"I’m just going to go for it, because why not?"

A few weeks ago a North Dakota plumber lined up to run in his first half-marathon. But Mike Kohler was sleepy. He wasn’t used to getting up so early. And he was wearing headphones. That may explain why he took off 15 minutes before he was supposed to do so—putting him with the runners who were competing in the full marathon. Soon he started seeing signs that indicated he was on the wrong route, but he shrugged off those warnings. Mike assumed the two paths overlapped part of the way.

Eventually, he realized his mistake—but kept going. At the 13 mile mark he seriously thought about quitting. He had run as far as he had planned to run and even beat his time goal. He had nothing more to prove.

Instead, he finished the marathon.  

“I’m just going to go for it, because why not?” Mike later told the Grand Forks Herald. “I’m already here, I’m already running, I’m already tired. Might as well try to finish it. He added, ”This just kind of proves you can do a lot more than what you think you can sometimes.”  

I learned

I learned ... that one can never go back, that one should not ever try to go back - that the essence of life is going forward. Life is really a one-way street, isn't it? -Agatha Christie

The Process

Don’t think about the national championship. Think about what you needed to do in this drill, on this play, in this moment. That’s the process: Let’s think about what we can do today, the task at hand.

Nick Sabin, Alabama football coach 

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -Thomas Edison

Articles of Interest - June 11

***FAKE NEWS

New technology makes it alarmingly easy to make realistic videos of people saying and doing things they've never done  The Week

The French Parliament is debating a bill that would attempt to restrain the spread of fake news New York Times 

How to use digital tools to archive and verify videos  Current

Peer review could have helped short-circuit the Theranos fake news scandal  Stat News

4 reasons 'fake news' tricks us and what we can do  Futurity

Russian Disinformation Campaign Operates openly in DC  The Daily Beast

***JOURNALISM

Almost seven-in-ten Americans have news fatigue  Pew Research Center

People Are Absolutely Horrified By How Awkward This Local News Segment Is (San Diego's KUSI shows viewers how not to do TV news)   BuzzFeed News

Why is your newsroom so hard to contact?  Poynter

Across Western Europe, public news media are widely used and trusted sources of news  Pew Research Center

Do journalists make good entrepreneurs?  Columbia Journalism Review

Daniel Radcliffe Will Fight for Ethical Journalism in New Broadway Play  The Observer 

Why wordsmiths matter more than ever in 21st century digital journalism  Medium

***JOURNALISM & REPORTING

Governments resist citizens on public records  Herald Tribune

Best practices for covering suicide responsibly  Poynter

How a major medical meeting uses embargoes to shape the news, and what the consequences may be  Health News Review

***TEACHING JOURNALISM

Craigslist founder gives $20 million to journalism school  CNN

The role of a reporter is shifting, as are the economics of education. With this new calculus, does journalism school still have a place in our profession?  Columbia Journalism Review

***SOCIAL MEDIA

A Facebook bug changed the privacy settings for 14 million users  Recode

Snapchat’s decline and the secret joy of internet ghost towns  The Verge

***INTERNET

Here are some of the ways you might be doing email newsletters inefficiently (and how to do them better)  Harvard Nieman Lab

Encyclopedia Britannica wants to fix false Google results  Wired 

How The Alt-Right Manipulates The Internet’s Biggest Commenting Platform  BuzzFeed

How much is each internet feature worth to you?  NPR

Report: Facebook is Primary Referrer For Lifestyle Content, Google Search Dominates Rest  Media Post

Flash gets in one more security fail before retirement  Wired

***TECHNOLOGY

Is technology bringing history to life or distorting it?  Washington Post

The race to send robots to mine the ocean floor  Wired

***BIG DATA & AI

Study: AI better than dermatologists at detecting skin cancer  CBS News

Why Data Scientists Should Consider Adding ‘IoT Expert’ to Their List of Skills  Datanamia

Machine learning can run on tiny, low-power chips, and that this combination will solve a massive number of problems  Pete Warden Blog

The roles of data scientists and data engineers share overlapping core skill sets are different and are not easily interchangeable  CTOvision

A team of MIT scientists announced recently that they'd created "the world's first psychopath AI"   MIT

Three techniques to improve machine learning model performance with imbalanced datasets  Medium

***PERSONAL GROWTH

4 options when dealing with false guilt   Becoming (my blog)

5 Ways To Handle Negative Conversations At Work  GirlBoss

***GRAMMAR

America's most misspelled words (so far in 2018)  CNET

Infinitives Can Be Split: Grammar Conservatives Face the Shock  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***WRITING & READING

Understanding story structure by dissecting Ali Wong’s standup special (a visualization)  Pudding

6 Ways to Beat Writer’s Block  Chronicle of Higher Ed

How to Copyedit The Atlantic  The Atlantic

'Nationalistic' Think Tank Plagiarised Chinese, US, Australian Writings  The Wire

***LANGUAGE

Email, the French Way  Chronicle of Higher Ed

A Sneaky Theory of Where Language Came From  The Atlantic

***LITERATURE

The 100 stories that shaped the world  BBC

How Tolkien created Middle-earth  The Guardian

The Year of 'Frankenstein'  Inside Higher Ed

***GENDER  

Charting the rise of three women in journalism  Poynter

The Different Words We Use to Describe Male and Female Leaders  Harvard Business Review

Book Review: Science and Suffrage in the First World War  The London School of Economics & Political Science

The Ninety-Nines Was Amelia Earhart’s Club for Female Aviators  Atlas Obscura  

***GENDER & RESEARCH  

Signing my peer review – unintended consequences and gender  Washington University

Research: Adequate statistical power in clinical trials is associated with the combination of a male first author and a female last author  eLife

