The aspect of our personality that appears to drive our creativity is called openness to experience, or openness. Among the five major personality traits, it is openness that best predicts performance on divergent thinking tasks. Openness also predicts real-world creative achievements, as well as engagement in everyday creative pursuits.

In our research, published in the Journal of Research in Personality, we found that open people don’t just bring a different perspective to things, they genuinely see things differently to the average individual.

Our findings suggest that the creative tendencies of open people extend all the way down to basic visual perception. Open people may have fundamentally different visual experiences to the average person.

It might seem as if open people have been dealt a better hand than the rest of us. But can people with uncreative personalities broaden their limited vistas, and would this be a good thing?

There is mounting evidence that personality is malleable, and increases in openness have been observed in cognitive training interventions and studies of the effects of psilocybin.

Luke Smillie and Anna Antinori writing in The Conversation

October 22, 2017

availability

October 22, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

God does not ask about our ability, but our availability.

October 21, 2017

The greatest test

October 21, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart. -Robert G. Ingersoll

October 17, 2017

what direction

October 17, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

October 16, 2017

articles of interest - Oct 16

October 16, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

When Does a Sexual Advance Amount to Sexual Harassment? An Attorney Explains Hollywood Reporter

Students storm a professor’s class at Columbia to protest the university’s handling of rape cases Inside Higher Ed

#MeToo made the scale of sexual abuse go viral. But is it asking too much of survivors? Washington Post

***ART & DESIGN

11 Optical Illusions Found in Visual Design Prototypr

Art About Racism: Closed to the Public Inside Higher Ed

Christie’s Unveils a Lost Leonardo da Vinci in New York Vogue

Two new studies paint an intriguing picture about the payoff of arts training Chronicle of Higher Ed

How Futura Became The Most Ripped-Off Typeface In History Fast Co.

***MUSIC

Hear Bob Dylan's Lost Gospel Masterpiece 'Making a Liar Out of Me' Rolling Stone

Hear 1,500+ Genres of Music, All Mapped Out on an Insanely Thorough Interactive Graph Open Culture

A billionaire’s quirky quest to create a mecca for Bob Dylan fans. In Tulsa, Oklahoma The Washington Post

***FILM

The History of Film Censorship The FIRE

***JOURNALISM

The State of Technology in Global Newsrooms ICFJ

The Journalism of Why: How we struggle to answer the hardest question Poynter

Donald Trump just issued a direct threat to the free and independent media (opinion) CNN

GOP lawmaker drafts bill requiring journalists to register with police The Hill

Tips for Data Journalism in the Shadow of an Overbroad Anti-Hacking Law ACLU

10 Journalism Tips That Never Go Out of Style (video) YouTube

Malta car bomb kills Panama Papers journalist The Guardian

Not a revolution (yet): Data journalism hasn’t changed that much in 4 years, a new paper finds Harvard’s Nieman Lab

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Is Brand Journalism Just for Big Businesses? Business2Business

The New York Times posts social media guidelines online for their newsroom accounts Talking New Media

***FAKE NEWS

Twitter Bots Are Trying To Influence You. These Six Charts Show You How To Spot One BuzzFeed News

These two studies found that correcting misperceptions works. But it’s not magic Poynter

Facebook Says Its Fake News Label Helps Reduce The Spread Of A Fake Story By 80% BuzzFeed News

Researchers developing a platform to detect image manipulation Rochester Institute of Technology

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Living purely in opposition to something, rather than for something, hollows you out inside Becoming (my blog)

The flaws a Nobel Prize-winning economist wants you to know about yourself Quartz

***LANGUAGE

An argument over the evolution of language, with high stakes Economist

On Dictionary Day, a tribute to books that offer the last word on language Poynter

***LITERATURE

Mississippi School District pulls ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ from its Curriculum over Language Sun-Herald

To Read This Experimental Edition of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, You'll Need to Add Heat to the PagesOpen Culture

***GENDER

Why Photography Can’t Get Woke Bloomberg

Women still earn a lot less than men, despite decades of equal-pay laws. Why? Economist

