday night. That's when it hit me. What if? I began rummaging. Sure enough, the keys were buried deep inside, covered with coffee grounds and spaghetti sauce.

Takeaway: Sometimes you have to go through some garbage to find what you need.

Stephen Goforth

September 22, 2016

The Passion for Control

September 22, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

Researchers arranged for student volunteers to pay regular visits to nursing-home residents. Residents in the high-control group were allowed to control the timing and duration of the student’s visit, and residents in the low-control group were not. After two months, residents in the high-control group were happier, healthier, more active, and taking fewer medications than those in the low-control group.

At this point the researchers concluded their student and discontinued the student visits. Several months later they were chagrined to learn that a disproportionate number of residents who had been in the high-control group had died.

Only in retrospect did the cause of this tragedy seem clear. The residents who had been given control, and who had benefited measurably from that control while they had it were inadvertently robbed of control when the study ended.

Apparently, gaining control can have a positive impact on one’s health and well-being, but losing control can be worse than never having had any at all.

Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

September 19, 2016

articles of interest - Sept 19

September 19, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

***RELATIONSHIPS

How Much Do Parents Matter? The Atlantic

Scientists have identified why binge-watching together brings couples closer Quartz

LoveBot tells your wife you love her so you don’t have to TechCrunch

The Internet is systematically changing who we date Washington Post

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook steps up fight against fake news The Hill

Twitter in retweet: It is too late for the social-media firm to become the giant that people once expected Economist

How Luck And Intuition Helped To Build Instagram NPR

A co-founder of Twitter is betting he can revolutionise digital publishing once again with Medium Economist

***GRAMMAR

Oxford English Dictionary welcomes moobs and yolo The Guardian

Why you shouldn't be a grammar snob (video) BongBong

***WRITING & READING

How Cliché Can You Get? Chronicle of Higher Ed

Why I Hate the New 'MLA Handbook' Chronicle of Higher Ed

The History and Usage of Common Symbols Medium

Should citations be normalized across disciplines? Plos

***LANGUAGE

Distant languages sound more similar than you might expect Economist

***LITERATURE

Algorithms Could Save Book Publishing—But Ruin Novels Wired

Patricians of parchment: Why manuscripts matter Economist

***RESEARCH

Why scientists must share their research code Nature

Could freeing Troves of data gathered during clinical trials lead to new cures? Proto

Be very careful when you think, "this is a good study" Statistically Funny

Links between citations and open access Elsev

***GENDER ISSUES

Discrimination by Design: The many ways design decisions treat people unequally Pacific Standard

How LinkedIn’s search engine may reflect a gender bias Seattle Times

Gender Bias and the Peer Review Process Wiley Exchanges

***FREE SPEECH

Colin Kaepernick and a Landmark Supreme Court Case New Yorker

***LEGAL ISSUES

Europe proposes copyright reform to help scientists mine research papers Nature

Judge Rejects Justice Department Ruling on Music Licensing New York Times

***RELIGION

The Faith Economy: Religion in US 'worth more than Google and Apple combined' The Guardian

How a Christian business tycoon used his depression to help tens of thousands Washington Post

Gay Christian Rocker Trey Pearson on Being Ousted From Festival Bill & How He Ended Up Onstage Anyway Billboard

Non-Politicians Talking Politics: Religion In 2016 Election NPR

Mormons are less Republican this year, and Trump is not the only reason why Religious News Service

Mother Teresa — a myth, a celebrity or a hero? Union-Tribune

***MUSIC AND ART

Can Music Save Your Life? Chronicle of Higher Ed

***JOURNALISM

4 Examples of AI’s Rise in Journalism (And What it Means for Journalists) Media Shift

When did charts become popular? How the revolution in data visualization came about Priceonomics

Fact-checkers around the world agree on shared code of principles Poynter

These students didn’t know Bin Laden was dead. How did we get so clueless about news? Washington Post

***SCIENCE

'Motherless babies!’ How to create a tabloid science headline in five easy steps Science Magazine

Genius is not enough: The sad story of Peter Hagelstein, living monument to the sunk-cost fallacy (opinion) Andrew Gelman

A 6-Step Infographic For Ending Pseudoscience Big Think

***HEALTH

How the sugar industry has distorted health science for more than 50 years Vox

There is now a sixth taste – and it explains why we love carbs New Scientist

The drug industry: Prescriptions for the pharma business Economist

Why I won't get Tested for the Breast Cancer Genes Questia

Feed a virus, starve a bacterium: An old wives’ tale gets some support from medical science Economist

To End the Opioid Epidemic, We Need Way More Than OD Treatments Wired

New study finds that medical marijuana may be helping to curb the opioid epidemic Washington Post

A mystery no more: Scientists have learned a great deal about Zika since the outbreak began. Now for the task of stopping it Economist

Parents May Be Giving Their Children Too Much Medication, Study Finds NPR

***PSYCHOLOGY

One in five CEOs are psychopaths, new study finds: Proportion of psychopath corporate executives 'similar to prison population' Independent

Four basic personality types identified: Pessimistic; optimistic; envious and trusting Science Daily

***NEUROSCIENCE

As More States Consider Legalizing, Questions About Pot And The Brain NPR

When Blind People Do Algebra, The Brain's Visual Areas Light Up NPR

***PHILOSOPHY

An Animated Aldous Huxley Identifies the Dystopian Threats to Our Freedom (1958) Open Culture