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

The most successful ethnic group in the US may surprise you  Ozy

Police Are Being Used To Exclude Black People From Public Places  NPR

***FREE SPEECH

Louisiana governor signs campus free speech bill into law  The FIRE

How Chinese students exercise free speech abroad  Economist

***LEGAL ISSUES

Rapunzel, Rapunzel let down your trademark restrictions  Boston Globe

Restaurant owner says copyright infringement lawsuit a ‘big scam’  Boston Herald

***RELIGION

Southern Baptist leader Paige Patterson has pulled out of giving key sermon at upcoming convention  Washington Post

Sex Offenders Groom Churches Too: How predatory behavior goes undetected in congregations Christianity Today

Bavaria Requires Crosses on All Public Buildings. Church Leaders Disagree  Christianity Today

What Religion Gives Us (That Science Can’t) (opinion)  New York Times

Religion is uniquely human, but computer simulations may help us understand religious behavior  The Conversation

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

The legislative assault by Christian nationalists to reshape America  The Guardian

***RELIGION IN THE WORKPLACE

CrossFit Just Fired Its Spokesperson Who Said LGBT Pride Is A “Sin”  BuzzFeed

Brownsburg teacher says transgender name policy goes against his religious beliefs  Indy Star

***RELIGION OUTSIDE THE U.S.

Crocodile kills Ethiopian pastor during lake baptism  BBC

5 facts about religion in India  Pew Research Center

The surprising history of “God Bless America”  Washington Post

***GOOD NEWS

Man Finds $1 Million Winning Lottery Ticket—and Tracks Down the Lucky Owner: 'It Felt Good' People

This NFL Player Saw an American Airlines Passenger In Trouble. His Stunning Reaction Went Viral  Inc.

A 6th-grade teacher wrote 'Invite me to your Harvard graduation!' -- 21 years later, the student did just that  CNN

4-year-old superhero using his power to feed the homeless  CBS News

Man mistakenly runs full Fargo marathon instead of half  Grand Forks Herald

Toddler makes 911 call after mom passes out  KTRK

Youth football team meets with couple they helped rescue from overturned car   Idaho Statesman

***ART & DESIGN

How Century old Design Decisions Impact Teaching Today  NPR

The Art World Is Easy to Dislike—Here Are Some Reasons Not to  New York Times

***MUSIC

The musical diversity of pop songs  Pudding

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

Next year, people will spend more time online than they will watching TV—That’s a first  Recode

***JOBS & INTERNSHIPS

Need an entry-level job at a store? It can be harder now  Associated Press

What editors at NPR, BuzzFeed News, Deadspin look for in an applicant  The Atlantic

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

The problem of sexual harassment in higher education isn’t a new one  Splinter News

Sexual Harassment In The Workplace Is More Common Than You Think  Daily Infographic

Hiring a Diversity Officer Is Only the First Step: Here Are the Next 7  Chronicle of Higher Ed   

#MeToo Complaints Swamp Human Resources Departments  NPR

Why Do Colleges Keep Failing to Prevent Abuse?  Inside Higher Ed

A valedictorian went off-script to talk about sexual assault: Then her school cut her mic  USA Today

The results of a survey that asked men about everything from workplace harassment to consent Glamour

***SOCIAL ISSUES

Where killings go unsolved: See interactive map of major US cities  Washington Post

What researchers found after analyzing data gathered from 20 million stops in North Carolina CityLab

ICE Came for a Tennessee Town’s Immigrants. The Town Fought Back  New York Times

***ENVIRONMENT

A Harvard professor says his company should be able to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, at industrial scales, by 2021  The Atlantic

***HEALTH

The Belt That Listens to Your Bowels  New Yorker  

The World’s Largest GMO Study Was Launched By Russians In 2014: Then It Disappeared BuzzFeed News

Almost 40% of peer-reviewed dietary research turns out to be wrong. Here’s why  New Food Economy

How Science Helps the Warriors Sleep Their Way to Success  Wired

***FAMILY

How much screen time is too much for kids?  The Guardian

New findings on "marshmallow test"  Inside Higher Ed

Mr. Rogers Had a Simple Set of Rules for Talking to Children  The Atlantic

The Perils Of Pushing Kids Too Hard, And How Parents Can Learn To Back Off  NPR  

***SCIENCE

Sloppy Science Happens More Than You Think  Leaps Mag

Scientists Are Subverting Formal Publishing. Well, Some of Them  Wired

Physicists at Fermilab say they have strong evidence for the existence of a new type of particle Physics World

***PSYCHOLOGY

What The Controversy Over Facebook's Privacy Policy Reveals (psychologically)  NPR

Ten of every eleven psychiatric patients housed by the government are incarcerated: Here's what this crisis looks like from the inside  Esquire

The Kids Who Are Cleared to Leave Psychiatric Hospitals—But Can’t  The Atlantic

CDC: U.S. Suicide Rates Have Climbed Dramatically  NPR

***NEUROSCIENCE

What Time Feels Like When You’re Improvising: The neurology of flow states  Nautil  

***CRITICAL THINKING

What editors at NPR, BuzzFeed News, Deadspin look for in an applicant  Columbia Journalism Review  

***RESEARCH

Impact of Social Sciences – Software updates: the “unknown unknown” of the replication crisis The London School of Economics & Political Science

Has Google Become a Journal Publisher?  Scholarly Kitchen

Give every paper a read for reproducibility  Nature

How Scientific Publishers Can End Bullying And Harassment In The Sciences  Forbes

Avoid Ethics Issues in Science Publishing with These 5 Questions  ASM

***HIGHER ED

UVa Library’s Plan to Cut Stacks by Half Sparks Faculty Concerns  Chronicle of Higher Ed 

The Cost of College (visualized)  New York Times  

Lobbying group for independent colleges says it's open to expanding federal data collection on student outcomes but..  Inside Higher Ed

DePaul University lays off dozens of staff  Chicago Sun-Times
https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/depaul-university-lays-off-dozens-of-staff/