ASNE's latest diversity survey shows some progress, but newsrooms are still mostly white and male Poynter

***FREE SPEECH

Students Divided on Free Speech Inside Higher Ed

Hecklers shout down California attorney general and Assembly majority leader at Whittier College Washington Post

Why Are Millennials Wary of Freedom? (opinion) New York Times

***LEGAL ISSUES

When is a Facebook ‘like’ a crime? Washington Post

Does the Internet Archive Need the Copyright Rhetoric to Be Useful? Illusion of More

Supreme Court Turns Away Challenge To Google's Trademark Media Post

Microsoft’s fight with the feds over foreign servers is headed to Supreme Court The Verge

Benching NFL players for protesting during the anthem would be illegal (opinion) Vox

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act Turns 20 Media Law Monitor

***TECHNOLOGY

Tech has made life better, say 42% of Americans Pew Research Center

Social bots as a threat to democracy BoingBoing

***BIG DATA & STATISTICS

The 1st demonstration of the ability of quantum machines to outperform classical computers could be just months way Technology Review

Silicon Valley analytic experts on the sort of classes undergrads should take to prepare for data science careers Datanami

Intelligence leaders caution that AI cannot and should not replace the role of the human analyst Fed Tech Magazine

The hardware needs of AI and the hardware needs of traditional software development are diverging in a big way EE Journal

Machine learning demo with your webcam and GIFs Flowing Data

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Snapchat is getting closer and closer to being a truly useful app with Context Cards Quartz

What Facebook Did to American Democracy The Atlantic

The New York Times Issues Social Media Guidelines for the Newsroom New York Times

Nearly half of U.S. teens prefer Snapchat over other social media Recode

***PRODUCING MEDIA

What do you need to know before creating a podcast? Better News

Deepgram opens up its machine transcription platform to everyone Tech Crunch

***RELIGION

Africa's "reverse missionaries" are trying to bring Christianity back to the United Kingdom Quartz

Hell House: The evangelism strategy that aims to scare people into heaven Christianity Today

How a growing Christian movement is seeking to change America The Conversation

Just What Is the Museum of the Bible Trying to Do? Politico

Sneak peek: DC's huge new Museum of the Bible includes lots of tech — but not a lot of Jesus Washington Post

Female church executive named lead pastor of Willow Creek Chicago Tribune

A growing share of Americans say it’s not necessary to believe in God to be moral Pew Research

Church denies First Communion to fashion-loving girl because she wanted to wear a suit Washington Post

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

Why evangelicals love Trump Politico

Trump, unlikely religious favorite, hails Christian values Washington Post

Donald Trump and the Dawn of the Evangelical-Nationalist Alliance Politico

***SOCIOLOGY

Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts calls data on partisan gerrymandering “sociological gobbledygook” Inside Higher Ed

First Evidence That Online Dating Is Changing the Nature of Society MIT Technology Review

***HEALTH

This Company Is Trying To Disrupt The Braces Industry And Dentists Are Fighting Back BuzzFeed

***SCIENCE

NASA's visitor center offers a video game filled with bad facts and grammar errors The Verge

***PSYCHOLOGY

Confirmation bias: Why you make terrible life choices Medium

Find Out Which Cognitive Biases Alter Your Perspective Life Hacker

***PRODUCTIVITY

Lessons on Productivity Chronicle of Higher Ed

***HISTORY

I have a message for you (12 minute documentary) New York Times

The Secret Lives of Leonardo da Vinci The New Yorker

***RESEARCH

ResearchGate has reportedly started to take down large numbers of research papers Inside Higher Ed

Automated software saves researchers valuable hours: Online tools are lightening the load for authors and journal editors Nature Index

China’s festering problem of systemic research fraud New York Times

Transparent peer review Nature Index

A study examines 70 years of engineering retractions, finding the main reason for retraction was unethical conduct Taylor & Francis Online

New web services are helping authors make data-driven decisions when choosing which journal to submit to The London School of Economics & Political Science

It is time to restore Rules for Authorship of scientific publications Wiley Online Library

