October 18, 2016

nothing

October 18, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

Nothing to prove. Nothing to lose.

October 18, 2016

Slot machines in our pockets

October 18, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

The capacity of slot machines to keep people transfixed is now the engine of Las Vegas’s economy. Over the last 20 years, roulette wheels and craps tables have been swept away to make space for a new generation of machines: no longer mechanical contraptions (they have no lever), they contain complex computers produced in collaborations between software engineers, mathematicians, script writers and graphic artists.

But it is the variation in rewards that is the key to time-on-device. The machines are programmed to create near misses: winning symbols appear just above or below the “payline” far more often than chance alone would dictate. The player’s losses are thus reframed as potential wins, motivating her to try again. Mathematicians design payout schedules to ensure that people keep playing while they steadily lose money.

Alternative schedules are matched to different types of players, with differing appetites for risk: some gamblers are drawn towards the possibility of big wins and big losses, others prefer a drip-feed of little payouts (as a game designer told Schüll, “Some people want to be bled slowly”). The mathematicians are constantly refining their models and experimenting with new ones, wrapping their formulae around the contours of the cerebral cortex.

Gamblers themselves talk about “the machine zone”: a mental state in which their attention is locked into the screen in front of them, and the rest of the world fades away. A player who is feeling frustrated and considering quitting for the day might receive a tap on the shoulder from a “luck ambassador”, dispensing tickets to shows or gambling coupons. What the player doesn’t know is that data from his game-playing has been fed into an algorithm that calculates how much that player can lose and still feel satisfied, and how close he is to the “pain point”. The offer of a free meal at the steakhouse converts his pain into pleasure, refreshing his motivation to carry on.

These days, of course, we all carry slot machines in our pockets.

Ian Leslie writing in 1843 magazine

October 17, 2016

articles of interest - Oct 17

October 17, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

***SOCIAL MEDIA

The Man Who Stood Up To Facebook NRP

Facebook Had an Insane Effect on Voter Registration Gizmodo

How Snapchat is Changing the Way We Communicate PBS Media Shift

***BIG DATA / STATS

Big data on campus CIO

How using big data in employment may run afoul of EEOC workplace regs SHRM

A list of contemporary machine learning algorithms of importance that every engineer should understand KD Nuggets

Building a framework for and computational AI law: when computer languages and real-world constructs meet Back Channel

The problem with cloud computing is bandwidth: Enter fog computing Forbes

Here’s how The White House wants the U.S. to approach AI R&D Tech Crunch

10 of the most helpful data blogs to discover new statistical tools and to keep you up-to-date with theory DataPlay

The cost of forsaking “C.” (get out the Bay Area web/mobile startup echo chamber) Medium

***TECHNOLOGY

'Unsubscribe' Outlines How to Change Your Email Habits NPR

***ART & DESIGN

The History and Usage of Common Symbols Medium

Street Artist Swoon Brings a Spiritual Installation to Detroit The Creators Project

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Don’t insist on knowing who you are before you begin the work Becoming (my blog)

***WRITING& READING

The Poetry of Digital Life: For a brief utopian moment, memes seemed a way to make poetry that was less elitist and more communal RealLife

***LANGUAGE

Banter, Locker Room and Otherwise Chronicle of Higher Ed

How Regional Dialects Are Fixing Standard English Atlas Obcura

The Internet Isn’t Changing English. Nor the Converse Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LITERATURE

USA! USA! US … Oh, Never Mind. It’s The Literature Nobel FiveThirtyEight

Why Bob Dylan’s Songs Are Literature New Republic

How does storytelling differ between video games and literature? Gameasutra

***RESEARCH

We got probability wrong and should abandon the well-worn term ‘statistically significant' Aeon

All the data, on all the trials: OpenTrials is a linked database for all the available information, on every trial ever conducted. It is built and updated with your help Open Trials

The false academy Springer

Undergraduate academic journals face continuing problems of relevance Columbia Spectator

Access to data: Troubling findings from studies of the past several years The Replication Network

Scientific publishing is self-regulating so poorly that we invite a “Clean Science Act” Scholarly Kitchen

