March 29, 2019

Embracing Life as it Is

March 29, 2019/ Stephen Goforth

For millennia, philosophers have understood that we don’t see life as it is; we see a version distorted by our hopes, fears, and other attachments. The Buddha said, “Our life is the creation of our mind.” Marcus Aurelius said, “Life itself is but what you deem it.” The quest for wisdom in many traditions begins with this insight. Early Buddhists and the Stoics, for example, developed practices for reducing attachments, thinking more clearly, and finding release from the emotional torments of normal mental life.

The goal is to minimize distorted thinking and see the world more accurately. When people improve their mental hygiene in this way—when they free themselves from the repetitive irrational thoughts that had previously filled so much of their consciousness—they become less depressed, anxious, and angry.

Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt writing in The Atlantic

March 28, 2019

Patriotism & nationalism

March 28, 2019/ Stephen Goforth

Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism when hate of people other than your own comes first. -Charles de Gaulle

March 27, 2019

Mental illness: Out of the shadows

March 27, 2019/ Stephen Goforth

Mental illnesses account for more suffering and premature death in rich countries than heart disease and strokes, or than cancer. One study estimates that depression is 50% more disabling than angina, asthma or arthritis. Men with mental-health problems die 20 years earlier than those without, according to the British Medical Association, mostly from causes other than suicide. That is partly because mental illnesses make physical ones tougher to treat, and because sufferers often live less healthily. Research has linked even moderate levels of stress to lower life-expectancy.

Half of adults with long-term mental conditions suffered their first symptoms before turning 14. Left untreated, even moderate conditions such as anxiety hurt school results and the prospects for employment. For serious conditions such as psychosis, prompt treatment greatly improves outcomes.

From The stigma of mental illness is fading in The Economist

March 26, 2019

The last of the human freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances. - Victor Frankl (born March 26, 1905)

March 26, 2019/ Stephen Goforth

March 25, 2019

Articles of Interest - March 25

March 25, 2019/ Stephen Goforth

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

How “Baby Shark” was manufactured in a Korean toddler entertainment factory Vice

Nexstar to Sell 19 TV Stations for $1.32 Billion Hollywood Reporter

***JOURNALISM

Google News Initiative launches new fact checking tools, supporting more subscription models 9to5Google

18 journalists on how—or whether—they use tape recorders Columbia Journalism Review***FAKE NEWS

Conspiracy Theories Can’t Be Stopped FiveThirtyEight

WhatsApp wants to label viral forwards to rein in fake news – but it’ll have to do more The Next Web

How OpenAI's Fake News Warnings Triggered Actual Fake News PC Mag

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Instagram Is Full of Conspiracy Theories and Extremism The Atlantic

China’s new social media craze: Paying random people to shower you with over-the-top compliments CNBC

Facebook is hiring 22 people for its secretive blockchain division The Next Web

***PRIVACY & SECURITY

Education and Science Giant Elsevier Left Users’ Passwords Exposed Online Mother Board

Watchdog: FEMA wrongly released personal data of victims Associated Press

Help may be on the way for those suffering from “password hell” Wall Street Journal (sub. req.’d)

Facebook left millions of passwords readable by employees Associated Press ***TECHNOLOGY

Better Living Through Crispr: Growing Human Organs in Pigs Wired

Everything Apple announced at its ‘show time’ event TechCrunch

***BIG DATA & AI

Big data got us here, but small data will get us the rest of the way Axios

Stanford University launches the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Stanford

CERN discovery of a tiny effect in particles indicating a difference in the way matter and antimatter behave—one that physicists have been hunting for decades Nature

How Walmart uses graphics processing units for better demand forecasting Datanami

***PERSONAL GROWTH

No one was paying attention Becoming (my blog)

24 Common Cognitive Biases: A Visual List of the Psychological Systems Errors That Keep Us From Thinking Rationally Open Culture