***ETHICS

Practical Ethics: A moral philosopher offers handy hints on how to live an ethical life (a book review) Economist

***HIGHER ED

The Next Hot Ticket in Ed Tech? Micro-Credentials Stamford Advocate

Dallas evangelical seminary requires sex abuse awareness training The Gazette

Biola Announces Campus Safe Space Biola University

***STUDENT MEDIA

Journalism faculty ask College president to apologize, drop suit against student newspaper Associated Press

***STUDENT LIFE

Share on Twitter Share via Email Donald Trump might be causing a major shift in how young Americans feel about immigrants Washington Post

***DIVERSITY ON CAMPUS

Student Diversity at More Than 4,600 Institutions Chronicle of Higher Ed

As Standards Change, Disability Officers Race to Keep Up Chronicle of Higher Ed

Elite Colleges and the Language of Class (sub. requ’ed) Chronicle of Higher Ed

September 16, 2016

grace and mercy

September 16, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

Grace is when God gives us when we don't deserve. Mercy is when God doesn't give us what we deserve.

September 12, 2016

articles of interest - Sept 12

September 12, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Horrible Facebook Algorithm Accident Results In Exposure To New Ideas The Onion

The seventh-grader’s sext was meant to impress him. Then he shared it. It nearly destroyed her Washington Post

Twitter Adds Button That Lets You Subscribe To Live Video Notifications BuzzFeed

***MUSIC AND ART

Machine Learning, AI, and Computer Generated Music DZone

Learn How to Read Sheet Music: A Quick, Fun, Tongue-in-Cheek Introduction Open Culture

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

BuzzFeed Regroups as Media Turns Video-Centric The New York Times

What We Mean When We Talk About “Engagement” Medium

***BIG DATA / STATS

Google project comes up with a machine-generated piece of music Dzone

MIT AI researchers claim breakthrough on threat detection: unsupervised machine learning w/ periodic human feedback Dark Reading

Storytelling: The power to influence in data science KD Nuggets

***WRITING& READING

This Rule I Learned and Then Unlearned Chronicle of Higher Ed

Americans aren't reading less -- they're just reading less literature Minnesota Public Radio

The Best New Way to Read? Novels Told Through Text Messages Wired

When Analogies Fail Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LANGUAGE

The Two Voices of Trump Chronicle of Higher Ed

Should religious language keep up with the times or stick closely to the original? Economist

BBC Editor Highlights Often Overlooked English Language Rule NPR

Beware the bad big wolf: why you need to put your adjectives in the right order The Conversation

Is Writing a Technology or a Language? Let’s Ask Some Aliens Jstor Daily

***LITERATURE

Even science majors should study literature Washington Post

***HEALTH

California Aims To Limit Surprise Medical Bills NPR

The Death of the Prostate Exam Medium

***PSYCHOLOGY

A Worrying Trend for Psychology’s “Simple Little Tricks" The Atlantic

***NEUROSCIENCE

What Happens in the Brain When We Misremember Scientific American

***PHILOSOPHY

A Life of Meaning (Reason Not Required) (opinion) New York Times

***RESEARCH

A Framework for Improving the Quality of Research in the Biological Sciences mBio

Is Most Published Research Wrong? (video) Veritasium

***GENDER ISSUES

Few evangelical churches led by a woman Christian Today

The Gender Factor in Conference Presentations Inside Higher Ed

Study finds gender bias in sports journalism PhysOrg

why the gender wage gap explodes when women hit their 30s Vox

News photos of scientists skew race but not gender (sub. requ’d) Newspaper Research Journal

Anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly’s philosophy perfectly captured in 15 disturbing quotes Raw Story

***RACE

Airbnb Gets Serious About Fighting Discrimination Wired

***FREE SPEECH

Half Of Professors In NPR Ed Survey Have Used 'Trigger Warnings' NPR

***LEGAL ISSUES

The Protection of Intellectual Property in International Law – An Introduction InfoJustice

***TECHNOLOGY

New book examines how technology is changing education Inside Higher Ed

AI Can Recognize Your Face Even If You’re Pixelated Wired

***ART

The stunning geographic divide in American creativity Washington Post

***RELIGION

White male leadership persists at evangelical ministries RNS

Trump's pitch to Christian voters evolves Politico

Why is Christianity declining? Religious News Service

Evangelicals Coming Out For Darwin Forbes

William Blake’s Masterpiece Illustrations of the Book of Job (1793-1827) Open Culture

Vanderbilt settles health insurance suit from Christian student Campus Reform

Evangelicals and conservative Catholics, who have voted together for decades, are splitting apart Washington Post

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Embracing the life that's been forced upon you Becoming (my blog)

When You Change the World and No One Notices Collaborative Fund

***JOURNALISM

Why Journalists Can No Longer Ignore Snapchat PBS’s MediaShift

Overlooked outlets where freelancers can pitch their work International Center for Journalists

***TEACHING JOURNALISM

Remix: How to Teach Story-Finding Skills PBS’s MediaShift

***STUDENT LIFE

Student Newspaper Dealing with Backlash from Editorial York Daily Record

What ‘Safe Spaces’ Really Look Like on College Campuses Chronicle of Higher Ed

***SEXUAL ASSAULT

Student goes public about the way the university handled her sexual assault and many join her Inside Higher Ed