Customer Service Is Misguided in the Classroom but Crucial in Advising  Chronicle of Higher Ed 

Sex and Gender on the Christian Campus (opinion)  New York Times

Catholic U. Trustees Clear Path to Cut the Faculty by 9 Percent  Chronicle of Higher Ed 

$5 million to Chapman University from billionaire Charles Koch sparks an uproar  Daily News

***TEACHING

The Numbers That Explain Why Teachers Are in Revolt  New York Times 

Asking students to work out a problem using nothing but what they already know  Chronicle of Higher Ed 

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Appeals Court Sides with Cornell in Tenure Dispute  Inside Higher Ed

UNM professors suing university over unequal pay  KRQE

Professors Decide Whether to Teach Summer Courses — for Cuts in Pay  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***STUDENT LIFE

Where Are Millennials Moving – 2018 Edition  Smart Asset

Why do so many students drop out of college? And what can be done about it?  Washington Post

Millennials and retirement: How bad is it?  Politico

Four big blunders young adults make with their health insurance  CNBC

What Millennials Earn In Every State, Mapped  Digg 

Millennials are moving to the exurbs in droves  Axios 

Dealing with False Guilt

Here are 4 options when dealing with false guilt.

1. Remove the Source of Guilt (the conscience)
This may only desensitize us to actual wrongs and could lead to a denial of real evil in our lives.

2. Emphasize Self-Potential
This fails to address the underlying problems and ignores any real wrongs.

3. Emphasize Punishment
This can lead to feeling guilt when caught, ignoring legitimate conviction.

4. Emphasize Forgiveness
If the guilt is false, there lacks a basis for forgiveness and the person may feel they haven’t suffered enough.

Instead of asking, "How do I get out of this thing I must do?" ask, "How do I become fully present in it?"

In times of stress, be bold and valiant. –Homer

How to cover up your fatal flaw

When did it become acceptable to embrace the characteristics that others have identified as detrimental to our mutual professional success? 

I suspect many of the people who trot out their fatal flaws are attempting to create a defense shield to protect themselves from further criticism:

"You will not speak of my fatal flaws because I have mentioned them first and am therefore immune to your potential condemnation."

It’s a classic offense-as-defense strategy.  That approach may work for a while but eventually it prompts some pointed questions: 

"If you know you talk too much, why do you continue to take up all the air time?"

"If you know you are considered dismissive, why do you believe it is in your best interest to denounce the perspectives of anyone who thinks differently than you do?"

"If you know you overpromise and underdeliver, what makes you think people will continue to take you seriously?"

"Why do you assume steamrolling over others is a sustainable strategy?"

It is good to be self-aware. But demonstrating self-awareness, while at the same time showing a lack of discipline to fix issues of concern, is worse than being clueless about our shortcomings. When people close to us offer consistent and considerable feedback about a behavior that is not serving us well, we need to listen up.  Dismissing feedback that does not comport with the way we see ourselves is understandable, but it is not strategic.

The most effective people I know sometimes whimper for a bit after receiving constructive criticism, but they quickly put a plan in place to modify the annoying or offending behaviors. By doing so, they demonstrate respect and appreciation for those brave enough to share difficult truths that are offered with the very best intentions. We need our colleagues to help us be better, but they can’t help if we’re not listening. 

Allison Vaillancourt writing in the Chronicle of Higher Ed   

In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story. -Jeff Bezos

Child rearing is an art

Child rearing is an art, and what makes art art is that it is doing several things at once. The trick is accepting limits while insisting on standards. Character may not be malleable, but behavior is. The same parents can raise a dreamy, reflective girl and a driven, competitive one—the job is not to nurse her nature but to help elicit the essential opposite: to help the dreamy one to be a little more driven, the competitive one to be a little more reflective.

Adam Gopnik writing in The New Yorker

In giving advice, seek to help, not please your friend. -Solon

Articles of Interest – June 4

***INTERNET

Mary Meeker’s 2018 internet trends report: the most highly anticipated slide deck in Silicon Valley  Recode

GDPR For Publishers: What You Need to Know  Media Vine

A scientific list of the most popular memes on the internet  Quartz

***TECHNOLOGY

Your next potato chip could come from a 3-D printer  MIT Tech Review  

Watch What Happens Inside the Body When You Talk  Curiosity

Microsoft confirms it's buying GitHub for $7.5 billion  Engadget

The battle for responsible technology  Poynter

***BIG DATA & AI

Who Is Going To Make Money In AI? Here’s an educated guess  Towards Data Science

How data science and the role of data scientist evolved over the years  Analytics India

Why Thousands of Researchers Are Boycotting Nature’s Upcoming AI Journal  Gizmodo

To Build Truly Intelligent Machines, Teach Them Cause and Effect  Quantum Magazine

Satellite imagery is revolutionizing the world. But should we always trust what we see?  The Conversation

Notes from Coursera Deep Learning courses by Andrew Ng  Slide Share: TessFerrandez

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Survey: Which  Social Media Platforms among Teens  Pew Research Center   

I wrote a negative Yelp review — and it made my life a nightmare  New York Post 

Trust is the new currency of the digital age (opinion)   Business Times

How Instagram’s algorithm works  Tech Crunch

Facebook Tried to Rein In Fake Ads: It Fell Short in a California Race  New York Times  

Avoiding Career Death by Twitter  TechNewsWorld

***FACEBOOK

The entire country of Papua New Guinea will have access to Facebook turned off for a month  Post Courier

Facebook's decision to kill its "Trending" feature proves that algorithms are not always the answer  Quartz

Facebook is shutting down trending topics feature  CNN

One Woman's Facebook Success Story: A Support Group For 1.7 Million  NPR

Facebook defends sharing user data with phone makers  CNN

***MOBILE

America is losing the war against robocalls  Economist

A New Threat to Your Finances: Cell-Phone Account Fraud  Comsumer Reports  

***PRIVACY

Does China’s digital police state have echoes in the West?  Economist

How Americans have viewed government surveillance and privacy since Snowden leaks  Pew Research Center