***GRAMMAR

Author of grammar guide traces language love to cookie sign (video) MSNBC

***WRITING & READING

The rise of robot authors: is the writing on the wall for human novelists? The Guardian

Why Do Wite-Out and Liquid Paper Still Exist? The Atlantic

***LANGUAGE

16-Year-Old Swedish Environmental Activist, Has Been Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize Mental Floss

The man bringing dead languages back to life BBC

***LITERATURE

How 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' Became a Classic The Atlantic

Meet 10 Emerging Writers Who Just Won the 2019 Whiting Award The Cut

***GENDER

U.S. Mathematician Becomes First Woman To Win Abel Prize, 'Math's Nobel' NPR

Sports-Bra Outrage And a Fight Over Everyday Sexism Chronicle of Higher Ed

Journal Issues Revised Version of Controversial Paper That Questioned Why Some Teens Identify as Transgender Chronicle of Higher Ed

A Transgender Student Said He's Being Barred From Running For Prom King Buzzfeed News

The narrowing, but persistent, gender gap in pay Pew Research Center

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

Why white nationalist terrorism is a global threat: The Christchurch killer acted alone but followed a terrifying trend Economist

Supreme Court Justices Seem Incredulous At Repeated Racial Bias In Jury Selection NPR

A study of nearly 100 million traffic stops: black drivers are 20% more likely to get pulled over CNN

50 Years Ago Students Shut Down This College To Demand Ethnic Studies Courses NPR

A third of the convictions overturned because of DNA involved witnesses who identified the wrong person who was of another race New York Times

Laila Lalami: ‘White supremacists target Muslims but the threat isn't taken as seriously as other forms of terror’ The Guardian

***FREE SPEECH

UC Berkeley in spotlight as Trump expected to issue campus free-speech order San Francisco Chronicle

Trump’s Free-Speech Order Could Have Been Harsher: Higher-Ed Leaders Still Don’t Approve Chronicle of Higher Ed

A student was briefly suspended for social media posts, angering many on campus: He believes his rhetoric was judged as a threat, unfairly, because he is Muslim Inside Higher Ed

***LEGAL ISSUES

An academic who helped a company gather data on millions of Facebook users is suing for defamation New York Times

A coalition of 41 media organizations is urging a court to uphold a decision dismissing a professor’s defamation lawsuit Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Jeanine Pirro Beats Defamation Lawsuit From Black Lives Matter Activist Hollywood Reporter

***CRIME

Here are the stories about police misconduct uncovered so far by a new media partnership LA Times

Pregnant Behind Bars: What We Do And Don't Know About Pregnancy And Incarceration NPR

***STATISTICS

800 scientists say it’s time to abandon “statistical significance” P-values and “statistical significance” are widely misunderstood: Here’s what they actually mean Vox

The Guardian view on statistics in sciences: gaming the (un)known (opinion) The Guardian

***RELIGION

Templeton Prize winner believes science, spirituality are complementary The Boston Pilot

Evidence of improper voting raises questions about Methodist gay clergy vote Religion News

Did John MacArthur visit the Motel where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated just hours after it happened? Throckmorton Blog

‘Nones’ now as big as evangelicals, Catholics in the US Religious News Service

***RELIGION OUTSIDE THE U.S.

4 facts about religion in New Zealand Pew Research Center

China Tells Christianity To Be More Chinese Christianity Today

***ISLAM

The baffling argument that ‘Islam is not a religion’ Washington Post

Evangelicals and Muslims see similarities in faiths and favor closer ties, survey says Religious News Service

***RELIGION & FINANCES

LifeWay to Close All 170 Christian Stores Christianity Today

Christian financial planner praised by Robert Jeffress facing Ponzi scheme charges Religious News Service

***THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH

395 Catholic priests, church staff accused of sex misconduct in new Chicago Sun Times

Pope Francis wants psychological testing to prevent problem priests. But can it really do that? Washington Post

West Virginia sues Catholic diocese, alleging it knowingly employed pedophiles The Hill