The Facebooking of Scholarly Research Scholarly Kitchen

***HIGHER ED

Florida governor declares state of emergency in advance of Richard Spencer event: The white nationalist leader plans to speak at the University of Florida on Thursday Miami Herald

***TEACHING

They Once Cheated in Class. Now They Teach Chronicle of Higher Ed

A new study shows that students learn way more effectively from print textbooks than screens Business Insider

***STUDENT LIFE

Student art exhibit at Penn prompts fierce debate over suicide Inside Higher Ed

Why Are More American Teenagers Than Ever Suffering From Severe Anxiety? New York Times

Research says college students no more narcissistic than previous generations at that age Inside Higher Ed

University student charters planes to bring supplies to Puerto Rico WTAE

America’s top universities deny students fair hearings The FIRE

***STUDENT MEDIA

How to cover free speech issues on university campuses Student Press Law Center

***JOBS

You Probably Need a Public Portfolio Even If You're Not a Freelancer or a "Creative" Life Hacker

October 16, 2017

Living in Opposition

October 16, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

I've never been around an activist group that didn't turn into an endless series of petty purity tests. I was raised in a church where everyone was looking for more and more inconsequential things to judge each other by.. The natural evolution is toward tighter and tighter criteria for what behavior gets you shunned from the group. The end result is that the central cause can be as pure as the driven snow, and yet the tone will get more and more toxic over time, the members becoming less and less charitable with each other.

You hear experts talk about how extremists get "radicalized." But it really isn't a mystery, and we all form less-murderous versions of this. All it takes is a closed like-minded social circle in which it's considered unacceptable to disagree with the group, and then devote that group to hating something. It doesn't even matter if the thing truly deserves hating -- it still turns toxic. In fact, it works better if it does. "How can you criticize any flaw in our group's behavior when the other side is Nazis! That's literally saying that both sides are the same! The mere existence of pure evil on the other side mathematically means our side is pure good!"

At that point, no criticism is possible and there is nothing to moderate the rage. The rhetoric ratchets higher and higher as each member tries to top each other (to prove their own righteousness by demonstrating they hate the target most), and there is no method for reining it in. Anyone from the inside who takes a moderate tone can be shouted down with accusations of being an enemy sympathizer.

Living purely in opposition to something, rather than for something, hollows you out inside. To be a whole human being, you have to spend your life building something good.

David Wong writing for Cracked

October 14, 2017

Grace arrives

October 14, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

Grace arrives, unannounced, in lives that least expect or deserve it. - Andrew Sullivan

October 12, 2017

A good marriage

October 12, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love. – Pearl S. Buck

October 09, 2017

articles of interest - Oct 9

October 09, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

***BIG DATA & STATISTICS

Algorithms have already gone rogue Wired

Does the new theory “information bottleneck” crack open the black box of deep neural networks? Wired

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Local Media Consortium to partner with Facebook-owned CrowdTangle

How to use Tweetdeck and advanced search to make Twitter useful again Poynter

Survey: Facebook (FB) is the big tech company that people trust least Quartz

Key trends in social and digital news media Pew Research Center

9 ways to make your dog famous on Instagram Hapers Bazaar

Meet the millennials who are making a living from livestreaming The Guardian

Snapchat to launch augmented reality art platform TechCrunch

***PRODUCING MEDIA

The Three Fundamental Moments of Podcasts' Crazy Rise Wired

How to Make Short-Form Videos as Tutorials, and Why You Might Want To Chronicle of Higher Ed

Rethinking audio editing on mobile Medium

The state of podcasting in five charts Digiday

Podcasts, Smart Speakers Lead the Way at Next Radio Radio World

Try This: Podcasting made audio great again. It could be even better. Two tools to help Poynter

The Boom In Political Podcasting NPR

***JOURNALISM

The rise of virtual reality journalism Columbia Journalism Review

Day One takeaways from ONA-17 Medium

Day Two: Following the Future of Journalism with #ONA17 MediaShift

ProPublica’s New Project to Work With Local Newsrooms ProPublica

Our addiction to links is making good journalism harder to read The Coffeelicious