***PRODUCING MEDIA

Drones Are Revolutionizing the Way Film and TV Is Made  TIME

Canon isn't selling film cameras any more  Quartz

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

Print gets a lot more advertising than eyeballs.. and mobile is just the opposite  Harvard’s Nieman Lab  

***JOURNALISM

These are the most important announcements Apple made for news publishers today  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

Roseanne’s comments get 16 times the coverage of the estimated Hurricane Maria’s toll of 4,600 deaths  Columbia Journalism Review

The Wall Street Journal reporter who doggedly kept asking a simple question - does this technology even work?  New York Magazine

It’s exhausting being a reporter in the Trump era: A new documentary captures the toll at the New York Times  Washington Post  

How Alexandra Bell Is Disrupting Racism in Journalism  The New Yorker

So you wanna be a journalist?  Columbia Journalism Review

There is no fake news in Showtime's winning 'Fourth Estate'  Baltimore Sun

AP Stylebook update: Multiple emoji are emoji  Poynter

NPR is getting rid of some of its news blogs (with more blog “changes” to come)  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

***JOURNALISM MISTAKES

Many journalists fail to question new Cancer Society colorectal cancer screening guidelines   Health News Review

New York Times Cites Old Mistaken Study  Andrew Gelman Blog

***JOURNALISM OUTSIDE THE U.S.

A Reporter Was Beaten to Death in Mexico, Becoming the Sixth Journalist Killed There This Year  TIME

Russian journalist and Kremlin critic shot and killed in Ukraine  The Hill

The killing of a journalist exposed something rotten in Slovakia  Economist

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Cities where newspapers closed saw government costs increase “as a result of the lack of scrutiny over local deals”  CityLab

Tronc buys Virginian-Pilot from Landmark for $34 million  Sun Herald

Tronc’s selling, and buying, and just generally shapeshifting  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

***FAKE NEWS

'Messing with the Enemy' takes on dark side of social media  MSNBC

Only You Can Fight Fake News  WIRED

The Legal War on Alex Jones  The New Republic

Facebook is Giving Scientists its Data to Fight Misinformation  WIRED

The Londoner: Is anti-fake news unit a fake itself?  Evening Standard

***STUDENT MEDIA

After papers were removed, a Seattle student newsroom pushed back  Columbia Journalism Review

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Life Beyond the Glowing Screen  Becoming (my blog)

Japan’s biggest bestseller is a philosophy book on “The Courage to be Disliked”  Quartz

***GRAMMAR

The weasel voice in journalism: Don’t blame grammar for the shortcomings of headline-writers  Economist

National Spelling Bee 2018: The most commonly misspelled words at the national spelling bee  Quartz

***WRITING & READING

Resources and ideas from a collaborative session on interactive fiction at this year’s Computers & Writing conferences  Chronicle of Higher Ed

To make beat writing more compelling, let’s rescue the offbeat story  Poynter  

Interactive fiction in the classroom  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LANGUAGE

A Week on Language Twitter: new words and usages on social media  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Filler words: One of the toughest part of a foreign language to master  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LITERATURE

The best children's books of the year for 2018  Bank Street

Writing Tips And Pointed Opinions From The Late Tom Wolfe  Forbes

Original map of Winnie-the-Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood  Flowing Data

***GENDER  

11 women executives on the greatest risk they ever took  Fast Company

How Reese Witherspoon female-driven storytelling company is channeling women’s voices into top-tier entertainment  Fast Company

Women are more likely to wait longer for a health diagnosis and to be told it’s ‘all in their heads’  BBC

One More To Go: Illinois Ratifies Equal Rights Amendment  NPR

How Disney is turning women from across the company into coders  Fast Company 

The Hidden Women of Architecture and Design  The New Yorker

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

68% of white evangelicals think America shouldn’t house refugees  Vox

At least 8 white nationalists running for federal office  MSNBC

***FREE SPEECH

Attorney General Jeff Sessions pens op-ed saying that the Justice Department is defending free speech on college campuses  USA Today

Why the struggle for academic freedom is the struggle for democracy  Chronicle of Higher Ed

A student at the center of a dispute over free speech can return to his religious studies class  Post Gazette

***LEGAL ISSUES

PUBG Corp. Sues Epic Games for Copyright Infringement  Variety

He Said No, Fox News Used His Images Anyway  PetaPixel

The Supreme Court Just Sided With The Baker Who Wouldn't Make A Gay Wedding Cake. What Does The Ruling Actually Mean?  Digg

Advocacy groups knock ‘unjust’ copyright-extending CLASSICS Act  TechCrunch  

***ART & DESIGN

The Intuitive and the Unlearnable: Why some designs won’t ever stop sucking  Medium

Want to make great art? Stop making art  Fast Company

***MUSIC

Was Classic Rock a Sound, or a Tribe?  The Atlantic

10 Surprising Skills You Gain From Music Lessons  Daily Infographic

***STUDENT LIFE

Forty-five percent of teens are online ‘almost constantly’ — and they don’t know if it’s good for them  Washington Post

Put a Ring on It? Millennial Couples Are in No Hurry  New York Times

***JOBS & INTERNSHIPS

What Your Resume Should Look Like in 2018  TIME

These paid journalism internships are still accepting applications  Student Press Law Center

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

Is it possible for two people to simultaneously sexually assault each other? The potential excesses of policing sex on campus  The Atlantic

Equipping Women to Stop Campus Rape (opinion)  New York Times

Older teens less likely to think sexting would get them in trouble  Journalism Resources  

