those who turn back
/Those who turn back know only the ordeal, but they who persevere remember the adventure.
- Milo L. Arnold
ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire
the world is a comedy
/This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.
-Horace Walpole
think about
/Think about what it will be like when you are old, when you approach death. Will you have already died inside or will your mind be alive with new ideas that are unmistakably around? -Ken Bain
articles of interest - June 5
/***SOCIAL MEDIA
How To Network On Instagram DM Medium
Snapchat for Old People PBS Media Shift
Snapchat opens the floodgates to bad ads Digiday
***LEGAL ISSUES
Court Says Facebook Can Block Parents From Deceased Teen’s Account Vocativ
***TECHNOLOGY
Mary Meeker’s 2017 internet trends report: All the slides, plus analysis Recode
***JOURNALISM
The government is spying on journalists to find leakers New York Post
The problem with data journalism is politics (opinion) PBS Media Shift
A Pro-Trump Writer Just Sued A Fusion Reporter For Accusing Her Of Making A "White Supremacist" Gesture BuzzFeed News
121 Right-leaning advocacy group wants its $115K back from UT journalism professor Knox News
Circulation, revenue fall for US newspapers overall Pew Research
How to report on algorithms even if you’re not a data whiz Columbia Journalism Review
Newseum chief fears for future of journalism The Guardian
The AP Stylebook now includes new guidelines on data (requesting it, scraping it, reporting on it, and publishing it) Harvard’s Nieman Lab
***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM
Online news outlets employing more women than print, TV Columbia Journalism Review
***FAKE NEWS
Facebook Shareholders Are Not Happy With How It’s Handling Fake News Washington Post
Craig From Craigslist Takes Role in Fighting Fake News The Ringer
***GRAMMAR
The Most Common Words That People Don't Know How To Spell In Every State Digg
After Months of Trolling Trump Merriam Webster has no words about Covfefe Washington Post
***WRITING & READING
Want to be a better writer? Try letting a robot tell you what to do Quzrtz
***GENDER
Some of the top political science journals are biased against women. Here’s the evidence Washington Post
***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES
College Access Index Shows Shrinking Levels Of Economic Diversity NPR
Students demand firing of Evergreen State professor, Supporters say he’s the one upholding principles of equity and free speech Inside Higher Ed
***DISABILITIES
Airbnb guests who disclose a disability are less likely to be approved for a room and more likely to be outright rejected New York Times
***FREE SPEECH
Interview With NC Student Whose School Canceled the Yearbook Because of Her Donald Trump Senior Quote The National Coalition Against Censorship
Trump Supporters Accuse Liberal Communities Of Hostility Towards Free Speech NPR
***BIG DATA & STATISTICS
Machine learning comes to Google Sheets, boosting data visualization for users Tech Republic
NGA, NRO, NSA joining DoD In Silicon Valley Breaking Defense
The New Yorker offers a “practical guide” on “How to Call B.S. on Big Data” The New Yorker
An academic paper surveys the recent advances in big learning with Bayesian methods National Science Review
Google Sheets now uses Machine Learning to help you visualize your data Tech Crunch
Similarities between quantum Machine Learning algorithms and their classical counterparts Phys.org
***RELIGION
Supreme Court exempts church-affiliated hospitals from pension law Reuters
BuzzFeed Shines a Light on the Shortcomings of Christian Health Insurance Providers BuzzFeed News
Gay man says church members beat, choked him for hours to expel ‘homosexual demons Washington Post
Muslims and Islam: Key findings in the U.S. and around the world Pew Research
Wendell Burton, Actor and Megachurch Minister, Dies at 69 New York Times
Largest Methodist Congregation in Mississippi Withdraws Denomination Christian Post
$2 million jury award to Trinity Broadcasting founder’s granddaughter My News LA
***ART & DESIGN
This site expertly pairs fonts using machine learning The Next Web
A workflow enabled by powerful artificial intelligence technologies Photo District News
Artists May Have Different Brains (More Grey Matter) Than the Rest of Us, According to a Recent Scientific Study Open Culture
***MUSIC
Sgt. Pepper's' At 50: Why The Beatles' Masterpiece Can't Be Replicated NPR
Using Music And Rhythm To Develop Grammar NPR
The History of Punk Rock in 200 Tracks: An 11-Hour Playlist Takes You From 1965 to 2016 Open Culture