Much academic research is never cited and may be rarely read indicating wasted effort Springer

***GENDER & RACE

Where girls spend the most time on household chores The Atlas

This Twenty-Something Forced Silicon Valley to ‘Show Her the Numbers: ’If you want to make tech less white and male, you need numbers. But data didn’t exist until one pissed-off engineer took action BackChannel

Divided Supreme Court Hears 'Screaming Racial Bias' Juror Case NPR

***SEXUAL ASSAULT & TITLE IX

What a Landmark Finding in a Title IX Case Means for Colleges Wrestling With Sex Assault (sub. req’d) Chronicle of Higher Ed

In rare decision, Education Department finds Wesley College violated law when it ignored its own policies and due process rights of students accused of sexual misconduct Inside Higher E

Title IX Officers Pay a Price for Navigating a Volatile Issue (sub. req’d) Chronicle of Higher Ed

***SEXUAL ASSAULT

A Student Fee to Respond to Sexual Assault: In what's believed to be a first, U of Maryland student government approves fee that would help fund university's overworked Title IX office Inside Higher Ed

Approaches to Sexual Assault would differ under Clinton, Trump Inside Higher Ed

Workplace Sexual Harassment: A Threat To Victims, A Quandary For Bystanders NPR

Can a syllabus be a form of sexual harassment? Inside Higher Ed

The politics of sexual assault: It’s not just the powerful.. Privilege lets predatory men get away with a lot, be they rich and famous or not Economist

Trump Allegations Of Sexual Misconduct Spur Calls To Assault Hotlines NPR

How To Deal With Sexual Harassment On The Job NPR

Baylor group makes waves with homecoming float targeting sexual assault scandal Houston Chronicle

***FREE SPEECH

Americans more tolerant of offensive speech than others in the world Pew Research

***LEGAL ISSUES

A former UVA dean's defamation lawsuit over the debunked Rolling Stone rape story is about to start Reuters

***RELIGION

Megachurch caught in "social media firestorm" disfellowshipping gay member KVUE

Christian group sues to exempt churches from Massachusetts transgender anti-discrimination law Mass Live

Churches Sue Over Attorney General Over Transgender Law NECNl

Okla. Guv Scrambles To Make Christian-Focused Proclamation More Inclusive Associated Press

Bob Dylan's Biblical imagination The Week

The spiritual abuse in InterVarsity’s treatment of LGBT people Religious News Service

Evangelical campus ministry group asks pro-gay staff to quit Associated Press

***RELIGION & POLITICS

A Christian conservative backlash against Trump seems to be building Boston Globe

Mike Pence Visits Liberty University And Tells Religious Voters To Stick With Trump NPR

Why Trump Tape Caused Only One Evangelical Leader to Abandon Him Christianity Today

Evangelical magazine publishes scathing anti-Trump editorial Yahoo News

***MUSIC

The Man Musicians Call When Two Tunes Sound Alike New York Times

'I Feel Pretty Good': A Moment With Brian Wilson NPR

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

YouTube Crushed TV in Total Debate Viewership Wired

***BUSINESS

More than half the world doesn’t understand this basic financial principle Quartz

***JOURNALISM

Just launched: A tool that will make life easier for FOIA reporters Columbia Journalism Review

At a Christian College, Student Journalism Gets Religious (opinion) New York Times

Why it’s important for news organizations to show their corrections Columbia Journalism Review

An economist makes the case for saving investigative journalism Poynter

A New Book Attempts to Define the Value of Investigative Journalism Nonprofit Quarterly

Publishing Hacked Private Emails Can Be a Slippery Slope Fortune

Google News now has a “Fact Check” tag Poynter

N. Dakota charges reporter with 'riot' for covering protest--but gets slapped down by judge LA Times

Criticism of the News Media Takes On a More Sinister Tone New York Times

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

BuzzFeed News, Twitter to partner on election night special Talking New Media

How CNN is ‘future-proofing’ itself Columbia Journalism Review

***STUDENT MEDIA

An unintended consequence of Title IX: Lack of clarity in the anti-sex discrimination statue is being used to censor student media Student Press Law Center