#MeToo Complaints Swamp Human Resource Departments  NPR

***BUSINESS & FINANCE

This Map Shows the Best-Paying Company In Every State  TIME

The myth of outliving your retirement savings  Reuters

***ENVIRONMENT

Climate Change: “Could You Do Any Better Than We Did?” Two volumes for future generations  Boston Review  

***HEALTH

Podcast: The new & (un)improved doctor-patient relationship  Health News Review

Coffee benefits: Caffeine makes you more social, as well as active Quartz

Health alert said American diagnosed with brain injury like reported in Cuba  Washington Post

LA Times provides careful take on early brain/diabetes research–except for the headline  Health News Review

Elder Abuse (video/language)  John Oliver

The noise all around us that’s destroying our hearing, explained One in four adults in the US show signs of noise-induced hearing loss  Vox

***HEALTH: DRUGS & PILLS

Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis: What journalists need to know  Journalists Resources

Study finds most popular vitamin, mineral supplements provide no health benefit  Fox 8

New risk calculator could change the aspirin, statins, and blood pressure medications some people take  Stat News

***HEALTH TECH

Ingestible “bacteria on a chip” could help diagnose disease  MIT  

Computers can diagnose stroke victims now  The Week

***HEALTH & CHILDREN

A new study links early childhood obesity to lower IQ scores  Quartz

Gene therapy is saving children’s lives—but screening to discover who needs it is lagging behind  MIT Tech Review

***SCIENCE

Questioning Truth, Reality and the Role of Science  Quantam Magazine  

Henrietta Lacks Gets Immortalized in a Portrait: It’s Now on Display at the National Portrait Gallery  Open Culture

There Are No Laws of Physics: There’s Only the Landscape  Quantam Magazine  

***PHILOSOPHY

The Russian Philosopher Who Sought Immortality in the Cosmos  Atlas Obscura

Why read Aristotle today?  Aeon

***HISTORY

The only World War II battle fought on North American soil  WNCT  

***RESEARCH

Can It Really Be True That Half of Academic Papers Are Never Read?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

All publishers are predatory - some are bigger than others  Scielo

Fewer than two out of every 10,000 scientific papers remain influential in their field decades after publication  Nature Index

Authorship credit varies across scientific disciplines — and even within the same field  Nature

Alphabetical name ordering in Research Harms Collaborations  London School of Economics and Political Science

South Korean apps are outsourcing academic fraud to freelance ghostwriters  Quartz

***RELIGION 

Televangelist seeks donations for $54M private jet, claims God is behind the idea  NOLA

Study: Infant Mortality Rates Higher in Christian Fundamentalist Communities  US News & World Report

American Bible Society to require church attendance, sexuality codes  Religious News Service

Atheists Are Sometimes More Religious Than Christians  The Atlantic

Southern Baptist seminary drops bombshell: Why Paige Patterson was fired  Washington Post

Joel Osteen and the making of Lakewood Church  Houston Chronicle

Christ art removed from Lexington SC church for being Catholic  The State

Judge: 'In God We Trust' on Money isn't Religion Endorsement  Associated Press

Jesse Duplantis says he's not asking followers to buy him a private jet: He just wants them to 'believe’  CNN

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

Dinesh D'Souza, America's greatest conservative troll, explained  Vox

Trump Pardons Dinesh D’Souza and Weighs Leniency for Rod Blagojevich and Martha Stewart  New York Times

Conservative Christian attorneys gain influence under Trump  Associated Press

***RELIGION OUTSIDE THE U.S.

China is secretly imprisoning close to 1 million people to get them to renounce their religion  Business Insider

Key findings about religion in Western Europe  Pew Research Center

***GOOD NEWS

Couple discovers safe filled with cash, gold, diamonds worth $52G in their backyard  New York Daily News

Two pilots spend savings on plane to rescue migrants in Mediterranean Sea  NBC News

How The Internet Is Changing The Way Dogs Find Homes  BuzzFeed

***HIGHER ED

The University Is Not an Aristocracy: So why do we value selectivity over social mobility?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

When a College Takes on Student Poverty, it can only do so much  The Atlantic

Higher-Ed Groups Warn Against Visa Restrictions for Chinese Students  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Christian College president apologizes for equating sexual assaults with gay relationships  Des Moines Register

Recent grad to Christian colleges: LGBT issues not going away  M-live

Catholic University of America faculty vote raises stakes in battle with president  Religion News Service

***LIBERTY UNIVERSITY

Liberty U is making a film about a man who says God told him Trump would become president  Chronicle of Higher Ed

The Tense History behind Jimmy Carter’s Liberty U. Commencement Address  Religious Dispatches

What to expect from a new Liberty University film  Washington Post

***TEACHING

What 6 Colleges Learned About Improving Their Online Courses  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Ideas for Creating an Effective Syllabus for Online Learning  Faculty Focus  

***ACADEMIC LIFE

A Self-Care Strategy for Beleaguered Academics: Every teacher needs a magic briefcase  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Don’t Blame Tenured Academics for the Adjunct Crisis  Chronicle of Higher Ed

life beyond the screen

Kevin Kelly writes, “Even the tiniest disposable item with a bar code shares a thin sliver of our collective mind.” Sharing in the increasing webness of things surrounding us is essential part of functioning in our digital society. If you have hung out on the cusp of technological adoption, waiting for the latest and most advanced devices to drop, you know how technology can monopolize our time and question any non-technological solution as inferior or important. The Internet is our exotic travel destination, a portal to bossy technologies.

Here’s the choice you have: You can grab the bullhorn of digital culture and plug into the belly of the machine or we can keep the cornucopia of technology at arm’s length to more easily remember who we are apart from it.

Somewhere there’s a balance between chasing the latest fad (simply because it is new) and becoming irrelevant to the conversation (because we choose to ignore transitions, remaining in our comfort zone). These extremes are the simplistic ditches we can fall into, when we would rather not have to regularly think hard and deal with uncertainty…and they will remain the temptations of anyone involved in the process of journalism.