Students at UPenn Protest Email as Evidence of Rape Culture Chronicle of Higher Ed

UCLA settles lawsuit with graduate students alleging Title IX violations Daily Bruin

Maryland’s Frostburg State University Found in Violation of Title IX Baltimore Sun

***HIGHER ED

The coming era of consolidation among colleges and universities Washington Post

Group Unveils a 'Model Policy' for Handling Student Chronicle of Higher Ed

Campuses Cautiously Train Freshman Against Insults New York Times

Colleges Are Defining ‘Microaggressions’ Really Broadly New York Magazine

Big data's deluge in higher Ed: We're standing under a waterfall feasting on information that's never existed before PhysOrg

***TEACHING

What Clicks From 70,000 Courses Reveal About Student Learning (sub. requ'd) Chronicle of Higher Ed

Why We should stop Grading students on a Curve (opinion) New York Times

Tips for Inclusive Teaching Chronicle of Higher Ed

A new book by undergraduates offers teaching advice based on thousands of comments from students Inside Higher Ed

No, Banning Laptops Is Not the Answer Chronicle of Higher Ed

Welcome, Freshmen. Look at Me When I Talk to You Chronicle of Higher Ed

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Northwestern orders professor to stay away. She says she is being punished for her activism Inside Higher Ed

Sociologists talk standards by which departments may consider social media activity and other public communications in tenure and promotion decisions Inside Higher Ed

Theater Director at Cal State-Long Beach Quits After Racially Charged Play Is Canceled Chronicle of Higher Ed

Your University can read your .edu email because it wants to target you or just for kicks Chronicle of Higher Ed

September 11, 2016

The Glory

September 11, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

The Glory of God is a human being who is fully alive! - Saint Irenaeus. 2nd century

September 08, 2016

the educated man

September 08, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

The future will belong not only to the educated man, but to the man who is educated to use his leisure wisely. C.K. Brightbill

September 08, 2016

Brain scans show Ugly

September 08, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

About one or two out of a hundred people has a psychological problem called body dysmorphic disorder. They become preoccupied with what they perceive as physical defects in their face. This can lead to numerous plastic surgeries or even suicide. Most people never get diagnosed. They just think they are ugly.

Scientists at UCLA used brain scans to get a better understanding of how the minds of people with this disorder work. Details of their finding are in the Achives of General Psychiatry.

Researchers scanned the brains of people with body dysmorphic disorder as they looked at photos of their own face and then that of a familiar celebrity – along with altered versions of each. One version obscured the details and another version showed only the details.

It turns out the brain of someone with this disorder doesn’t some parts of their brains that the rest of us use whenever we are looking at the shape and size of faces. They see a distorted, twisted version and fail to grasp how the parts fit into the whole. They're not able to contextualize the information.

The problem for them is really not on the outside at all.

In the same way, people with twisted, distorted views of the world have an inside problem. They’ll never bring the world in focus by making outside changes. The change has to happen on the inside.

Step back and get the big picture. See the painting created by the tapestry of life’s details. By themselves, those details can appear quite ugly. But that’s not the whole picture.

Stephen Goforth

September 07, 2016

4 Steps When Addressing Inappropriate Behavior

September 07, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

When someone keeps repeating inappropriate behavior, try the DESC approach. The four steps are describe, express, specify, and consequences.

1. Describe the objectionable behavior.

Poor: You’re ignoring me! You insensitive, spiteful, stubborn bore.

Better: You are not looking at me when I ask a question and you are not answering me.

2. Express your feelings.

Poor: You make me so angry I could wring your neck. I really hate you! Better: When you do this, I feel hurt. I feel insignificant and unimportant here.

3. Specify what action you want to see.

Poor: Notice I’m alive!

Better: Would you please look at me and give me a quick answer?

4. Tell the person the consequences if there is no change in behavior.

Poor: I’ll give the children up to the orphanage and leave!

Better: I’ll let you know I appreciate you looking and answering with a hug and a kiss!!

September 05, 2016

Articles of Interest - Sept 5

September 05, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Almost no one really knows how Facebook’s Trending algorithm works, but here’s an idea Harvard’s Nieman Lab

12 Rules for Winning at Snapchat Like a Boss—a Teen Boss Wired

Groups Worry About Impact Of Police Moves To Block Social Media NPR

How an online forum catches censors unawares Economist

The Teenager’s Definitive Guide to Social Media Don’ts Wired

Study: Social Media Overtakes TV as Main Source of News for 18-24 AdWeek

***ART AND DESIGN

Why Facebook Is Blue: The Science of Colors in Marketing Medium

***IMAGES

Stanford Professor puts his entire digital photography course online for free DIY Photography

***PRODUCING MEDIA

The Curse of a Phoenix Weatherman: Finding New Ways to Say ‘It’s Hot’ New York Times

Why Recent Grads Are Breaking Up With Blogs in Favor of Podcasts: Millennials shift to audio to build their personal brand Adweek