***RELIGION AND LGBT

Christian group drops lawsuit over Austin's LGBT protections Chronicle of Higher Ed

Google resists pressure to pull LGBT "conversion therapy" app Axios

Michigan will no longer fund adoption agencies that deny LGBT parents Washington Post

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

Secrecy surrounding briefing for ‘faith-based media’ raises eyebrows MSNBC

***GOOD NEWS

Man with Down Syndrome honored for working at same McDonald's for 27 years 11 Alive

104-year-old woman arrested BBC

Blind runner, guide dog trio makes history in NYC Half Marathon CNN

Twelve-year-old Former intensive care patient returns to play guitar for newborns Health Maters

Former wounded warrior is spending his retirement volunteering at Walter Reed The Week

Man gifts car to stranger during trade-in at El Cajon dealership 10 News

Woman Who Was Smallest Baby Born in Texas Now Works at Same Hospital People

Dad's Adopted Daughter Turns Out to Be Perfect Kidney Donor Match Inside Edition

***ART & DESIGN

The very mathematical history of a perfect color combination Wired

Sean Adams's The Designer's Dictionary of Type explains famous fonts Fast Company

9 Photo Stories That Will Challenge Your View Of The World BuzzFeed News

Web Design Trends of 2019 [Infographic] SocialMediaToday

***MUSIC

The Oral History of the Les Paul Guitar

Why music affects your productivity Quartz

What Will Happen When Machines Write Songs Just as Well as Your Favorite Musician? Mother Jones

The Case for Why Captain Beefheart's Awful Sounding Album, Trout Mask Replica, Is a True Masterpiece Open Culture

In Times of Crisis, We Need Classical Music What will we lose if Bach and Beethoven disappear from our schools and concert halls? The Walrus

***FILM

How ‘God’s Not Dead’ Perpetuated the Modern Evangelical Victim Narrative (opinion) Relevant Magazine

***STUDENT MEDIA

USC's Student Newspaper Published A Brutal Editorial About The Cheating Scandal LAist

***STUDENT LIFE

Poll: 74% of parents admit to making appointments for their adult children KTVU

New data shows more than half of young people in America don't have a romantic partner Washington Post

***VIDEO GAMES

How Designers Engineer Luck Into Video Games Nautil

Google Unveils Plan for Video Games Streaming Service Hollywood Reporter

***FREELANCE WRITING

Writers for love & sex short fiction platform of Slide Stories

Freelance reporters with an interest in state/local policy based in West Coast or Midwest Stateline.org

Freelance pitches on Asian American / Pacific Islander issues Hyphen Magazine

Emergent science and technology story pitches Futurism

Freelance pitches The North Star

Four paid fellowships Mother Jones

Freelance writer (night+weekend Gizmodo (remote)

***SOCIAL ISSUES

US government uses several black-site shelters to detain immigrant children Reveal

California Wildfire Survivors Say They’re Living In Dire Conditions And There’s Little Help Buzzfeed News

Canada’s becoming a tech hub thanks to Donald Trump immigration policies Reddit

Border Patrol Detained a 9-Year-Old U.S. Citizen for Over a Day on Her Way to School NBC-7

Wellbeing Inequality May Tell Us More About Life Than Income Gallup

***BUSINESS & FINANCE

The lawyers who took on Big Tobacco are aiming at Realtors and their 6% fee MarketWatch

Google, Facebook Scammed For More Than $100 Million In Fake Invoices Media Post

Boeing is doing crisis management all wrong – here’s what a company needs to do to restore the public’s trust The Conversation

***ENVIRONMENT

16-Year-Old Swedish Environmental Activist, Has Been Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize Mental Floss

Shocking autopsy photos show toll of plastic waste on dead whale The Guardian

Adidas Sold 1 Million Eco-Friendly Shoes Made from Ocean Plastic, Plans 11 Million More The Epoch Times