Beyond 800 words: new digital story formats for news BBC

How J-Schools Are Adding Social Media, Curation, Analytics to Editing Classes Media Shift

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Los Angeles Times Newsroom, Challenging Tronc, Goes Public With Union Push New York Times

A course in freelancing? Yes, and not only that, it's a master's degree Poynter

***FAKE NEWS

The science behind why fake news is so hard to wipe out Vox

Facebook tries fighting fake news with publisher info button on links TechCrunch

***TECHNOLOGY

Google's New Live-Translating Earbuds Look Absolutely Incredible Digg

A “right to repair” movement tools up From tractors to smartphones, mending things is getting ever harder Economist

Inside Apple’s Quest To Transform Photography BuzzFeed News

Video Games for people with disabilities Economist

Who’s afraid of disruption? Economist

***PERSONAL GROWTH

To take a step without feet Becoming (my blog)

How We Make Up Our Minds The New York Times

***GRAMMAR

The Rise of the Restrictive Comma Chronicle of Higher Ed

***WRITING & READING

The weekly routine of writer Ann Friedman Extraordinary Routines Extraordinary Routines

***LANGUAGE

Two new slang words that show the effects of electronically mediated communication on our speech Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LITERATURE

Kazuo Ishiguro Is Awarded Nobel Prize In Literature NPR

Jill Bialosky Says Plagiarism Claims ‘Should Not Distract’ From Her Poetry Memoir New York Times

Austenistan: Jane Austen’s books are remarkably relevant to women in Pakistan today 1843 Magazine

Students, teachers ponder literature in an age of technology Meridian Star

***GENDER

Jeff Sessions Just Reversed A Policy That Protects Transgender Workers From Discrimination BuzzFeed News

To Keep a Campaign Pledge Pleased his Conservative Christian Supporters, Trump Eviscerates Requirements that Employers cover Women’s birth Control Reuters

Financial Firm Behind ‘Fearless Girl’ Will Pay $5 Million for Allegedly Underpaying Women and Minorities Adweek

***FREE SPEECH

Free Speech Advocate Silenced: An ACLU official was the latest to be blocked from speaking on campus Inside Higher Ed

College students and the First Amendment: What the right doesn’t want you to know Salon

Blocking a President From Talking: University of Oregon is third institution in two weeks where speakers have had talks disrupted Inside Higher Ed

***LEGAL ISSUES

The defamation lawsuit against BuzzFeed for publishing an unverified intelligence dossier on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election National Law Journal

NYPD officer: Former tennis star James Blake defamed me as ‘a racist and a goon’ Washington Post

Publishers seek removal of millions of papers from ResearchGate Times Higher Ed

In Comic-Con Dispute, Appeals Court Wants to Hear More About Judge's Gag Order Hollywood Reporter

Authenticity more than any other quality was flagged as a key to success by 22 litigators National Law Journal

U.S. Government, Hollywood Studios Weigh in on Dispute Exploring Reach of U.S. Copyright Law Hollywood Reporter

Hyperlinking to Sources Can Help Defeat Defamation Claims–Adelson v. Harris Eric Goldman

***PRIVACY

How digital devices challenge the nature of ownership and threaten property rights in the digital age Economist

Despite massive hack, Equifax wins IRS contract for fraud-detection The Verge

***RELIGION

An AI god will emerge by 2042 and write its own bible. Will you worship it? Venture Beat

Key facts about government-favored religion around the world Pew Research Center

Sessions outlines broad exemptions for religious freedom Politico

Princeton Student Group Excises 'Evangelical From Name Due to Negative Perceptions Washington Free Beacon

The Satanic Temple Wins Appeal in Missouri Abortion Case Patheos

Christian radio host Delilah trusting God as she loses her second child to a suicide Christianity Today

Religion on the College Campus First Things

***MUSIC

This music production tool is the reason why all new music sounds the same Quartz

Language of Hip Hop The Pudding

***FILM

Honest Trailers creator suspended over accusations of sexual harassment and assault AV Club