In the Digital Age Billboards are far from Dead New York Times

***FREE SPEECH

Free Speech, Political Correctness And Higher Education Huffington Post

Welcome to Campus! And Freedom of Speech! The FIRE

***LEGAL ISSUES

ADA Taken to Task by Feds and Critics on Law School Student Outcomes Inside Higher Ed

Judge: Glenn Beck must disclose his marathon bombing sources Associated Press

Warner Bros. issues so many DMCAs that some of its own websites are included Daily Dot

***TECHNOLOGY

This program can mimic your handwriting with shocking accuracy—what could go wrong? Daily Dot

***FILM

The first AI-made film trailer Wired

5 Hours of Free Alfred Hitchcock Interviews: Discover His Theories of Film Editing, Creating Suspense & More Open Culture

***BIG DATA / STATS

I’ve lost track of the number of meetings where government contractors and Data Scientists have left me gasping at the lack of experience Forbes

What is the right mix of competences for Data Scientists? First partial survey findings Alessandro Piva

Free A/B Split Test Calculator Online Answer Miner

The 10 algorithms machine-learning engineers need to know Lab41

***MUSIC AND ART

Malcolm Gladwell on Why Genius Takes Time: A Look at the Making of Elvis Costello’s “Deportee” & Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” Open Culture

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

Making The eSport Leap NPR

***JOURNALISM

Shield laws and journalist’s privilege: The basics every reporter should know Columbia Journalism Review

The Newspaper Association of America is dropping ‘paper’ from its name Poynter

***TEACHING JOURNALISM

Remix: 5 Tips for Managing a Year-Long Student Journalism Project Media Shift

What Can Journalism Educators Do to Help End Sexist Language in Sports Coverage? Media Shift

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Vice shows how not to treat freelancers Columbia Journalism Review

Why Radio Stations keep playing the same songs over and over again Life Hacker

***STUDENT MEDIA

What happened after 6 college newspapers cut their print schedules Poynter

Student paper’s traffic spikes with coverage of dean’s controversial note Columbia Journalism Review

***HEALTH

Machine predicts heart attacks 4 hours before doctors New Scientist

Test Of Experimental Alzheimer's Drug Finds Progress Against Brain Plaques NPR

A row over Mylan’s EpiPen allergy medicine raises fresh questions about how drugs are priced Economist

How to anticipate epidemics Economist

5 ways hospitals are improving the workplace on Labor Day and beyond Stat News

Calcium Supplements Linked to Higher Risk of Dementia in Some Women Live Science

***HEALTH/ ZEKA

Mosquitoes carrying Zika can hand down virus to offspring, study shows Stat News

POLL: Most Americans Want Congress To Make Zika Funding A High Priority NPR

Quicktake: Zika Virus basics Bloomberg

***PSYCHOLOGY

People can get addicted to almost any product. Do manufacturers have a responsibility to stop them? The Atlantic

Another classic finding in psychology—that you can smile your way to happiness—just blew up Slate

The delicate balance of disclosing mental illness on social media Daily Dot

***NEUROSCIENCE

How A Baseball Batter's Brain Reacts To A Fast Pitch NPR

You’re not a jerk if you can’t remember faces: Facial blindness is a spectrum, neuroscientists say Quartz

Cognitive scientist puts profanity in its place Science News

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Letting go of The Inner Rhythm Becoming (my blog)

***WRITING& READING

Map: Which US states are the most well read? Quartz

Book Reading 2016: A growing share of Americans are reading e-books on tablets and smartphones rather than dedicated e-readers, but print books remain much more popular than books in digital formats Pew Research Center

***LANGUAGE

The class with 20/20 vision! Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LITERATURE

Meet the parents who won’t let their children study literature Washington Post

3,000 Illustrations of Shakespeare’s Complete Works from Victorian England, Neatly Presented in a New Digital Archive Open Culture

How Hip-Hop Can Bring Shakespeare to Life KQED

The History of Literature Podcast Takes You on a Literary Journey: From Ancient Epics to Contemporary Classics Open Culture

***PHILOSOPHY

Philosopher of the month: Aristotle Oxford University Press

A well-documented account of the second golden age of Western philosophy Economist

An Animated Introduction to French Philosopher Jacques Derrida Open Culture

***ETHICS

A two-year-old's solution to the trolley problem (video) YouTube

***RESEARCH

Stupid Patent of the Month: Elsevier Patents Online Peer Review Electronic Fronteir Foundation

We’ve seen computer-generated fake papers get published. Now we have computer-generated fake peer reviews Retraction Watch

***HIGHER ED

Colleges Brace for Impact of Overtime Rule Chronicle of Higher Ed

The debate over trigger warnings and safe spaces on college campuses. (podcast) WNYC

What the Savviest School Administrators Know About Education Technology EdSurge

***TEACHING

The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2020 Beloit

How to Think Like Shakespeare Chronicle of Higher Ed

MIT experiments with instructor grading in massive open online courses Inside Higher Ed

***STUDENT LIFE

One of the biggest ways college students are ripped off is getting out of control Business Insider

Millennials respond excellently to #HowToConfuseAMillennial hashtag Mashable

Surprised? College students are drinking more, smoking less USA Today

***GENDER ISSUES

Colleges work on gender inclusivity with pins, pronouns USA Today

Researchers Find That Female CEOs and Senators Are Disproportionately Blond Slate