College newspaper defaced with racist message Union Tribune

***SCIENCE

Is our world a simulation? Why some scientists say it's more likely than not The Guardian

Bob Dylan, the songwriter scientists love to quote Science Mag

***HEALTH

Data Mining Is Revolutionizing Our Understanding of Human Weight Change MIT Technology Review

Reviews Of Medical Studies May Be Tainted By Funders' Influence NPR

Someone Called Her 'Just A Nurse,' So She Told Them What Being A Nurse Is All About

Welcome to On Call, a newsletter about hospitals and health care Stat News

Doctors’ political leanings Flowing Data

***PSYCHOLOGY

College students nationwide flood mental-health centers Fox News

John Borghi chronicles his experiences with psychology’s century-old problem with p-values Medium

How The Concept Of Implicit Bias Came Into Being NPR

***NEUROSCIENCE

Brain Implant Restores Sense Of Touch To Paralyzed Man NPR

***PHILOSOPHY

Why I Don't Have a Biblical Worldview and You Shouldn't Either, Says Christian Philosophy Professor Christian Post

***ETHICS

Computational Law, Symbolic Discourse, and the AI Constitution BackChannel

***HIGHER ED

Revolt at Liberty U: Students sharply criticize President for endorsement and continued support of Trump Inside Higher Ed

The Professor Wore a Hijab in Solidarity — Then Lost Her Job: Larycia Hawkins, the first black woman to receive tenure at Wheaton College New York Times

Religiously Serious, Thoughtfully Secular Chronicle of Higher Ed

***TEACHING

DIY Syllabus: What Goes Into a Syllabus Chronicle of Higher Ed

My Syllabus, My Self New York Times

20 Things Students Say Help Them Learn Chronicle of Higher Ed

***STUDENT LIFE

Generation Adderall ("Adderall has now become ubiquitous on college campuses, widely taken by students both with and without a prescription") New York Times

Here's What the Average American Owes After College Fox Business

Want college to pay off? These are the 50 majors with the highest earnings Washington Post

6 Tips For College Students Traveling Alone Huffington Post

October 13, 2016

capturing passion

October 13, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

Passion must be captured and directed in order to accomplish actual work.

–Rick Karlgaard

October 12, 2016

Participate

October 12, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

Participate in co-creative relationships.

October 11, 2016

parenthood

October 11, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

Parents are often so busy with the physical rearing of children that they miss the glory of parenthood, just as the grandeur of the trees is lost when raking leaves. -Marcelene Cox

October 10, 2016

Articles of Interest - Oct 10

October 10, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

***SOCIAL MEDIA

A short history of famous people talking about the memes they became Washington Post

You Can All Finally Encrypt Facebook Messenger, So Do It Wired

This bot expertly baits Internet imbeciles into losing arguments Washington Post

Facebook Workplace Tries to Muscle In on Your Job Wired

Why Bloomberg, ESPN and others aren't doing Facebook Instant Articles Digiday

5 Top Tips and Tools For the Social Media Reporter PBS’s Media Shift

***INTERNET

SEO Trek: The Search for Google RankBrain* Moz

***BIG DATA / STATS

How data analytics is helping to fight human trafficking Datanami

How Big Data is changing education Smart Data Collective

Predicting future human behavior with deep learning: A chat with MIT’s Carl Vondrick KD Nuggets

Big data analytics is the future of intelligence-driven security operations center Data Integration

6 major don'ts when leading big data projects Tech Republic

New report: NoSQL and Hadoop will see the biggest growth in the next five years Cloud Computing

The AI Revolution: why deep learning Is suddenly changing your Life Fortune

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Gratitude and Kindness Becoming (my blog)

***GRAMMAR

Pronoun Challenge in Ann Arbor Chronicle of Higher Ed

Do commas still matter? (opinion) Washington Post

***WRITING& READING

Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators The Atlantic

***LITERATURE

AMaster List of 800 Free Classic eBooks for iPad, Kindle & Other Devices Open Culture