As you decide where to place yourself in the technological embrace, remember there’s life beyond the screen.

Stephen Goforth

the important thing

The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.

 –Charles Dubois

the glowing screen

When we grab a glowing screen first thing in the morning what are we trusting for nourishment? What are we imprinting on our day? 

When your appliances work as police informants

Suppose police suspect a man of organizing a political protest that turned violent, muses the ACLU’s Nathan Wessler, who argued the Carpenter case (on digital privacy) for the ACLU before the Supreme Court. The suspect’s smart meter and thermostat confirm that a handful of people showed up at his home and stayed there the two nights before the demonstration; the suspect’s smart refrigerator ordered a bunch of soda and snack food on those days, which was all consumed; after someone asked Alexa to play some music in his living room, a voice in the background said, “Tomorrow, we’re going to really show them”; and that night, the suspect’s smart mattress recorded him sleeping fitfully and his heart beating faster than normal. The police arrest the man on conspiracy and other charges. He eventually proves he’s innocent – some old friends visited from out of town, and planned a day of sightseeing—but not before a legal nightmare turns his life upside down.

 "There’s not a person among us who doesn’t have private aspects of their life that could create difficulty for them if they were exposed,” Wessler says. “And misinterpreted.”

David Henry writing in 1843

do well with what you have

The trouble is, you think you have time. -Jack Kornfield

Articles of Internet - May 28

***TECHNOLOGY

Few Rules Govern Police Use of Facial-Recognition Technology  Wired

New Tech May Make Prosthetic Hands Easier for Patients to Use  North Carolina State

So Long, Glassholes: Wearables Aren't Science Projects Anymore  Wired

The Murky Legal Consequences of Smart Homes  The Marshall Project

Scientists figured out a way to implant holographic brain images  Daily Dot

6 Essential Steps to Becoming a Drone Pilot  Story Hunter

***BIG DATA & AI

How facial software (allegedly) can identify liars  The Week

Results from KD Nuggets software poll for analytics, data Science, machine Learning shows python’s strength   KD Nuggets

There is little agreement over how to define Data Scientist: Scores of people are rushing to add it to their resumes whether or not it's accurate  LA Times

Is learning to code in middle age a fool’s errand or a committed act of digital citizenship?  1843 Magazine

A new machine-learning system tries to predict whether an online conversation is going to get nasty right from the get-go  Technology Review

Google & Coursera are launching a machine learning specialization consisting of five courses  Tech Crunch

Why the future of AI depends on high school girls  The Atlantic

There are some decent free online training courses designed to get you up to speed on Hadoop  Business News Daily

Escaping the scandals but getting the big data right  Information Age

 ***SOCIAL MEDIA

Pro-ISIS propaganda finds fertile ground on Google Plus platform  The Hill

Trump Can't Block Critics on Twitter. What This Means For You  Wired

***FACEBOOK

Facebook is beating Snapchat on its own invention — stories: Why stories have taken off  Axios

‘Content Providers’ Easily Find Ways Around Facebook’s Rules  Snopes

‘A fun adventure, not a business’: The Weather Channel stopped publishing video on Facebook  Digiday

Facebook is updating how you can authenticate your account logins  Tech Crunch

***PRIVACY

Amazon is selling police departments a real-time facial recognition system  The Verge

California Eyes Data Privacy Measure  NPR

Personal data and the rapid recent evolution of cybersecurity laws - the dust is, as of yet, far from settled.  Law.com

***INTERNET

F.B.I.’s Urgent Request: Reboot Your Router to Stop Russia-Linked Malware  New York Times

Stealthy, Destructive Malware Infects Half a Million Router  Wired

The Quiet Death of WHOIS  Plagiarism Today 

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA 

Media’s Two-Front Spending War Visualization   Traffic

Impatient, distracted consumers upend the media landscape  Axios 

3 Steps for Bringing the Oldest Form of Advertising Into the Digital Age  Adweek

Great Big Story on Building a Video Storytelling Powerhouse from Scratch — Facebook Live  StoryHunter 

***JOURNALISM

New mobile journalism guide has free resources for reporters, newsrooms  International Journalists’ Network

The Marketplace of Ideas is failing the journalism industry (opinion)  Daily Tar Heel 

These newsrooms are reinventing journalism education with audience members in the lead   Membership Puzzle

Radio presenters and journalists among top jobs for psychopaths  Radio Today

Long Beach Press-Telegram Down to One Reporter; Departing Staff Plan New Pub  LA Business Journal

Facebook shows once again that it does not understand or value journalism  CNBC

Who is watching local TV news? New research provides some surprises  Medium

How the Media Helped Legitimize Extremism  Wired

In portraying a silver lining to Santa Fe school shooting, news stories mislead public about GoFundMe campaign for victim’s husband  Health News Review

What is it that journalism studies is studying these days?  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

The Coming Splinternet: How the GDPR Could Threaten Journalism (opinion)  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

Showtime's ‘Fourth Estate’ shows how the journalism sausage is made  Poynter

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

The Hard Truth at Newspapers Across America: Hedge Funds Are in Charge  Bloomberg

News Radio Audience Jumps Following Hurricanes  Nielsen

How The Washington Post is building its tech platform, Arc  Digiday

Elon Musk wants to fix media mistrust with a dopey rating system. There’s a better way.  Washington Post

***FAKE NEWS

Is your fake news about immigrants or politicians? It all depends on where you live  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

Families of Sandy Hook victims, FBI agent file defamation lawsuit against right-wing radio host Alex Jones  ABC News

From ‘news literate’ to ‘news fluent’, the best fake news researchers, and the elimination of public editors  International Journalism Festival  Medium 

Facebook Opens Up About False News  Wired

How Snopes keeps fact-checking in the era of fake news overload (podcast)  2 girls, 1 podcast

Based on the exact words you type Google is giving you drastically different information  Washington Post