***SEXUAL ASSAULT

She Was Raped During Study Abroad. Then Her School Said She Couldn’t Talk About It Huffington Post

August 29, 2016

Articles of Interest - August 29

August 29, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Inside Facebook’s Totally Insane Unintentionally Gigantic Hyperpartisan Political Media Machine New York Times Magazine

FB predicts your political pref The Wrap

Social Network Nextdoor Moves To Block Racial Profiling Online NPR

Pinterest Buys Instapaper, the Popular ‘Read Later’ App Wired

Facebook is trying to get rid of bias in Trending news by getting rid of humans Quartz

Sent From My iPhone: how a humblebrag became a key piece of net etiquette The Guardian

Facebook suspends Domain Insights, changing rules of the road for new publishers Digiday

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Emotional Blackmail Becoming (my blog)

5 Ways to Steal Like An Artist Medium

***RACE

Big data and hidden cameras are emerging as dangerous weapons in the gentrification wars Quartz

***LEGAL ISSUES

The Difference between Copyright Infringement and Plagiarism—and Why It Matters Library Journal

Quackwatch.org Survives Defamation Case As Judge Rejects Claims of Two Anti-Aging Doctors Pathos

Chipotle's social media policy violated federal labor Law360

***TECHNOLOGY

What it feels like to be the last generation to remember life before the internet Quartz

Voice Recognition Software Finally Beats Humans At Typing, Study Finds NPR

***BIG DATA

The CIA working to monitor you from Space Vocativ

How Big Data has Changed Decision Making Harvard Business Review

50 Useful Machine Learning and Prediction APIs

Data Scientists face an Existential Crisis every day: How do you Distinguish Signal from noisy illusion Info World

A look at Three Big Data Trends This year Fine Extra

***FILM

The best 100 films of the 21st century, according to 177 film critics around the world Quartz

***GRAMMAR

The argument for writing "a historian” Chronicle of Higher Ed

***WRITING& READING

Copy Edit This! New York Times

***LITERATURE

12 Sexting Ideas From Classic Literature That Book Nerds Will Blush Over Bustle

Why ‘medalling’ and ‘summering’ are so annoyingPeople have been turning nouns into verbs for centuries – so why does it grate so much? BBC

***RESEARCH

An alarming number of scientific papers contain Excel errors Washington Post

Excel Created Major Typos in 20 Percent of Scientific Papers on Genes Slate

New leader of NIH’s research watchdog faces staff revolt Science Mag

How to Review a Paper The Genome’s Take

NASA's new online archive is a treasure trove of free research articles The Verge

***RELIGION

What do Americans look for in a church, and how do they find one? It depends in part on their age Pew Research

Why Church Hymns Are Best Sung in Bars The Atlantic

Why America’s ‘nones’ left religion behind Pew Research

A Preacher's Kid Finds His Own Sanctuary In Music NPR

The feel-good gospel of the pastor made famous by Kimye and Bieber Esquire

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

How Netflix does A/B testing Medium

Five Reasons Not to Trust Your Analytics Data Mind the Product

***JOURNALISM

FBI investigating Russian hack of New York Times reporters, others CNN

Why I Force My Students to Learn AP Style Prof KRG

How Does the Language of Headlines Work? Jstor

How Journalists Can Protect Themselves (And Keep Their Apple Devices) In Wake of iOS Vulnerability Media Shift

How to use open source information to investigate stories online International Journalists’ Network

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

It’s hard to giveaway small newspapers New York Times

Survey Finds Newsrooms Are Monitoring Metrics, Not Acting on Them Media Shift

***STUDENT MEDIA

University Will Sue Its Own Student Newspaper For Reporting On Sexual Assault Case BuzzFeed News

The University of Kentucky prof facing sexual harassment allegations also faced accusations of research misconduct Kentucky Kernel

***STUDENT LIFE

Graduate Students Can Unionize at Private Colleges, U.S. Labor Panel Rules Wall Street Journal

‘Stacking the Deck’ Against Due Process at UCSD The FIRE

Blame millennials for the vanishing bar of soap CBS News

This may be the last presidential election dominated by Boomers and prior generations Pew Research

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Judge: Academic Freedom Doesn't Bar Campus Carry Inside Higher Ed

***SCIENCE

Must Science be Testable: Why Science needs philosophy Aeon

***HEALTH

The right to die: What is unbearable? Economist

Doctors Who Sexually Abuse Patients NPR

Zika: The Millennials’ S.T.D.? New York Times

Friendships Might Not Help You Live Longer, But Family Does New York Mag

Who Let The Dogs In? More Companies Welcome Pets At Work NPR

Superbug resistant to two last-resort antibiotics found in US for first time Stat News

The Life-Changing Magic of Choosing the Right Hospital New York Times

***PSYCHOLOGY

Instagram Probably Can’t Predict Depression. GPS, Though… Wired

***NEUROSCIENCE

The low replication success in psychology is realistic and worse performance may be expected for cognitive neuroscience bioRxiv

Narrowing the gap between biological brains and electronic ones The Economist

***ETHICS

Self-driving cars don't care about your moral dilemmas The Guardian

Many Americans are wary of using gene editing for human enhancement Pew Research

***HIGHER ED

The New Cheating Economy Chronicle of Higher Ed

The university's note to new students sets off national debate on safe spaces, trigger warnings and more Inside Higher Ed