Men, women and films: How pronounced is the gender divide on the silver screen? 1843 Magazine

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

USC medical school dean out amid revelations of sexual harassment claim, $135,000 settlement with researcher LA Times

Some colleges opt to outsource Title IX investigations, hearings Inside Higher Ed

***HEALTH

With The Swab Of A Cheek, This Company Knows When You're Likely To Die Forbes

Is there a doctor in my pocket? we are on the verge of a transformation in health care that will render visiting the doctor a thing of the past 1843 Magazine

Human Brain Has A Direct Link To The Immune System After All NPR

***PSYCHOLOGY

Children have got much better at a famous psychological test Economist

My Depression Is Like Having A Bad Dog BuzzFeed News

***NEUROSCIENCE

How Stress Can Change Your Brain: An Animated Introduction Open Culture

Understanding the Influential MindScientific American Scientific American

***ETHICS

Is It Ethical to Visit a Country With Human Rights Violations? CN Traveler

Ethics of Internet research trigger scrutiny: Concern over the use of public data spurs guideline update Nature

***PHILOSOPHY

How philosophy can solve your midlife crisis Phys.org

***PRODUCTIVITY

Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says Chicago Tribune

***HISTORY

Stalin’s famine, a war on Ukraine Economist

***POLITICS

The Partisan Divide on Political Values Grows Even Wider People

America's Political Divide Intensified During Trump's First Year As President The Atlantic

***RESEARCH

The Big Bang Theory recap: 'The Retraction Reaction Entertainment Weekly

What separates a predatory publisher from a legitimate science publisher? PLOS

Research papers are becoming less readable Chemistry World

The scientist who spots fake videos: “I’ve seen the technology get good enough that I’m now very concerned” Nature

Publishers seek removal of millions of papers from ResearchGate Times Higher Ed

The benefits and drawbacks of letting reviewers identify themselves to the authors of the paper under review PLOS

***HIGHER ED

How Technology Is Transforming the Way We Teach and Learn Singularity Hub

Hate fliers have appeared on hundreds of campuses, largely due to the efforts of groups looking to make recruiting inroads Chronicle of Higher Ed

Tennessee congressmen support end of DACA after Christian colleges ask President Trump to keep it The Stampede (Milligan College student newspaper)

Nondenominational Christian University Closing Inside Higher Ed

How to prepare students for the rigors of higher education: The 2017-2018 Bilingual Christian College Guide Christianity Today

Puerto Rico's plight has Olivet Nazarene University student worried Daily Journal

***TEACHING

Instructors, Did You Ever Cheat When You Were a Student? Chronicle of Higher Ed

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Professors are the new therapists Slate

***STUDENT LIFE

5 Tips for Feeling Organized in College Study Breaks

Students Are Demanding More Help With Mental Health And Say Universities Aren’t Keeping Up BuzzFeed News

Ex-student sues Montana State University alleging Disabilities Act violations Bozeman Daily Chronicle

What everyone gets wrong about 'millennial snowflakes' BBC

Video shows white California Baptist student throwing beer on black men for kneeling during national anthem The Tab

***STUDENT MEDIA

Student government and college paper in Pennsylvania clash over publishing budget SPLC

Young Sheldon sends student newspaper editor into an existential death spiral AV Club

October 09, 2017

To Take a Step Without Feet

October 09, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

This is Love: to fly toward a secret sky,
To cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First, to let go of life.
In the end, to take a step without feet;
to regard this world as invisible,
and to disregard what appears to the self.

Heart, I said, what a gift it has been
to enter this circle of lovers,
to see beyond seeing itself,
to reach and feel within the breast.

My soul, where does this breathing arise?
How does this beating heart exist?
Bird of the soul, speak in your own words,
and I will understand.

The heart replied: I was in the workplace
the day this house of water and clay was fired.
I was already fleeing that created house,
even as it was being created.
When I could no longer resist, I was dragged down,
and my features were molded from a handful of earth.