Can “Extreme Transparency” Fight Fake News and Create More Trust With Readers?  Harvard’s Nieman Report

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Why You Should Stop Being So Hard on Yourself  New York Times

***GRAMMAR

There Is No ‘There’re’ There  Chronicle of Higher Ed

‘OMG This Is Wrong!’ Retired English Teacher Marks Up a White House Letter and Sends It Back  New York Times

***WRITING & READING

Every story in the world has one of these six basic plots  BBC

Copy Editors Are OCD. Thank Goodness  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LANGUAGE

China is becoming more tolerant of some regional Han languages  Economist

Linguists Say We Might Be Able to Communicate With Aliens If We Ever Encounter Them  Mental Floss 

Language activists are trying to make French gender-neutral  Economist

***LITERATURE

The 50 most commonly assigned works of literature at top US colleges  Quartz

Philip Roth Discusses His Writing Process  NPR

Philip Roth (RIP) Creates a List of the 15 Books That Influenced Him Most  Open Culture

***GENDER  

Judge rules that transgender teen is protected by Title IX and the Constitution in bathroom controversy  American Bar Association

How Social Media Became a Pink Collar Job  Wired

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

Study finds that whites commit suicide at higher overall rates than blacks, but black children commit suicide at rates twice as high as white children  Quartz

New study connects white American intolerance and support for authoritarianism  NBC News

***FREE SPEECH

Without respectful discourse, free speech isn’t much more than a hostile shouting match.  The Atlantic

‘Don’t burn the flag’ and 11 more rules for free speech  Washington Post

***LEGAL ISSUES

Who Owns LOVE? A copyright suit over a beloved public artwork  CityLab

Court Applies Pre-Digital Age Law to Digital Age Technology  Law.com

LGBT wedding cake Supreme Court decision looms, but more cases likely  CBS News

Viacom's Victory in 'SpongeBob' Restaurant Trademark Dispute Upheld by Appeals Court  Hollywood Reporter

'Star Trek'/Dr. Seuss Mashup Creator Beats Trademark Claims  Hollywood Reporter

Makers of ‘Sesame Street’ Sue to Get Raunchy Puppet Movie to Change Its Advertising  New York Times

The NFL’s “take a knee” ban is flatly illegal  Vox

A Copyright Small Claims Court? (opinion)  Technology & Marketing Law Blog

***RELIGION

Oregon principal ousted for making LGBTQ students read Bible as punishment  OregonLive 

The group least likely to think the U.S. has a responsibility to accept refugees? White Evangelicals.  Washington Post

Religion Goes to the Movies - Los Angeles Review of Books  LA Review of Books

Conservative Christian guide to nation's capital vows to tell what other tours won't  Washington Post

Jesus would like to connect with you on LinkedIn! Inside the Church of England's digital conversion  Wired

White nationalists protest outside Tennessee church  Fox 17

***SOUTHERN BAPTISTS

Prominent Southern Baptist leader removed as seminary president following controversial remarks about abused women  Washington Post

Amid a Southern Baptist scandal, some evangelical women say the Bible’s gender roles are being distorted to promote sexism  Washington Post

Controversial Southern Baptist leader still set to give prominent sermon in front of thousands  Washington Post

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

From Bible study to Google: How some Christian conservatives fact-check the news and end up confirming their existing beliefs  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

Roman Catholics And Evangelicals Move Apart In Their Political Priorities  NPR

How Christian media is shaping American politics  The Conversation

***ART & DESIGN

What’s Next for Protest Art in the Trump Era?  The Atlantic

Plasticine circuits show how today's tech is tomorrow's art  Engadget

***MUSIC

What makes good music? Composers and listeners disagree  Economist

“This Is America,” the Video, Is a Smash. Will the Song Have Legs?  Slat

***JOBS 

Three clauses freelancers should know (and negotiate), according to lawyers  Columbia Journalism Review

***STATISTICS

P values in display items are ubiquitous and almost invariably significant: A survey of top science journals  PLOS

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

Why Your Next Workplace Harassment Training Might Be in VR  Wired

An economics professor at Harvard is under investigation for allegations of sexual harassment  The Crimson

This Professor Was Accused Of Sexual Harassment For Years. Then An Anonymous Online Letter Did What Whispers Couldn’t.  BuzzFeed 

A rape victim was just awarded $1 billion. Jurors told her: ‘You’re worth something.’  The Daily New

Ex-ESPN Analyst Argues Network Wasn't "Media Company" in Publishing "Fake Texts"  Hollywood Reporter

***SOCIAL ISSUES

Federal officials lost – yes, lost – 1,475 migrant children  Arizona Central 

Why Do Americans Stay When Their Town Has No Future?  Bloomberg

***AMERICA BY THE NUMBERS

America’s graying population in 3 maps  The Conversation

The percentage of American adults identifying as LGBT increased to 4.5% in 2017  Gallup

See the progress towards pot legalization in all 50 states  Thrillist

What Unites and Divides Urban, Suburban and Rural Communities  Pew Research Center

America is changing demographically. Here’s how your county compares  Pew Research Center

Religiously, nonwhite Democrats more similar to Republicans than to white Democrats  Pew Research Center

***BUSINESS & FINANCE

Meet the 2018 CNBC Disruptor 50 companies  CNBC 

See How Your Take Home Pay Compares to Workers Around the World Visualized  HowMuch             

Fed survey shows 40 percent of adults still can't cover a $400 emergency expense  CNBC

***ENVIRONMENT

What a 'Reproducibility Crisis' Committee Found When It Looked at Climate Science  Pacific Standard  

***HEALTH

Subtle hearing loss while young changes brain function: Early damage could open door to dementia, lead author says  Scientific Daily

A nationwide study reported that US cancer deaths have steadily declined for two straight decades  NIH

Scientists have figured out exactly how much you need to exercise to slow your heart’s aging process  Quartz