A Brief Guide to the Battle Over Trigger Warnings Chronicle of Higher Ed

Does Religious Liberty Include the Right to Harass and Harm Newsweek

The California Christian Colleges/LGBT Bill NPR

Oklahoma Wesleyan Joins Lawsuit Challenging 2011 ‘Dear Colleague’ Letter The FIRE

***HUMANITIES /STEM

Study finds Students Benefit from Waiting to Declare a Major Inside Higher Ed

What Doctors Can Learn from the Arts Jstor

How Performing in Theater Can Help Build Empathy in Students KQED

***TEACHING

It’s Time to Ditch Our Deadlines: Why you should stop penalizing your students for submitting work late Chronicle of Higher Ed

Why Cold-Calling on Students Works Chronicle of Higher Ed

August 23, 2016

10 Things to do when people bring you their problems

August 23, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

1. Empathize with hurt feelings.

2. Reflect a genuine concern.

3. Offer a summary of the problem as you see it.

4. Be slow to give advice. Let the other person come to the best decisions themselves whenever possible.

5. Distinguish between causes and symptoms.

6. Keep confidences.

7. Wisely use questions. Especially open-ended and indirect questions. Use “why” sparingly.

8. Watch your body language.

9. Be willing to refer the person to someone else more qualified when the problem is beyond your abilities or knowledge.

10. Ask the person how he or she is doing a few days later. Let the person know you haven’t forgotten about them and you care. Their situation is important to you.

Stephen Goforth

August 22, 2016

Articles of Interest - August 22

August 22, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Live-streaming Economist

What you need to know to get started with Facebook Live International Journalists' Network

98 personal data points that Facebook uses to target ads to you Washington Post

Is 'FaceBragging' the quickest route to divorce? Stuff

Twitter ‘quality filter’ works because it’s about news, not social The Next Web

***PRODUCING MEDIA

A GIF-by-GIF guide to GIFing everything you see Daily Dot

Everything you ever wanted to know about WeChat Medium

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Chronic procrastination? Rather than lamenting your lack of will power, you can just blame your parents Becoming (my blog)

Patience Is the Secret to Wealth and Health, Economists Suggest in a New Study Wall Street Journal

***GRAMMAR

What’s the Matter With ‘Me’? Resistance to the personal object pronoun continues to rise Chronicle of Higher Ed

The Linguistics of Assassination Threats: What exactly did Donald Trump mean about 'the Second Amendment people"? Chronicle of Higher Ed

Reflections on the origin of the phrase "drink the Kool-Aid" Chronicle of Higher Ed

***WRITING& READING

8 Writers on How to Face Writer’s Block and the Blank Page: Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Franzen, Joyce Carol Oates & More Open Culture

Learning to Write All Over Again Chronicle of Higher Ed

Thank Heavens for Email Clichés The Atlantic

***LANGUAGE

Is repeating your toddler’s cute speech mistakes bad for her development? Slate

Machine-to-Human Communication: Nobody Cares Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LITERATURE

Will Reading Romance Novels Make Artificial Intelligence More Human? Jstor

Literature of the Forever War New York Times

Happy Birthday, Dorothy Parker Jstor

Better To Reign In Hell: Literature's Unpunished Villains NPR

***GENDER ISSUES

Women are judged by the way they speak Economist

***RACE

Study Finds More Faculty Diversity at Public Institutions Than at Private Ones Chronicle of Higher Ed

Are black Americans more likely to be shot or roughed up by police? Economist

***LEGAL ISSUES

If computers wrote laws: Decisions handed down by data Economist

Confusion over legality of republishing Data Sets Nature

***BIG DATA / STATS

The 7 Steps of a Data Project Data Science

DARPA wants AI with the capacity to help humans trace the conclusions, decisions and reasoning Next Big Future

Will reading romance novels make artificial intelligence more human? Jstor

The hardest work in data analysis lies in the data munging-an unglamorous yet critical part of data science Analytic Bridge

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

P&G to Scale Back Targeted Facebook Ads citing limited effectiveness Wall Street Journal

Facebook Profit Nearly Triples on Mobile Ad Sales and New Users New York Times

Television is at last having its digital-revolution moment Economist

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Buyouts hit GateHouse newspapers across the United States Poynter

Facebook Traffic to U.S. News Sites Has Fallen by Double Digits, Report Says Fortune

NYT decides to shutter its mobile app NYT Now, will rely on Facebook to drive new traffic Talking New Media

News Apps Are Dying Off. But in a Way, They’ll Live On Wired

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Law Professor to Students: Stop Calling Me by My First Name Wall Street Journal

***SCIENCE

The Changing Face of Scientific Collaboration: A spirit of collective enterprise in research is being replaced by a rush to assign precise credit for who did what Chronicle of Higher Ed

***HEALTH

Menopause Makes Your Body Age Faster TIME

***PSYCHOLOGY

Bayesian reasoning may help to explain some mental disorders where processing flaws confuse prior expectations Science News

***NEUROSCIENCE

Researchers just doubled what we know about the map of the human brain Washington Post

Sting's Brain Scan Reveals Clues About How The Musical Mind Works NPR

***HIGHER ED

UC Berkeley chancellor to resign following widespread criticism by faculty LA Times