Rumi

October 08, 2017

God is a comedian

October 08, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

October 07, 2017

the grass is greener

October 07, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

The grass is always greener wherever you water it. – Anonymous

October 05, 2017

creating

October 05, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

God does not create in order to acquire something but in order to share Himself.

October 04, 2017

Policing people’s grammar online is never really about grammar

October 04, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

One of the many unexpected side effects of the internet is that it’s shown us just how many people appear to lose the capacity for emotional self-regulation when confronted with a misused semicolon. Scroll through the comments section of any publication or simply sign on to Twitter, and you’ll find plenty of examples of people who treat typos and grammatical errors not just as ordinary mistakes, but as a kind of moral offense.

When a grammar stickler obsesses over the proper placement of an apostrophe in a Facebook status or a blog post, they’re not engaging with the actual content. How many times have we seen an online commenter whose only remark on a post about the author’s struggles with body image is “It’s their not there,” or a Twitter acquaintance who proudly screenshots a typo in a New York Times article on science education? The instinct to publicly criticize and police linguistic errors is also a way to avoid wading into the muck of other people’s thoughts and feelings, and redirect the conversation back toward oneself.

Because young or poor or immigrant populations are often among those who may not conform to traditional English grammar and spelling and punctuation usage, focusing on linguistic deviations can reinforce the barriers of privilege.

Sarah Todd writing in Quartz

October 03, 2017

The goal in marriage

October 03, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

The goal in marriage is not to think alike, but to think together. -Robert C. Dodds

October 02, 2017

articles of interest - Oct 2

October 02, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

***BIG DATA & STATISTICS

The Coming Software Apocalypse (check the comments section) The Atlantic

Cloud platforms are offering machine learning users alternatives to open source tools: the advantages and cautions Search Business Analytics

Microsoft launches new Machine Learning tools for developers all related to the Azure Machine Tech Crunch

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Ready Or Not, Twitter Is Doubling A Tweet's Character Limit To 280 NPR

Twitter Wipes Hundreds of Russian Operative Accounts Geek

Russian-Linked Election Ads Highlight Scope Of Facebook's Power NPR

Does Even Mark Zuckerberg Know What Facebook Is? New York Mag

Russia Continues To Use Social Media To Influence Public Opinion In The U.S. NPR

Facebook is hiring another 1,000 people to review and remove ads Recode

***INTERNET

Google turns 19: Here are 19 random facts about the search engine giant Recode

The ‘Google Trick’ to Get Around Paywalls Is Getting Shut Down New York Mag

***TECHNOLOGY

Apple says iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 do not contain FM radio chips or antennas, in response to FCC request 9 to 5 Mac

The Coming Software Apocalypse The Atlantic

The internet isn’t forever. Is there an effective way to preserve great online interactives and news apps? Harvard's Nieman Lab

***SECURITY

The US remains an easy mark for drug dealers, terrorists and others who prize anonymity when registering aircraft or getting licensed to fly Boston Globe

The Equifax Hack Has the Hallmarks of State-Sponsored Pros Bloomberg

Most Americans think the government could be monitoring their phone calls and emails Pew Research

***JOURNALISM

As crisis unfolds in Puerto Rico, journalists help connect familiesColumbia Journalism Review

Where we are on getting people to pay for online news Harvard's Nieman Lab

Tension between Trump and the media? That’s nothing compared to journalism’s worst crisis (opinion) Washington Post

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Text-only news sites are slowly making a comeback. Here's why. Poynter

The secret cost of pivoting to video Columbia Journalism Review

The Design of Newspapers: Why The News Industry is Changing Medium

***FAKE NEWS

Paul Horner, Fake News Purveyor Who Claimed Credit For Trump's Win, Found Dead At 38 NPR

Facebook and Google’s algorithms prioritized fake news in the wake of Las Vegas shooting Mic

***GRAMMAR

The power of the comma: The punctuation mark most likely to start fights between grammar gurus The Economist