***SCIENCE
Scientific integrity: dropping points EuroScientist Journal
Crispr’s Next Big Debate: How Messy Is Too Messy? Wired
20,000 Endangered Archaeological Sites Now Catalogued in a New Online Database Open Culture
***HEALTH
Babies’ face scans detect exposure to low amounts of alcohol in utero Stat News
***PSYCHOLOGY
Popular People Live Longer New York Times
Personality traits don’t simply affect your outlook on life, but the way you perceive reality Quartz
***NEUROSCIENCE
Primates Recognize Faces Instantly Using Specialized Neurons NPR
***SOCIOLOGY
Blame The Top 20 Percent, Not The 1 Percent, Author Argues NPR
***RESEARCH
Evaluating research ethics: Study finds most universities lack best practices in NSF-mandated research integrity plans West Virginia University
Fake science publisher accepts (again) a paper already exposed as 'pile of dung' Ottawa Citizen
The Reproducibility Of Research And The Misinterpretation Of P Values bioRxiv The Economist
***PERSONAL GROWTH
Let go of your bitterness and desire for retaliation Becoming (my blog)
How the Self-Esteem Craze Took Over America New York Mag
***HIGHER ED
These Campus Inquisitions Must Stop: the recent ugliness at Evergreen State College (opinion) New York Times
Leaked Trump Rule: Any Religious Employer Can Opt Out of Contraception Coverage “including Christian colleges” Christianity Today
***HUMANITIES /STEM
Humanities Majors Drop but trends at community colleges may cheer advocates for the liberal arts Inside Higher Ed
***TEACHING
No, Student Evaluations Aren’t “Worthless” Chronicle of Higher Ed
***STUDENT MEDIA
Kate Snow Sees ‘a Direct Line’ Between Cornell’s Off-Campus Radio, Her Career NBC News
***STUDENT LIFE
It probably doesn't matter where you went to college — here's why Business Insider
How First-Generation Students See College (The New York Times asked several first-generation students who are campus journalists to interview their first-generation classmates about challenges they've faced) New York Times
Are esports the next major league sport? The Conversation
Shifting Incomes for Young People Flowing Data
***ACADEMIC LIFE
Why Academic Freedom Should Be Covered at Freshman Orientation Chronicle of Higher Ed
getting it done
/There's usually an inverse proportion between how much something is on your mind and how much it's getting done. -David Allen
Let it Go
/You've suffered unjustly. Passed over for the promotion. Mistreated by a spouse. Disrespected by a co-worker, fellow student, or even a member of your church.
Perhaps you lie in bed at night imagining detailed conversations with someone who's wronged you. You daydream about getting back at them. You conspire, hoping to discover ways to embarrass those who've treated you unfairly.
Let go of your bitterness and desire for retaliation.
Romans 12:19 says, "Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: " Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."
It is not your job to exact revenge. That's God's responsibility. And he does not need our help doing it. If you hoard hatred and bitterness toward those who have hurt you, the injury will only deepened and hurt you even more. Those around you will suffer as well. Bitterness is a poison that spills over into our relationships. Don’t allow the people who have hurt you keep on doing so.
Stephen Goforth
and THIS is love
/“In this is love..” or “In this way is seen the true love” (1 John 4:10). God didn’t look down and say, “Boy, I see you love me. I think I’ll love you.” Or “You’re a nice guy, I really like that.”
Instead: You were rebellious, arrogant, self-centered. God said, “I love you.”You ignored him, fought him, were bored with him. God said, “I love you.” You spit in his face, yelled at him, shook your fist.
God said, “I love you.” That’s what John means here.
We see what real love is by looking at what God did. He loved us with a desire to restore us, to make us whole.What separates real love from the pretenders is the aim. Real love aims at spiritual growth.
Stephen Goforth
business ethics
/There is really no such thing as business ethics. There is only personal ethics.
S.Truett Cathy
Trusting Ourselves to Live Without Self-Made Barriers
/My weekend of "sleeping" on the decision of whether to apply for a potentially exciting job evolved into a familiar frenzy of circular, useless thought and internal list-making, as well as reading everything I could get my hands on, including a book one of my journalism professors gave me, titled "Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes," which I have yet to finish for good reason.