As College Costs Soar, Critics Question Open Curriculum Courses NPR

California bill to ban grant students from religious colleges stymied Washington Times

Oklahoma Wesleyan University Joins Lawsuit Over 'Dear Colleague' Letter KOTV

***TEACHING

Do perceptions of the utility of ethics affect academic cheating? Science Direct

***RESEARCH

Two Cheers for the Retraction Boom The New Atlantis

‘Does This Have to Go through the IRB?’ Chronicle of Higher Ed

Two studies, one on neuroscience and one on palaeoclimatology, cast doubt on established results Economist

Science editor-in-chief sounds alarm over falling public trust Times Higher Ed

***RELIGION

Bible commentaries pulped after New Testament scholar admits plagiarism Christian Today

Evangelical Lutherans Overwhelmingly Vote to Approve Declaration of Unity With Roman Catholics Christian News

The Obsession With Biblical Literalism: A Christian theme park in Kentucky brings the ancient to life through a life-sized reconstruction of Noah’s Ark—but not without dipping into fiction (opinion) The Atlantic

August 21, 2016

the cost

August 21, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

The cost of a thing is the amount of life that must be exchanged for it. -Henry David Thoreau

August 20, 2016

Make Things = Know Thyself

August 20, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

If I waited to know “who I was” or “what I was about” before I started “being creative”, well, I’d still be sitting around trying to figure myself out instead of making things. In my experience, it’s in the act of making things that we figure out who we are.

Austin Kleon, How to Steal Like an Artist

August 16, 2016

arguments worth having

August 16, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

Parents who browbeat their kids into being obedient and agreeable may not be giving them the best preparation for the real world. A new study shows that encouraging teens to argue calmly and effectively against parental orders makes them much more likely to resist peer pressure.

University of Virginia researchers observed more than 150 13-year-olds as they disputed issues like grades, chores, and friends with their mothers. When researchers checked back in with the teens two and three years later, they found that those who had argued the longest and most convincingly—without yelling, whining, or throwing insults—were also 40 percent less likely to have accepted offers of drugs and alcohol than the teens who had caved quickly.

“We found that what a teen learned in handling these kinds of disagreements with their parents was exactly what they took into their peer world,” study author Joseph P. Allen tells NPR.org. The key to having a constructive debate with your kids, experts say, is listening to them attentively and rewarding them when they make a good point—even if you don’t end up reaching a mutual agreement. “Think of those arguments not as a nuisance,” Allen says, “but as a critical training ground” for wise, independent decision-making.

The Week Magazine

August 15, 2016

Articles of Interest - August 15

August 15, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

***TECHNOLOGY

MIT and Microsoft Research made a 'smart' tattoo that remotely controls your phone The Verge

***ART AND DESIGN

Google Chrome is officially killing Flash starting next month The Next Web

Optical Adjustment – Logic vs. Designers (opinion) Marvel

Zara Comes Under Fire for Copying Indie Artists Designs The Fashion Law Blog

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Researchers Study Effects Of Social Media On Young Minds NPR

Stop Chasing Clicks … It’s About Community AdWeek

Facebook to give 'informative' posts more weight USA Today

***PRODUCING MEDIA

A blueprint for planning audio projects NPR

***BIG DATA / STATS

Big data: digging a little deeper into millennials on social media.. they aren’t all cut from the same cloth Data Science Central

Just bec algorithms inspired by Bayes’ theorem can mimic cognition doesn’t mean our brains employ similar algorithms Scientific American

Meaningful relationships (in data)... "predictions may be more prone to failure in the era of Big Data" Becoming

An attempt to explain Gaussian processes (an alternative approach to regression problems) in Machine Learning GitHub

What the lack of transparency means for black-box difficult-to-interpret statistical models CIO Review

Data integration changes enormously with IoT. How the internet of things changes Big Data Data-Informed

A Big Data and Data Science newsletter list of good resources for all things data Data Science Central

***GENDER ISSUES

He's Brilliant, She's Lovely: Teaching Computers To Be Less Sexist NPR

***RACE

IS Pokemon Go a Racist App? USA Today

Newspaper Covers Simone Manuel's Historic Gold in Olympically Offensive Way Huffington Post

The 4.3 million Americans whose race could change when they die Quartz

Want To Address Teachers' Biases? First, Talk About Race NPR

The Racist Chinese Washing Powder ad and the Truth about Afrophobia in China Quartz

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

Dear old media: Get over yourselves Columbia Journalism Review

***JOURNALISM

TV Anchor Has Had It Up To *Here* With NBC's Ridiculous Restrictions On Olympics Coverage Digg

How to avoid 10 common mistakes in data reporting American Press Institute

A Front-Row Look at State-Sanctioned Terrorism: Journalism students studying abroad in Uruguay and Argentina witness the aftermath of an attack on freedom of the press (opinion) Chronicle of Higher Ed

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Warren Buffett changes his mind about newspapers: ‘Newspapers are going to go downhill’ Talking New Media

Study looks at the performance of three media spin-offs and sees the newspaper side lagging Talking New Media

***JOBS

Five Signs Your Interview Is Fake Because They've Already Hired Someone Forbes

***HEALTH

Which Percentage of People Is Older and Younger Than You Public Health Intelligence