***WRITING & READING

The World According to Dan Brown New York Times

Writing Well about Terrible People Incisive.nu

***LANGUAGE

Johns Hopkins University eliminates Russian Major Inside Higher Ed

***GENDER

The state of women in computer science: An investigative report Tech Republic

Saudi Arabia To End Ban On Women Driving NPR

Cute Outfits and the Academic Career Chronicle of Higher Ed

This Is the Job Where Women Make the Most Compared to Men Fortune

Trump’s White House Froze an Equal pay Rule Women are fighting to Save Washington Post

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

White American men are a bigger domestic terrorist threat than Muslim foreigners Vox

Air Force Academy Leader Responds To Racial Slurs On Campus NPR

Hispanic dropout rate hits new low, college enrollment at new high Pew Research

***FREE SPEECH

Sessions’ Justice Dept. Will Weigh In on Free-Speech Cases. What Should Campuses Expect? Chronicle of Higher Ed

Berkeley’s Leader Saw Hints That ‘Free Speech Week’ Was a Stunt. Here’s Why She Planned for It Anyway. Chronicle of Higher ED

***LEGAL ISSUES

Seven legal questions about Trump deleting his tweets Columbia Journalism Review

Appeals court sides with Texas cheerleaders who sued to display Bible verses at football gamesDallas News

Professor used historical imagery of a strike being put down violently in criticizing Colorado State’s move to lay off employees. University then blocked him from using his university email account. Inside Higher Ed

Mississippi restaurant sued after Christian waitress is allegedly fired for wearing a skirt to work Washington Post

***RELIGION

Tenn. church suspect's car had note referencing retaliation for Dylann Roof's Charleston attack ABC News

500 Years After Martin Luther, Does The Protestant Reformation Still Matter? (opinion) The Daily Beast

The Justice Department is intervening in a case at Georgia Gwinnett College involving a student’s claim that he was prevented from religious proselytizing on campus. Chronicle of Higher Ed

Fired by ESPN for a racist headline, he’s finding his second chance as a Catholic priest Washington Post

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

Evangelicals urge more action from Trump against 'alt-right' CNN

Roy Moore, Christian theocrat Vox

A short history of Roy Moore’s controversial interpretations of the Bible Washington Post

***ART & DESIGN

An SNL skit for designers YouTube

Ethics For Design

Online Design: Nested Symbols & Auto-Updating Styleguides

Naked Mona Lisa By Da Vinci, Discovered In France, Is Rocking The Art World Forbes

A Five Minutes Guide to Better Typography Pierrick Calvez

***MUSIC

3 myths about streaming... and 3 truths about the music industry today Music Business Worldwide

Streaming has pushed Latin music into the mainstream The Economist

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

The Meteoric rise of a new Way of Watching Media in America Changes how we Monetize its Consumption Broadcasting & Cable

5 Branded Videos That Reached Over 100,000 Likes Video Strategist

***HEALTH

The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life: the new sleep science The Guardian

Cancer Warnings on Coffee May Be Coming to California Food & Wine

Pain Cream Invented, But Untested NPR

Nobel Prize In Medicine Is Awarded To 3 Americans NPR

***SCIENCE

Hip-hop star creates GoFundMe page to prove to him that the world is, in fact, curved Gizmodo

Why We Find And Expose Bad Science Medium

Wikipedia shapes language in science papers Nature

***PSYCHOLOGY

The Cause Of Your Worst Mistakes? A Psychological Gremlin You've Never Heard Of Forbes

The Sorrow and the Shame of the Accidental Killer: How do you live after unintentionally causing a death? The New Yorker

Psychology beats business training when it comes to entrepreneurship The Economist

***PHILOSOPHY

Yes, your kid will do something with that philosophy degree after all Washington Post

***BUSINESS

Huge volumes of data make real-time insurance a possibility The Economist

***POLITICS

How Every NFL Team’s Fans Lean Politically FiveThirtyEight

***HISTORY

Tom Cruise's 'American Made' just latest case of film recasting history Union-Tribune

***ETHICS

Scientists gave kids real guns for an experiment. Now ethicists are weighing in Mic