***RESEARCH

One reason so many scientific studies may be wrong (opinion) The Conversation

The hard road to reproducibility (opinion) American Association for the Advancement of Science

Fake ethics journal aids cheating scientists Ottawa Sun

***GENDER ISSUES

Exploring the relationship between gender and author order and composition in NIH-funded (opinion) Michael Eisen

***DIVERSITY

UC Berkeley student with disabilities faces obstacles with campus program The Daily Californian

***RACE

A professor is under fire after saying Black Lives Matter is racist like the KKK Washington Post

AAJA demands an apology for racist and offensive Fox News segment on Chinese American voters in Chinatown AAJA

Comments about NFL player who started national anthem protest cost a Concordia (Mich.) instructor her job Matter Inside Higher Ed

***SEXUAL ASSAULT

Title IX Coordinator resigns: "Baylor Set me Up" (“senior administrators wanted to protect the college's brand and not students”) Baylor Lariat

Baylor U.’s Title IX Coordinator Resigns Chronicle of Higher Ed

***FREE SPEECH

American U student government launches campaign in support of mandatory trigger warnings -- despite a recently reaffirmed faculty stance against them Inside Higher Ed

Victory for Student Speech Rights: Appeals court revives suit over student complaints about being pressured to participate in medical procedure Inside Higher Ed

***LEGAL ISSUES

Antitrust lawsuits against NCAA Inside Higher Ed

New California IMDb Age Law Probably Unconstitutional, Experts Say Hollywood Reporter

***TECHNOLOGY

Google’s New Service Translates Languages Almost as Well as Humans Can MIT Technology Review

Meerkat built a new app in secret, and almost 1 million people are using it The Verge

If there's a tech skills shortage, why are so many computer graduates unemployed? Tech Republic

***ART & DESIGN

Google's New Fonts Chip Away at Written Language Barriers Tech News World

***RELIGION

EEOC's 'I Love You' Bias Suit Falls Short, Health Co. Says Law 360

InterVarsity to Fire Employees Who Support Gay Marriage TIME

Cal State Northridge settles with Christian lab manager who said he was fired for his creationist beliefs Inside Higher Ed

'No excessive weight' says Hillsboro church to worship team Oregon Live

Trump or Jesus? (a test)

American views on issues involving religious liberty, traditional values and civil rights for LGBT people Pew Research

***MUSIC

The music business: Once enemies of record labels, Spotify and Apple are now spinning profits for them Economist

Philosophy of Jazz Daily Nous

Intricate Map of Alt Music History Wired

***ART

The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art (book review) Economist

***JOURNALISM

Younger adults more likely than older to prefer reading news Pew Research Center

Note to journalists: If there’s no report you can read, there’s no study Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

How 2 journalists who’ve never met in real life became a kidney donor and recipient Poynter

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Thomson Reuters to add 400 jobs in Toronto focusing on cognitive computing CBC

***STUDENT LIFE

Don’t worry, millennial underachievers: It’s always been tough to figure out your life Washington Post

College Kids Ask: Is My Costume Racist? The Daily Beast

Who’s Defaulting On Their Student Loans? Vocativ

***HEALTH

Victory for Student Speech Rights: Appeals court revives suit over student complaints about being pressured to participate in medical procedure Inside Higher Ed

Making research reproducible IAP

U.S. government health plans spent over $1 billion on EpiPens over five years Reuters

Medical linguistics: How to spot children’s speaking and listening problems early Economist

***PSYCHOLOGY

4 things every college student must know about mental health on campus USA Today

How to Talk about Conflict of Interest Skeptical Inquiry

Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives Economist

What Type of Procrastinator are You? Daily Infographic

***PHILOSOPHY

Philosophy professor under fire for online post (Jason Stanley recently drew national attention for his strong response to a keynote address at the Society of Christian Philosophers’ regional conference about homosexual orientation is a disability) Yale Daily

Philosophy professor calls homosexuality a ‘disability,’ Christian conference condemns him The College Fix

***HIGHER ED

The Reason Behind Colleges' Ballooning Bureaucracies: Universities’ executive, administrative, and managerial offices grew 15 percent during the recession, even as budgets were cut and tuition was increased The Atlantic