Finland is offering free trips to people in need of happiness lessons Tree Hugger

West Virginia industry group successfully argues the state doesn’t need new clean-water standards because the obese population can tolerate higher levels of cancer-causing chemicals Sustainability Times

The insect apocalypse is not here but there are reasons for concern Economist

***HEALTH

Daily Aspirin to Prevent Heart Attacks No Longer Recommended NBC4 Washington

My Friend’s Cancer Taught Me About a Hole in Our Health System New York Times

***HEALTH: VACCINES

What anti-vaxxers are actually afraid of (it's not all about autism): A new study from the University of Pittsburgh details how the anti-vaxx movement has divided and grown BigThink

Her son died. And then anti-vaxers attacked her CNN

Why the Washington measles outbreak is mostly affecting one specific group Box

Measles Rages in Brooklyn as Some Yeshivas Defy Vaccine Rule The Daily Beast

One Doctor Is Responsible for a Third of All Medical Vaccine Exemptions in San Diego Voice of San Diego

Kentucky Gov. says he intentionally exposed kids to chicken pox instead of giving them vaccine ABC News

5 facts about vaccines in the U.S. Pew Research Center

Why anti-vaxxer mobs go after pro-vaccine doctors online — and what to do about it Mashable

***FOOD

Celery was once as sexy as kale Quartz

***PARENTING

Forget helicopter parents, snowplow parents are killing kids' life skills USA Today

How parents feel about – and manage – their teens’ online behavior and screen time Pew Research Center

***ANIMALS

Man jumps shirtless into frozen Irvington, New York, lake to rescue stranded dogs abc7ny.com

***SCIENCE

Philosophy of Biology: Philosophical bias is the one bias that science cannot avoid eLife

Scientists find new evidence that humans may be sensitive to the Earth’s magnetic field; quick changes caused as much as 60% drop in alpha brain waves Cal Tech

Public confidence in scientists has remained stable for decades Pew Research Center

***PSYCHOLOGY

Psychiatry’s Incurable Hubris The biology of mental illness is still a mystery, but practitioners don’t want to admit it The Atlantic

Here’s A Breakdown Of The 6 Core Emotions We Feel Daily Infographic

How the Brain Links Gestures, Perception and Meaning Quantam

***NEUROSCIENCE

People don't become 'adults' until their 30s, says neuroscientist BBC

Neuroscience proves Nietzsche right: some people are wired to be more spontaneous than others The Conversation

***PHILOSOPHY

Oxford's Free Course Critical Reasoning For Beginners Teaches You to Think Like a Philosopher Open Culture

Philosophers and neuroscientists join forces to see whether science can solve the mystery of free will Science Mag

***ETHICS

Moral technology Self-driving cars don’t drink and medical AIs are never overtired. Given our obvious flaws, what can humans still do best? Aeon

Microsoft will be adding AI ethics to its standard checklist for product release Geekwire

***RESEARCH

Peer reviewed studies soon to be replaced by CAPS LOCK The Science Post

University of Illinois at Chicago Missed Warning Signs of Research Going Awry, Letters Show ProPublica

Error vs. Fraud in Research Medium

We need to relearn how to play nice in peer review University Affairs

Five Article-Writing Mistakes and How to Fix Them The Professor is in

Are Papers with Open Data More Credible? International Conference on Information Springer

Duke University to Pay $112.5 Million to Settle Claims of Research Misconduct New York Times

***HIGHER ED

The Deeper Education Issue Under the College Bribery Scandal Wired

The Growing Crisis of Guns on Campus The New Republic

***HUMANITIES

The Humanities and the Future Scientific American Blog Network

What majoring in the humanities can teach us The Independent Florida Alligator

***TEACHING

Hitler was a ‘good leader,’ guest speaker tells N.J. students. School says it won’t happen again NJ.com

Many Professors Want to Change Their Teaching but Don’t. One University Found Out Why Chronicle of Higher Ed