I initially plunged into the book, knowing my super-speedy reading skills would yield another "achievement" of having yet another book to bring up at parties or feel particularly good about myself when I can tell others, "Yeah, I've read that," as if some book fairy was waiting on the last page to plant a huge gold star on my forehead for being on the fast track to personal enlightenment. There I go again. Fast as I can. Trying to get to the finish line before anyone knows I'm in the race. But something slowed me down. Something made me stop trying to rush through a book intended to help me enjoy, or at least cope, with life's gentle lulls.
Amid my mental commotion, I managed to pick up another book by Geneen Roth, "Women Food and God." That one was impossible NOT to read in about three hours - again, for good reason. It was a book I needed to read ten years ago. And it led to a few realizations:
The constant drive I feel to keep climbing whatever ladder happens to be in front of me at the moment has a lot to do with the fact that weight loss has somehow programmed to me think that PROGRESS is actually REPAIR for a person I've always been convinced is broken. I'm not skinny enough, so I "fix" myself with a rigid diet. I'm not smart enough, so I digest information at every possible opportunity to seem less inadequate. I haven't accomplished enough, so I keep seeking professional outlets for which to prove to a judgmental world that I'm aware of my shortcomings and want to overcome them.
This self-inflicted rat race has never been about personal growth; it was always about internal repair. And these moments of murky transition scream to my compulsions, saying, "Wait, there is no way that YOU could be good enough to slow down. You've never been good enough. What makes you think you are now? Keep pushing. Keep working. Keep killing yourself to prove you have value. It's the only way."
Any sort of educational, professional or personal structure I've ever maintained in my life was an excuse to keep a cage around Broken Me. I adhere to strict, torturous diets and workout plans because if I don't, Broken Me (who obviously can't be trusted) will screw up and gain weight. I maintain impossibly difficult schedules because Broken Me would waste her life away if left unattended. I've spent my life devaluing everything about myself in order to justify having my own predetermined life track. I've also convinced myself that if I don't spend a life obsessively submerged in all that I love, simply loving it has no value in itself, hence the all-too-predictable desire to jump at the opportunity to apply for the job.
And the truth is, I would love that job. I would learn from it. But, would I grow? My news judgement and management skills would likely improve. I would be able to gain a new type of experience. But, would taking on a position like that enhance my education or serve as yet another comfortable crutch for a girl who convinced herself long ago that she couldn't stand on her own two feet?
Alex McDaniel
security and opportunity
/There is no security on this earth, there is only opportunity. -General Douglas MacArthur
Three Types of Learners
/College students will take - usually without even realizing it – one of three basic approaches to their studies that will determine much of what they get out of school.
“Surface learners” as the psychologists called them, looked for facts and words they could memorize, attempting to anticipate any questions someone might ask them. In subsequent studies, we have learned that surface learners usually focus only on passing the exam nor on every using anything they read.
Meanwhile, other students expressed much different purposes. They wanted to understand the meaning behind the text and to think about its implications and applications, to search for arguments, and to distinguish between supporting evidence and conclusions. These are “deep learners.”
There is a third style of learning that students will take. “Strategic” learners primarily intend simply to make good grades, often for the sake of graduate or professional school. These people will usually shine in the classroom and make their parents proud of their high marks. In many ways, they look like deep learners but their fundamental concerns is different. They focus almost exclusively on how to find out what the professor wants and how to ace the exam. If they learn something along the way that changes the way they think, act, or feel, that’s largely an accident.
They rarely go off on an intellectual journey through those unexplored woods of life, riding their curiosity into a wonderland of intellectual adventure and imagination. They approach college with a checklist rather than with any sense of awe and fascination.