***HUMANITIES /STEM

How Humanities Can Help Fix the World Chronicle of Higher Ed

***CHRISTIAN COLLEGES

One prof fired, Another Criticized over Race comments Inside Higher Ed

Christian colleges are debating whether to arm campus safety officers Washington Post

***TEACHING

Are We Teaching Composition All Wrong? Chronicle of Higher Ed

Open Doors: A New Take on Teaching Observations Chronicle of Higher Ed

Study suggests that whether students think their instructors have political bias is linked to attitudes about entitlement and grades, not what the professors are saying or doing Inside Higher Ed

October 09, 2016

being miserable

October 09, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

Pain and suffering is inevitable, being miserable is optional. - Art Clanin

October 08, 2016

Taking the Abuse

October 08, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

When someone stays in an abusive situation, there must be a measure comfort in that identity for the victim. The abused, in effect, says to themselves, "I know what to do when playing this role." To become someone different means acknowledging there is a choice--and with that realization comes the uncomfortable recognition of responsibility.

A victim may tell themselves, “At least in the abusive situation I know the old pain and its ways." Moving toward change means stepping into the unknown. Fear can freeze the victim into making no decision, defaulting to the status quo, keeping the situation the same as it has always been.

Perhaps the abuse fits some part of how they have chosen to define themselves. To choose not to be abused means redefining the identity. In the end, some people would prefer to keep the painful but familiar abuse rather than entering a new kind of pain--one that accompanies building a new identity.

Victims who choose to no longer be victims take an heroic step. It's an empowering choice--and only those who have made a similar decision can fully grasp its breath and courage.

Stephen Goforth

October 05, 2016

to rise

October 05, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: "To rise above little things." -John Burroughs

October 03, 2016

Articles of Interest - Oct 3

October 03, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

***TECHNOLOGY

IT is seeing a once-in-a-generation battle between open-source software and cloud computing Economist

The Internet of Things is yet to arrive at the starting blocks of innovation Gigaom

The Mathematical Genius of Auto-Tune Priceonomics

***PERSONAL GROWTH

King gives crown to friend Becoming

***GRAMMAR

Flaws and Strengths of the Oxford Comma Pepperdine student newspaper

As a freelance copy editor, how can I sell myself to potential employers? The Guardian

Early years of English teaching should focus on reading and writing, not abstract grammar Economist

Watch English change Baltimore Sun

***WRITING& READING

How one Amazon Kindle scam made millions of dollars ZDnet

Why I Like the New MLA Handbook Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LANGUAGE

To Seek Out New Vowels… Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LITERATURE

A Guide to the Real-Life Homes of the Heroes of Children's Literature Atlas Obscura

Truman Capote ashes sell for $45,000 at auction CNN

***RESEARCH

A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors. The results are concerning Vox

***GENDER ISSUES

Gender equality in 2016? It's complicated Associated Press

***DIVERSITY

Diverse Teams Feel Less Comfortable — and That’s Why They Perform Better Harvard Business Review

Teaching Diversity Online Is Possible. These Professors Tell You How Chronicle of Higher Ed

***RACE

What Should Colleges Do to Discipline Students Who Spew Hate? Chronicle of Higher Ed

Why so many college students are getting busted for racist Snapchat posts Fusion

The police surveillance technology intensifying racial discrimination Mashable

***FREE SPEECH

The University of Minnesota is standing by 'Build the Wall' messages as protected, free speech Inside Higher Ed

At DePaul, Free Speech Is Out; ‘Fee Speech’ Is In FIRE

***LEGAL ISSUES

Going to law school? Thinking about law school? What should you read? Leiter Reports

***ART & DESIGN

Your Body Text Is Too Small Medium

***BUSINESS

Yay, It's Time For My Performance Review! (Said No One Ever) NPR

***BIG DATA / STATS

The 4th revolution in satellite tech: the Earth becomes a gigantic data set that can be interrogated and extrapolated Economist

How data science and big data are alike.. and different: digging past the marketing KD Nuggets