Trigger Warnings May Not Do Much, Early Studies Suggest New York Times

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Eight academics who were implicated in allegations of plagiarism at the North West University have been found guilty after an investigation by the university City Press

It is “up to scientists to free themselves…from the tyranny of academic publishers by refusing to perform free peer-reviews for them PeerJ

Professor in Prostitution Sting Says He Was Doing 'Research' KAAL-TV

Did Utah professor confess to viewing child porn to class? Desert News

March 25, 2019

No one was paying attention

March 25, 2019/ Stephen Goforth

Hazel Motes walked along down town close to the store fronts but not looking in them. The black sky was underpinned with long silver streaks that looked like scaffolding and depth on depth behind it were thousands of stars that all seemed to be moving very slowly as if they were about some vast construction work that involved the whole universe and would take all time to complete. No one was paying attention to the sky. The stores…stayed open on Thursday nights so that people could have an extra opportunity to see what was for sale.

Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

(Born March 25, 1925)

March 23, 2019

the tragic fate of most individuals

March 23, 2019/ Stephen Goforth

The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born, when we die, although it is the tragic fate of most individuals to die before they are born. -Erich Fromm (born March 23, 1900)

March 22, 2019

Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely at an angle. —Andre Gide

March 22, 2019/ Stephen Goforth

March 21, 2019

Plenty of reason for doubt, anger and sadness

March 21, 2019/ Stephen Goforth

All of us — whatever our natural serotonin level — look around us and see plenty of reason for doubt, anger and sadness. A child dies, a woman is abused, a schoolyard becomes a killing field, a typhoon sweeps away the innocent. If we knew or felt the whole of human suffering, we would drown in despair. By all objective evidence, we are arrogant animals, headed for the extinction that is the way of all things. We imagine that we are like gods, and still drop dead like flies on the windowsill.

The answer to the temptation of nihilism is not an argument — though philosophy can clear away a lot of intellectual foolishness. It is the experience of transcendence we cannot explain, or explain away. It is the fragments of love and meaning that arrive out of the blue — in beauty that leaves a lump in your throat, in the peace and ordered complexity of nature, in the shadow and shimmer of a cathedral, in the unexplained wonder of existence itself.

Michael Gerson, published in the Washington Post

March 20, 2019

Look for the helpers

March 20, 2019/ Stephen Goforth

When I was a boy and would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of "disaster" I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers-so many caring people. – Fred Rogers (Mister Rogers, born March 20, 1928)

March 18, 2019

Articles of Interest - March 18

March 18, 2019/ Stephen Goforth

***JOURNALISM

Why Trump, in the era of fake news, is fueling journalism majors Roll Call

Fox News’ Shep Smith: 'History will poorly reflect' on journalists 'who intentionally misinform' The Hill

How the Seattle Times used a breaking news approach on enterprise reporting Better News

NYTimes Reporter Gets Bogus Defamation Lawsuit Dismissed As Judge Philosophizes About SLAPP Suits Tech Dirt

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

The New York Times Is Planning to Experiment With Blockchain Publishing Coindesk

Decline in readers, ads leads hundreds of newspapers to fold Associated Press

Facebook enters the news desert battle, trying to find enough local news for its Today In feature Nieman Lab

***TECHNOLOGY

Google is reportedly shutting down its in-house VR film studio Tech Crunch

Denver will allow smartphone voting for thousands of people Denver Post

You will soon be able to pay your subway fare with your face in China South China Morning Post

***BIG DATA & AI

No, scientists didn’t just “reverse time” with a quantum computer MIT Tech Review

The NSA makes open source its cybersecurity tool Ghidra Wired

Some scientists are arguing that the latest techniques in machine learning and AI represent a fundamentally new way of doing science Quanta Magazine

How Artificial Intelligence Could Transform Medicine New York Times

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Twitter reveals big changes to conversations and new camera features NBC News