Ken Bain, What the Best College Students Do
articles of interest - wk of May 30
/***TECHNOLOGY
Google Lens Turns Your Camera Into a Search Box Wired
The Washington Post is Using Augmented Reality to Let Audiences Explore Iconic Buildings With Their iPhone Journalism.co
Are AR and VR Only for Special Occasions? (opinion) Techpinions
Getting Serious About Teen Smartphone Addiction TechNewsWorld
***BIG DATA & STATISTICS
An academic paper on when AI will pass human performance: a survey of experts Arxiv
Is Google's RankBrain about to get a new Machine Learning cousin? Forbes
***SOCIAL MEDIA
The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak, the Anonymous Messaging App New York Times
***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA
Here’s How Top Women’s Magazines Are Doing Online WWD
***JOURNALISM
What an academic hoax can teach us about journalism in the age of Trump Harvard’s Nieman Lab
Google and Facebook Can’t Just Make Fake News Disappear BackChannel
A Body-Slammed Reporter and the New American War on Journalism Vice
Google News Labs unveils new visualization tool for journalists: Data Gif Maker Talking News Media
I’m a reporter in Mexico. My life is in danger. The United States wouldn’t Give Me Asylum Washington Post
***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM
Texas journalists collaborate on nonprofit to share data, enrich reporting Columbia Journalism Review
Small Texas paper's name co-opted by Ukrainian site to peddle fake news Dallas Morning News
***FAKE NEWS
What Universities can do about Digital Literacy in the Age of Fake News PBS Media Shift
People Are Creating Their Own Fake News Stories And They’re Going Viral Buzzfeed News
The Fake News Challenge Puts AI to the Test PBS MediaShift
***PERSONAL GROWTH
Your task as a strategist is simple: to see the differences between yourself and other people Becoming (my blog)
Why It’s So Hard to Admit You’re Wrong New York Times
***GENDER
Caltech Professor Who Harassed Women Was Also Investigated For Creating An Imaginary Female Researcher BuzzFeed News
Gender Gap Persists In Science Beyond the Bookcast
This woman’s sexual discrimination case against D.C. has lasted 27 years Washington Post
***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES
***DISABILITIES
Why We Dread Disability Myths Chronicle of Higher Ed
***RELIGION
'Hook 'em' or devil's sign? Pastor Joel Osteen caught in online tangle after UT graduation photo Dallas Morning News
Why Fake News and Fake (Evangelical) Religion Endures (opinion) Franky Schaeffer
Saddleback Church youth mentor arrested on suspicion of lewd acts with 2 boys OC Register
Richard Dawkins On Terrorism And Religion NPR
Mainstream rap has grown more Christian. So why is Christian rap going maianstream Religious News
***ART & DESIGN
PayPal sues Pandora over confusingly similar logos Engadget
Visit a New Digital Archive of 2.2 Million Images from the First Hundred Years of Photography Open Culture
***MUSIC
Google’s AI Invents Sounds Humans Have Never Heard Before Wired
Why Catchy Songs Get Stuck in Our Brains: New Study Explains the Science of Earworms Open Culture
***SCIENCE
Creationist geologist sues U.S. park service after it rejects request to collect samples in Grand Canyon Science Mag
***HEALTH
Adult ADHD Can't Be Diagnosed With A Simple Screening Test, Doctors Warn NPR
Does living in a city make you psychotic? Stat News
***PHILOSOPHY
Why Does the World’s Leading Philosopher Remain a Catholic? Patheos
Alvin Plantinga: The Atheists’ Unicorn Context
***CRITICAL THINKING
***RESEARCH
When misconduct occurs, how should journals and institutions work together? Retraction Watch
The Library of Congress Just Made 25 Million Records Available for Free Fortune
***HIGHER ED
How Finland Created One of the Best Educational Systems in the World (by Doing the Opposite of U.S.) Open Culture
Accreditation Is Broken. Time to Repair It Chronicle of Higher Ed
***WRITING& READING
Why Are Colleges So Hostile to Fantasy Writers? Wired
***FREE SPEECH
Free Speech Advocate On The State Of College Campuses NPR
***STUDENT MEDIA
Hacker breaks into Harvard student paper to troll Mark Zuckerberg The Verge
***STUDENT LIFE
How Successful Valedictorians Are After High School TIME
Mark Zuckerberg tells Harvard grads that automation will take jobs, and it’s up to millennials to create more Washington Post
Teachers disciplined after naming student 'most likely to become a terrorist' KHOU
Why the Teen Summer Job Is Disappearing WSJ
***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT
How Baylor’s First Female President Plans to Move Past the Sex-Assault Scandals Chronicle of Higher Ed
***ACADEMIC LIFE
Professor told he's not safe on campus after college protests King5
Student Mob Shrieks at Professor Who Objected to Event That Kicks White People Off Campus for a Day Heat Street
Open Arms
/Perhaps because your father questioned you for so long, you question yourself.. just out of habit. Despite the fact there's plenty of evidence to show that you are usually on the right track, a vague nagging feeling persists. You may not measure up to your father's ideals.