***RELIGION

6 facts about U.S. Mormons Pew Research

Key findings about Americans’ views on religious liberty and nondiscrimination Pew Research

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

Signing off: CBS is getting out of the radio business — is this finally the end of the medium? Salon

the End of mental_floss (Magazine) Medium

***JOURNALISM

Survey: Americans rely on TV, websites for election news Talking New Media

How 'All the President's Men' Defined the Look of Journalism on Screen Atlas Obscura

Five things I learned at ONA GateHouse

The Science of Headline Writing: Does A/B Testing Headlines Work? Priceonomics

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

What Beacon’s Failure Means for Crowdfunded Journalism PBS Media Shift

Journalists as Strategists: How to Think About Business Now that the Wall Has Come Down PBS Media Shift

New York Times reporters won’t face jail for airing Trump’s taxes Poynter

10 First Amendment experts comment on legality of NYT release of Trump’s tax returns Concurring Opinions

***SCIENCE

Ben Goldacre: fighting bad science (video) ABC (Australia)

***HEALTH

Medical Record Mixups NPR

The Accuracy of Bibliographical References Generated for Medical Citation Styles Science Direct

To make big profits, drug companies turn to monopoly shenanigans Stat News

***PSYCHOLOGY

Why is the scientific replication crisis centered on psychology? Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

Amy Cuddy’s Response to Critiques of Her Power-Posing Research NY Mag

Psychologist Helps San Quentin Prisoners Find Freedom Through Self-Reflection NPR

The psychological origins of procrastination—and how we can stop putting things off Jstor

***NEUROSCIENCE

Our IQs have never been higher – but it hasn’t made us smart Our IQs have never been higher – but it hasn’t made us smart BBC

***PHILOSOPHY

Quiz From UCR Philosophy Professor Determines If You Are A Jerk CBS Los Angeles

Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Update Daily Nous

***CRITICAL THINKING

The Myth Of Coincidences And Why We Search For Their Meaning NPR

***TEACHING

Not Just Hillary: Young Women In Debate Face Sexism, Double Standards Huffington Post

The University of Texas system is teaming up with Salesforce to make college courses more like Netflix Business Insider

28 Extremely Disappointing Facts About The Class Of 2020 BuzzFeed

***STUDENT LIFE

Michigan students can now pick their preferred pronouns, but not everyone is happy USA Today

Student loan default rate dips, but ‘considerable work remains,’ education secretary says Washington Post

***SEXUAL ASSAULT

In aftermath of Brock Turner case, California’s governor signs sex crime bill Washington Post

Lawyer: Why the lower standard of evidence in college sexual-assault cases is dangerous (opinion) Washington Post

September 26, 2016

Articles of interest - Sept 26

September 26, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

***TECHNOLOGY

Half of U.S. smartphone users download zero apps per month: Thirteen percent of smartphone owners account for more than 50 percent of all app downloads Recode

Snapchat’s Wild New Specs Won’t Share Google Glass’s Fate Wired

How Colleges Should Adapt in a Networked Age Chronicle of Higher Ed

***SOCIAL MEDIA

An 18-year-old is suing her parents for posting embarrassing baby pictures on Facebook Fusion

***BIG DATA / STATS

The top 5 habits of a professional data scientist: 1. Be motivated by business problems rather than technology O’Reilly

Supervised learning is unacceptable, inadequate & yet the most powerful tool at our disposal. Some cautionary advice KD Nuggets

A White House data scientist on knowing when to go with the gut. Washington Post

Data science cheat sheets covering R, Python, Django, MySQL, SQL, Hadoop, Apache Spark and Machine learning algorithms KD Nuggets

The medical co.’s using Machine Learning to change healthcare Forbes

A list of top algorithms used by data scientists including the most academic and most industry-oriented algorithms KD Nuggets

***GENDER ISSUES

A designer altered this 'Girls' Life' cover to show what empowerment really looks like Mic

New Book: Gender Shrapnel Inside Higher Ed

***DIVERSITY

NCAA calls on college leaders to sign pledge promising to recruit and interview more women and ethnic minorities for top sports positions Inside Higher Ed