Can Too Much Time Online Make You Depressed? NPR

'Distracted boyfriend' couple star in Hungary pro-family ads BBC

The Hottest Chat App for Teens Is Google Docs The Atlantic

***FACEBOOK

Facebook Can Make VR Avatars Look—and Move—Exactly Like You Wired

Facebook's sloppy data-sharing deals might be criminal Wired

***PRIVACY & SECURITY

Facial recognition's 'dirty little secret': Millions of online photos scraped without consent NBC News

Scientific American: The Internet Knows You Better Than Your Spouse Does Scientific American

Privacy-focused DuckDuckGo Now on Chrome as a Default Search Option Digital Trends

Facebook faces fresh questions over when it knew of data harvesting The Guardian

***PRIVACY & GOOGLE

What Google Knows About You Axios

Google Quietly Adds Search Engine Privacy Option To Chrome - Here's How To Enable It Forbes

***PRODUCING MEDIA

Calendars might be the next great online publishing tool Poynter

***INTERNET

At age 30, World Wide Web is 'not the web we wanted' ABC News

50 Years of the Internet: What we Learned & Where we are going next Tech Crunch

***PERSONAL GROWTH

The Value of Community Becoming (my blog)

Sorry to bother you, but do you say “sorry” too much? What to say instead Ted Ideas

***WRITING & READING

Publisher withdraws Derek Thomas’ Acts commentary due to plagiarism by the Presbyterian Pastor World Magazine

Public demand apology from artist at center of plagiarism scandal Global Times

***LANGUAGE

Mistakes are the engine of language’s evolution Economist

How ‘F’ Sounds Might Break a Fundamental Rule of Linguistics The Atlantic

The fact that people can use “literally” about things that can’t possibly be factual may literally make your blood boil Daily Jstor

***LITERATURE

Why should you read Sylvia Plath? (video) TED-Ed

When William Faulkner Set the World Record for Writing the Longest Sentence in Literature: Read the 1,288-Word Sentence from Absalom, Absalom! Open Culture

So many arguments are given against Shakespeare being gay – yet his sonnets contain their own message, that love is love (opinion) Aeon

***GENDER

If "Guys" Is Problematic, "Ya'll" Is Problematic Too The Stranger

The share of women in legislatures around the world is growing, but they are still underrepresented Pew Research Center

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

Black editor steps down from Alabama newspaper that called for KKK to ‘ride again’ AL.com

Mastermind Behind College Admission Scam Reportedly Faked Ethnicity of Students On Applications BET

***FREE SPEECH

Court: Flipping the bird to cop is free speech Washington Post

How Businesses Are Testing the Limits of Free Speech Wharton

***LEGAL ISSUES

Timbs v. Indiana: Supreme Court on Policing for Profit The Atlantic

Who Owns a Meme? A legal battle over Fortnite raises many questions without clear answers One Zero

'Star Trek'/Dr. Seuss Mashup Deemed Copyright Fair Use by Judge Hollywood Reporter

Two Examples of How Courts Interpret Emojis Technology & Marketing Law Blog

***LEGAL ISSUES: DEFAMATION

Tweet Containing Question Mark Isn’t Defamatory Technology & Marketing Law Blog

Tennessee high court rules for reporter in defamation suit ABC News

Nicholas Sandmann’s legal case against CNN is basically “MAGA” Slate

***CRIME

Public regularly denied access to police officer videos Associated Press

AI is being used to predict crime and send people to jail, but it could be just as biased as humans CNBC

***RELIGION

The Gospel Coalition, pastor CJ Mahoney and Sexual Abuse (opinion) Medium

Teen suspended after posting Bible verses around school, district says there's more to the story WLWT

Survey: Faith groups maintain widespread support for LGBT protection laws National Catholic Reporter