Ethical investment is booming. But what is it? The Economist

***RESEARCH

An Ivy League Prof Tries To Do Damage Control For His Bogus Food Science BuzzFeed News

As research and editorial processes become increasingly open, scientists and editors need to be proactive but also alert to risks Nature

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Social proof is a much more effective persuasion technique than purely evidence-based proof Becoming (my blog)

This gene explains why some people crave adventure more than others Mashable

***HIGHER ED

154 incidents of hate speech and violence at more than 120 campuses nationwide BuzzFeed News

How Artificial Intelligence Is Disrupting the Education Industry Huffington Post

White nationalist fliers removed from University of Tennessee campus Knox News

The Rural Higher-Education Crisis: When it comes to college enrollment, students in Middle America—many of them white—face an uphill battle against economic and cultural deterrents. The Atlantic

For-profit University of Phoenix Phasing Out 20 Campuses Phoenix NewTimes

Assessment Competitors LiveText and Taskstream Merge Inside Higher Ed

DeVos assailed by protesters at college campuses in Boston, Washington Washington Post

How Schools Got into the Job-Prep Business Jstor

Colorado Christian University orders student athletes to stand for national anthem Denver Post

At Christian Colleges, Theology Can Complicate Sexual-Assault Prevention Chronicle of Higher Ed

Christian college Won’t Play Opponents Who Kneel During National Anthem Chronicle of Higher Ed

***HUMANITIES /STEM

Amid Professors’ ‘Doom-and-Gloom Talk,’ Humanities Ph.D. Applications Drop Chronicle of Higher Ed

***TEACHING

Using Digital Archives to Teach Data Set Creation and Visualization Design Chronicle of Higher Ed

AAU reports on efforts to improve science teaching at research universities Inside Higher Ed

***STUDENT LIFE

Colleges Recruit a New Kind of Athlete: Video Gamers Fortune

Study found that 17 percent of high school kids surveyed knew somebody living in an unstable housing situation, usually couch surfing Mercury News

Assortative mating: People tend to marry spouses with similar levels of education The Economist

The Keg in the Frat House New York Times

Where Students Get Valued Advice on What to Study in College Gallup

80 Evergreen State College Students Are Penalized for Protests Chronicle of Higher Ed

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

DeVos Should Want to Educate Men About Rape New York Times

An Overview of Congress’ Pending Legislation on Sex Trafficking Technology & Marketing Law Blog

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Why Ph.D.s in the natural sciences and engineering leave academe Inside Higher Ed

Sociology professor arrested for assaulting student The Tab

Research suggests students are biased against female lecturers The Economist

One-third of Ph.D.s lose interest in academic careers, but not for lack of jobs Cornell

CUNY Lecturer Charged With Running Fake Health Certificate Program New York Times

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***CRIME ON CAMPUS

USC faculty member detained by police after reporting an active shooter on campus. There wasn’t one Washington Post

October 02, 2017

Social Proof

October 02, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

We constantly compare our actions and beliefs to those of our peers, and then alter them to fit in. This means that if our social group believes something, we are more likely to follow the herd.

This effect of social influence on behaviour was nicely demonstrated back in 1961 by the street corner experiment. The experiment was simple (and fun) enough for you to replicate. Just pick a busy street corner and stare at the sky for 60 seconds.

Most likely very few folks will stop and check what you are looking at – in this situation Milgram found that about 4% of the passersby joined in. Now get some friends to join you with your lofty observations. As the group grows, more and more strangers will stop and stare aloft. By the time the group has grown to 15 sky gazers, about 40% of the by-passers will have stopped and craned their necks along with you. You have almost certainly seen the same effect in action at markets where you find yourself drawn to the stand with the crowd around it.

The principle applies just as powerfully to ideas. If more people believe a piece of information, then we are more likely to accept it as true. And so if, via our social group, we are overly exposed to a particular idea then it becomes embedded in our world view. In short social proof is a much more effective persuasion technique than purely evidence-based proof, which is of course why this sort of proof is so popular in advertising (“80% of mums agree”).

Mark Lorch writing in Business Insider