The Sad State of Product Design and Innovation in Healthcare Medium

Muslim doctor: My patient refused to let me treat her because of my Religion Washington Post

Cocaine Vaccine Approved For Testing In Humans CBS NY

Zika Moves Quickly, and Scientists Fear That Journals Aren't Keeping Pace The Chronicle of Higher Education

***WRITING & READING

In the Only Surviving Recording of Her Voice, Virginia Woolf Explains Why Writing Isn’t a “Craft” (1937) Open Culture

***LANGUAGE

Partisan Political Speech Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LITERATURE

What’s Old Is New Again.. Lewis Carroll Chronicle of Higher Ed

How Did Children’s Literature Evolve From Prim Morality Tales to the Likes of Captain Underpants? Slate

James Joyce: An Animated Introduction to His Life and Literary Works Open Culture

The 10 worst endings in all of literature Business Insider

***PSYCHOLOGY

Most Common Family Types in America Flowing Data

The Replication Game: How Well Do Psychology Studies Hold Up? Science Friday

Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why (education policy in rich countries has emphasised academic skills while neglecting emotional and psychological development) Economist

5 science-backed tips for getting rid of guilt The Week

***NEUROSCIENCE

Can This Brain Exercise Put Off Dementia? A new study is believed to be the first to show that speed training can reduce the risk for the condition Wall Street Journal

***ETHICS

Augmented Reality Games Like Pokémon Go Need a Code of Ethics—Now Wired

***FREE SPEECH

The Story Behind The New Documentary ‘Can We Take a Joke?’ (It started with a comment from a comedian about playing on college campuses) Huffington Post

***LEGAL ISSUES

Judge: Ohio State didn't defame fired marching band director Associated Press

***RELIGION

A Hillary Clinton speech on improving the plight of women and girls worldwide has been cited as a demand that American Christians deny their faith Snopes

Thirty years ago, progressives embraced religious exemptions. No longer Economist

As U.S. Politicians Shun Syrian Refugees, Religious Groups Embrace Them NPR

Is God Transgendered? (opinion) New York Times

Why a stout theological creed is not saving evangelical churches Religious News Service

Most states allow religious exemptions from child abuse and neglect laws Pew Research

White Christian America is dying Washington Post

***HIGHER ED

Head of University of California campus resigns after probe Associated Press

Data From the 2016 Higher Ed Almanac Chronicle of Higher Ed

Keeping Faith without Hurting LGBT Students at Christian Colleges The Atlantic

State senator drops proposal that angered religious universities in California LA Times

A coalition of 25 LGBT rights groups are urging the Big 12 not to admit Brigham Young University as a new member, citing the school's policies against homosexual behavior Christian Science Monitor

***TEACHING

Does Your Teaching Encourage Epistemological Pluralism? Chronicle of Higher Ed

Why Today's MOOCs Are Not Innovative Campus Technology

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Institutes, Grading, and the Nine Circles of Adjunct Hell: ‘McSweeney’s’ Regards Academe Chronicle of Higher Ed

***STUDENT LIFE

19 signs you're a functioning adult — even if it doesn't feel like it Business Insider

***RESEARCH

8 Rejected Papers That Won the Nobel Prize Authorea

Do declarative titles affect readers’ perceptions of research findings? A randomized trial Research Integrity & Peer Review

***SEXUAL ASSAULT

Federal investigation launched into BYU’s handling of sex-assault reports Salt Lake Tribune

How Technology Could Change Reporting of Campus Sexual Assault (sub. req.’ed) Chronicle of Higher Ed

August 15, 2016

stomping of the foot (before storming out of class)

August 15, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

I'll never forget the student who charged out of one of my first philosophy classes. The professor had challenged the student's view of religion and the young man stomped his foot, turned red, yelled, and left the room.

Why such an emotional outburst? Perhaps his beliefs were built on a weak foundation. A little rhetoric from an authority figure threatened to topple the structure. When we accept the conclusions of other people, never figuring out the "why" for ourselves, weak lay a weak foundation. Should we intentionally avoid opposing view points? It turns out we naturally steer clear of conflict.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found the less certain you are about what you believe, the more likely you’ll stay away from opposing viewpoints (and freak out when you run across opposing opinion). After reviewing nearly 100 studies, they came to the conclusion that people tend minimize their exposure when they are less certain and less confident in their own position. In fact, we're nearly twice as likely to completely avoid differing opinions than we are to give consideration to different ideas. For those who are close-minded the percentage jumps even higher. Three-out-of-four times the close-minded person will stick to what supports their own conclusions. Details of the study are in the Psychological Bulletin by Researchers.

Stephen Goforth

Becoming

ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire

Articles of interest - Sept 26

The Prediction Learning Curve

Finding my Keys

The Passion for Control

articles of interest - Sept 19

grace and mercy

articles of interest - Sept 12

The Glory

the educated man

Brain scans show Ugly

4 Steps When Addressing Inappropriate Behavior

Articles of Interest - Sept 5

Articles of Interest - August 29

10 Things to do when people bring you their problems

Articles of Interest - August 22

the cost

Make Things = Know Thyself

arguments worth having

Articles of Interest - August 15

stomping of the foot (before storming out of class)

Goforth Solutions, LLC