Compare these expectations to those who love you; They don't ignore your inadequacies. Instead, they are willing to pitch in. They cheer for you. They don't run away when you fail. Their arms remain outstretched in acceptance.
Stephen Goforth
a time
/There is a time for talking.. and a time for just breathing. And each is equally important.
who you become
/The most important thing in your life is not what you do; it's who you become. That's what you will take into eternity. Dallas Willard
Accepting the Gift
/A friend once told me, "Everything worth anything is hard." That proverb is true in many areas of life, but we've got to abandon it briefly if we want to grasp and embrace God’s grace. It comes freely. You can't earn it. A part of us rebels against such lavish and reckless generosity. It sounds noble to say, “I don't want anything handed to me that I don't deserve. I work for what I get.” But if you earn it, the spotlight shifts from God's graciousness.. to your own striving and accomplishment.
Are you anxious and "tied up in knots" today? You know can’t be good enough. You know you don’t measure up. You don’t deserve to be happy or fulfilled or forgiven. But there's good news. When we come to the end of ourselves and let go.. we are set free and can truly relax in grace. There’s not a thing we can do to make God love us any more.. or any less.
Stephen Goforth
Shrink the Change
/Our emotional side is an Elephant and our rational side is its Rider.
A sense of progress is critical, because the Elephant in us is easily demoralized. It’s easily spooked, easily derailed, and for that reason, it needs reassurance, even for the very first step of the journey.
If you’re leading a change effort… rather than focusing solely on what’s new and different about the change to come, make an effort to remind people what’s already been conquered.
A business cliché commands us to “raise the bar.” But that’s exactly the wrong instinct if you want to motivate a reluctant Elephant. You need to lower the bar. Picture taking a high-jump bar and lowering it so far that it can be stepped over.
If you want a reluctant elephant to get moving, you need to shirk the change.
Chip & Dan Heath, Switch
the old and the new
/There are two kinds of fools: one says, "This is old, therefore it is good"; the other says, "This is new, therefore it is better." -William R. Inge
What Google searches Teach us
/You may not be a data scientist. You may not know how to code in R or calculate a confidence interval. But you can still take advantage of big data and digital truth serum to put an end to envy — or at least take some of the bite out of it.
Any time you are feeling down about your life after lurking on Facebook, go to Google and start typing stuff into the search box. Google’s autocomplete will tell you the searches other people are making. Type in “I always …” and you may see the suggestion, based on other people’s searches, “I always feel tired” or “I always have diarrhea.” This can offer a stark contrast to social media, where everybody “always” seems to be on a Caribbean vacation.
As our lives increasingly move online, I propose a new self-help mantra for the 21st century, courtesy of big data: Don’t compare your Google searches with other people’s Facebook posts.
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz writing in the New York Times
Just the Right Amount of Practice
/Practice too little and you never become world-class. Practice too much, though, and you increase the odds of being struck down by injury, draining yourself mentally, or burning out. To succeed, students must “avoid exhaustion” and “limit practice to an amount from which they can completely recover on a daily or weekly basis.”
How do students marked for greatness make the most of limited practice time? The rhythm of their practice follows a distinctive pattern. They put in more hours per week in the practice room or playing field, but they don’t do it by making each practice longer. Instead, they have more frequent, shorter sessions, each lasting about 80 to 90 minutes, with half-hour breaks in between.
Add these several practices up, and what do you get? About four hours a day. About the same amount of time Darwin spent every day doing his hardest work, Hardy (G.H. Hardy was one of Britain’s leading mathematicians in the first half of the 20th century) and Littlewood (Hardy’s longtime collaborator John Littlewood) spent doing math, Charles Dickens and Stephen King spent writing. Even ambitious young students in one of the world’s best schools, preparing for an notoriously competitive field, could handle only four hours of really focused, serious effort per day.
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang writing in Nautilus