What Are Screens Doing to Our Eyes—and Our Ability to See?  Wired 

The US FDA says there are only risks, no benefits, for a common painkiller used by teething toddlers  Quartz

***HEALTH & TECHNOLOGY

Spermbots Offer a Promising New Way to Target Cancer  Wired

Ingestible Sensors Electronically Monitor Your Guts  Wired

Digital Ambulance Chasers? Law Firms Send Ads To Patients' Phones Inside ERs  NPR

Deep brain stimulation found to improve diabetes by increasing dopamine release  Science Magazine 

***HEALTH CARE COSTS

An in-network emergency room & he still ended up with an 8K bill: “Even with a PhD in billing, you couldn’t make sure to avoid a surprise bill”  Vox

Vulnerable patients — easy targets for companies willing to sacrifice ethics for profits  The Hill

***FAMILY

Parents sue 30-year-old son to move out of house  WTNH

American parents invented 1,100 new baby names last year  Quartz

***SCIENCE

Science That Is Not Transparent Is Bad Science: Richard Gray On the Citation of Retracted Articles  Wiley

Questioning Truth, Reality and the Role of Science  Quanta Magazine

***PSYCHOLOGY

The Amazing Psychology of Japanese Train Stations  CityLab

Personal Space Is an Elaborate, Unconscious Dance  The Atlantic

Schizophrenia ‘risk genes’ are not so risky if the mother’s pregnancy was healthy  Stat News

Mapping the rising tide of suicide deaths across the United States  Washington Post

This Is Why Cognitive Biases Are Harmful (visualization)  Daily Infographic

Depression and Anxiety Speed Up Cognitive Aging, Scientists Find  Sci-News

***PHILOSOPHY

The "Insanely Low Acceptance Rates" of Philosophy Journals  Daily Nous

The Map of Philosophy (video)  Open Culture 

***HISTORY

The Rulers of Europe: Every Year (video)  Cottereau

What Middle-Eastern thinkers discovered long before the west (visualization)  Information is Beautiful

***RESEARCH

Writing a page-turner: how to tell a story in your scientific paper  The London School of Economics And Political Science

Systems Matter: Research Environments and Institutional Integrity  Harvard 

There is little evidence to suggest peer reviewer training programmes improve the quality of reviews paper  The London School of Economics And Political Science

Non-preferred reviewers and editorial discretion  Small Pond Science

How to review a manuscript: Journal editors identify 10 key steps for would-be reviewers American  Psychological Association

What’s Up with Data Citations?  Scholarly Kitchen

***RESEARCH & REPRODUCIBILITY

Before reproducibility must come preproducibility  Nature

A survey on data reproducibility and the effect of publication process on the ethical reporting of laboratory research  Clinic Ancerres

***HIGHER ED

New Federal Data Also Show Enrollment Declines  Inside Higher Ed

In a setback for UMass Boston, all finalists for top job withdraw following faculty criticism  Boston Globe

After ex-employee is accused of fraud, UT hires a former federal prosecutor to investigate internal controls  Texas Tribune

A Federal Panel Tries to Regulate Accreditation. But Is Anyone Paying Attention?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

College Does Help the Poor (opinion)  New York Times

Why Is Undergraduate College Enrollment Declining?  NPR

USC President C.L. Max Nikias to step down  LA Times 

Calvin College will change its name to Calvin University by 2020  Christianity Today

DeVos looks to ease rules on religious colleges  Politico

Fuller Seminary to Leave Pasadena Campus  Christianity Today

Small Christian College Announces It Will Close  Inside Higher Ed

***TEACHING

Trauma Can Interfere With Students’ Learning. Here’s Something Professors Can Do to Help. Chronicle of Higher Ed

The Second Wave of MOOC Hype is Here, and it’s Online Degrees  Ed Surge

Do Photos of Teaching on Your Campus Look Staged and Static?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Trauma Can Interfere With Students’ Learning. Here’s Something Professors Can Do to Help.  Chronicle of Higher Ed 

Teaching Eval Shake-Up  Inside Higher Ed

***STUDENT LIFE

Proud mom orders ‘Summa Cum Laude’ cake online. Publix censors it  Washington Post

'Disgusting and horrible': Community reacts to UO statement after student dies at Shasta Lake  OregonLive

College kids want to save the world, just don’t ask them to volunteer  Fast Company 

Democrats pin midterm hopes on millennials  Politico

Binghamton University campus police surveil students and threaten prosecution over anti-racism flyers  The FIRE

Inside Gay Students’ Fight to Be Heard at BYU  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***STUDENTS & FINANCE

Should Businesses Help Employees Pay Off Their Student Loans?  The Atlantic

Ed Dept Announces Opportunity for Student Loan Borrowers to be Reconsidered for Public Service Loan Forgiveness  Ed.gov

By the Numbers: Changes in Graduate Student Debt Over Time  New America

Eligible for financial aid, nearly a million students never get it  Hechinger Report

***ACADEMIC LIFE

U. of Kentucky Moves to Fire Tenured Professor for Telling Students to Buy His Book  Kentucky.com

A researcher has agreed to leave WSU in return for a $300,000 settlement over infringement of his academic freedom  Seattle Times

***STUDENT MEDIA  

Missouri scraps student press freedom bill for third year in a row  Student Press Law Center

We never planned to work in a college newspaper. Here’s why we’re glad we did  The Collegian

Principal won't renew contract for one of nation’s top journalism advisers  Student Press Law Center

A college journalist learns why independent press critical to democracy  The Morning Call

Suppressed Press at Christian Colleges: New student coalition is alleging religious institutions are regularly squashing student newspapers  Inside Higher Ed

Listen to the Young

Listen hardest to people younger than you. They are ignorant and generally have lowly jobs, but their fragments of knowledge will be more cutting-edge than yours. -Simon Kuper