Inside Denver's International Church of Cannabis Cosmopolitan

Giant underwater Jesus draws hundreds to frozen Lake Michigan Fox News

Belief in aliens could be America’s next religion The Outline

***RELIGION OUTSIDE THE U.S.

China official says West using Christianity to undermine country Reuters

Meet Romania's very internet-savvy witch community Wired

***RELIGION AND MONEY

Bible signed by Trump fetches $325 on eBay Fox News

Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability suspends Chicago-area megachurch Religious News Service

ECFA appears to lack meaningful oversight of members’ financies (opinion) The Throckmorton Blog

***THE MOSQUE ATTACK IN NZ

People Leaving Flowers at Mosques After Christchurch Attack TIME

Sikhs In New Zealand Are Helping Victims Of Shooting With Free Langars StoryPick

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

Evangelical approval of Trump remains high, but other religious groups are less supportive Pew Research Center

***GOOD NEWS

Egg Boy' to donate money raised for him towards victims of Christchurch attack New Zealand Herald

New Jersey teen overcomes homelessness, gets accepted to 17 colleges CNN

The "Trashtag Challenge" Is A Wonderful Viral Trend That Has People Picking Up Trash Everywhere BuzzFeed News

You got this!’: Mom who beat stage 4 pancreatic cancer writes open letter to Alex Trebek FOX-8

Chess Champion 8 year old Homeless Refugee New York Times

***REALLY?!

Loose cow ends up at Chick-fil-a following police chase Tribune Media Wire

Sons prank dad with giant billboard for birthday, prompting calls from around the world FOX 4 Kansas City

50 years after graduation, University of Michigan alum receives congratulatory telegram Michigan Live

Vermont town elects goat named Lincoln as its honorary mayor Associated Press

Slovenian woman's hand sawn off 'in insurance fraud' BBC News

***ART & DESIGN

If Your Favorite Typefaces Were Celebrities Medium

Healing the Healers: Art among physicians Forbes

***MUSIC

Tom Odell: “I couldn’t make the music I make today without having learned music theory” Music Radar

The BBC cutting Late Junction is a blow for experimental music The Guardian

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

Senate easily approves bill giving sex abuse victims more time to sue Politico

Gallup Survey: ewer men say sexual harassment in the workplace is major problem The Hill

Women in Economics Report Rampant Sexual Assault and Bias New York Times

***SOCIAL ISSUES

The College Scam Is Exposing All the Legal Ways Rich People Game Society VICE

11 death penalty states haven’t used it in a decade or more Pew Research Center

What the college admissions scandal reveals about the psychology of wealth in America Vox

***BUSINESS & FINANCE

Americans Are Going Bankrupt From Getting Sick Doctors’ bills play a role in 60 percent of personal-bankruptcy filings The Atlantic

***ENVIRONMENT

A relatively painless guide to cutting plastic out of your life Fast Company

Where Will Your Plastic Trash Go Now That China Doesn't Want It? NPR

***HEALTH

Being a couch potato 'bad for the memory of over-50s' BBC

How to Negotiate Down Your Hospital Bills The Atlantic

Brain wave stimulation may improve Alzheimer’s symptoms MIT News

Electronic Health Records' Side Effects: Fraud, Burnout And Headaches NPR

Unvaccinated student is suing for ban during a chicken pox outbreak – Says he refuses to get vaccinated because of his Christian faith BongBong

***TRAVEL

See Photos of This Year's California Super Bloom Travel + Leisure

25 Healthy Travel Airplane Snacks to Keep In Your Carry-On Women’s Day

***FOOD

Good enough to eat? The toxic truth about modern food The Guardian

***PARENTING

How Parents Are Robbing Their Children of Adulthood New York Times

Parents Are Only Happy with Kids When They Can Afford Them Fatherly

***RELATIONSHIPS

How People Meet Their Partners FlowingData

Why millennials are writing contracts for their relationships Washington Post

***ANIMALS

A Couple Created Good Boy, A Line Of Beer Your Dog Can Drink Delish

Barking drones used on farms instead of sheep dogs Radio NZ

Snoop The Dog Is Loving Life In New Home After Being Abandoned LADbible

Georgetown’s Kitten Lounge makes the cat cafe around the corner seem like old mews The Washington Post