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Forgiveness is Becoming (my blog)

Against happiness: Companies that try to turn happiness into a management tool are overstepping the mark Economist

***GRAMMAR

Grammar Snobs Can Now Correct People’s iOS Text Messages Buzz Feed

***WRITING& READING

Don’t Try to Make a Living Writing Short Stories Wired

***LANGUAGE

Bringing up Babel: There are cognitive benefits to raising bilingual children 1843 Magazine

***LITERATURE

How Literature Can Improve Mental Health Open Culture

What Is Shakespeare’s Most Popular Play? Priceonomics

***RESEARCH

Meet the world’s top peer reviewer Stat News

21 Brutal, Honest And Relatable Things That Happened In Academic Publishing BuzzFeed

***SEXUAL ASSAULT

Academic Ethics: What Should We Do With Sexual Harassers in Academe? Chronicle of Higher Ed

New Bill Fights Sexual Harassment By Going After Professors’ Grant Money BuzzFeed

Campus sexual assault Re-education: Students starting college are trained in how to avoid committing rape Economist

U Kentucky is suing its Student Newspaper, trying to Block Sexual Assault Reporting Washington Post

***FREE SPEECH

College Threatens to Punish Students If They Share ‘Self-Destructive’ Thoughts With Friends The Fire

***LEGAL ISSUES

IMDB would be required to remove actors' ages when asked under new California law The Verge

‘So to Speak’ Podcast: ‘Twisting Title IX’ (opinion) The Fire

***RELIGION

Like Katy Perry, I broke up with the conservative evangelical project (opinion) Religious News Service

Many evangelicals favor Trump because he is not Clinton Pew Research

Phillip Yancey Is Downright Baffled By Evangelical Support For Trump Huffington Post

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

Number of U.S. low-power FM radio stations has nearly doubled since 2014 Pew Research

***JOURNALISM

The Big Problem Still Plaguing America’s News Media Fortune

When important investigative reporting must compete with Brangelina Columbia Journalism Review

Website ‘Rate My Media’ hopes to increase media accountability through crowd-sourced ratings Talking New Media

How the FDA Manipulates the Media Scientific American

Five takeaways from the ONA 2016 conference Columbia Journalism Review

***SCIENCE

Why bad science persists: Poor scientific methods may be hereditary Economist

***HEALTH

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan pledge $3 billion to cure all diseases Recode

The average person is better off without a fitness wearable, weight loss study finds PBS

Bad science misled millions with chronic fatigue syndrome Stat News

This Globe-Trotting Brain Surgeon Says Doctors Are Doing Medical Missions Wrong Vice

***PSYCHOLOGY

The scientists who make apps addictive and some of the psychologists who are worried about the way behavioral design is being used 1843 magazine

Watching sad films boosts endorphin levels in your brain, psychologists say The Guardian

***HIGHER ED

University May Remove Online Content to Avoid Disability Law Inside Higher Ed

Christian University kicks out freshman who used Racial slur in Social Media Inside Higher Ed

***HUMANITIES /STEM

The Importance of an Arts Education (and How It Strengthens Science & Civilization) Open Culture

Fear of a College-Educated BaristaIs there really a Millennial underemployment crisis? Yes, but only among liberal-arts majors The Atlantic

***TEACHING

Zero Correlation Between Evaluations and Learning: New study adds to evidence that student reviews of professors have limited validity Inside Higher Ed

LinkedIn unveils new online learning and messaging tools Mercury News

Do Your Students Take Good Notes? Chronicle of Higher Ed

***STUDENT LIFE

Why students who do well in high school bomb in college Washington Post

When a C Isn’t Good Enough: Some Students being made to Retake Classes if they earn a ‘C’ Inside Higher Ed

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Jury finds University denied tenure to a female professor based on her gender and in retaliation for a speaking out against the culture of her male-dominated department Inside Higher Ed

The Dangers of Faculty Book Club Chronicle of Higher Ed

September 24, 2016

The Prediction Learning Curve

September 24, 2016/ Stephen Goforth

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