Viral cat videos and the man who watches thousands of them BBC

***SCIENCE

Science tends to be presented as a firmly established epistemological method: but it isn't Medium

Brain wave stimulation may improve Alzheimer’s symptoms MIT News

***PSYCHOLOGY

Why Do People Believe in Pseudoscience? Gizmodo

Study: One in Six U.S. Children Has a Mental Illness American Assoc of Family Physicians

***NEUROSCIENCE

Forgetting Uses More Brain Power Than Remembering UT News

Can a Neuroscience Video Game Treat ADHD? Ed Surge

***ETHICS

Moratorium On Gene-Edited Babies Urged By Leading Geneticists NPR

An unpleasant scientific practice called ethics dumping where Rich-world scientists conduct questionable experiments in poor countries Economist

The seven moral rules that supposedly unite humanity Quartz

The Larger Lie Beyond the College Admissions Bribery Case TIME

***RESEARCH

University College Dublin issues apology after computer science students were sent email asking to help develop sex consent app The Journal.ie

Continued Citation of Retracted Radiation Oncology Literature—Do We Have a Problem? Int Journal of Radiation Oncology

Even the head of $6M liver study doesn’t know what’s going on at San Diego VA Inewsource

How to write a good scientific paper Brunel University London The Journal

Improving the peer review process: a proposed market system Scientometrics

Should journals become more like content curators? ResearchResearch

Ten myths around open scholarly publishing PeerJ

The systemic problem behind the rise of retractions Perspectives on Behavior Science

***HIGHER ED

Celebrities among 50 charged in college admissions scam for unworthy kids, prosecutors say Vice

College Access And Inequality NPR

The U. of Southern California Is on the Rise. Why Is It a Hotbed of Scandal? Chronicle of Higher Ed

***CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS

Azusa Pacific University lifts LGBTQ relationship ban (again) San Gabriel Valley Tribune

PCUSA’s only seminary in Western US to become part of nonsectarian Calif University Christian Post

***TEACHING

Research scholars to air problems with using 'grit' at school The Hechinger Report

***STUDENT MEDIA

Students At UCLA Weigh In On College Admissions Scandal With 'Daily Bruin' Editorial NPR

***STUDENT LIFE

No One Asks the Top CEOs Where They Went to College Bloomberg

Orange County, Calif., School District Responds To Students' Offensive Social Media NPR

Millennials really are special, data show Washington Post

***ACADEMIC LIFE

FBI: Former assistant planned to kill professor with ax Associated Press

Adjunct faculty at Elon University vote to unionize Greensboro

March 18, 2019

The Value of Community

March 18, 2019/ Stephen Goforth

I used to think that community was as simple as having friends who bring a lasagna when things fall apart and champagne when things go well. Who pick up your kids from school when you can’t. But I think community is also an insurance policy against life’s cruelty; a kind of immunity against loss and disappointment and rage. My community will be here for my family if I cannot be. And if I die, my kids will be surrounded people who know and love them, quirks and warts and oddities and all.

Jenny Anderson writing in Quartz

March 16, 2019

the power of knowledge

March 16, 2019/ Stephen Goforth

A people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. -James Madison, born March 16, 1751

March 15, 2019

A Successful Team needs Cohesive Personalities

March 15, 2019/ Stephen Goforth

A useful way to think about teams with the right mix of skills and personalities is to consider the two roles every person plays in a working group: a functional role, based on their formal position and technical skill, and a psychological role, based on the kind of person they are. Too often, organizations focus merely on the functional role and hope that good team performance somehow follows. This is why even the most expensive professional sports teams often fail to perform according to the individual talents of each player: There is no psychological synergy. A more effective approach focuses as much on people’s personalities as on their skills.

Dave Winsborough and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic writing in Harvard Business Review