Here’s how you can tell who will do well in College 

The best predictor of who will do well in college is not how smart the student is but their understanding of intelligence: Is it something the student puts on display or is it something that changes with learning?

Many first-year college students are settling into their dorms and getting ready for classes this week. I like to show my students a news story I wrote in graduate school covered in red marks. When that paper was returned to me, I could have said to myself, "I can't do this" or I could adjust, trying different strategies and working out what I needed to do to improve. The first attitude assumes either I can do it or I can't. If you can, you do it immediately. You show your intellegence. The second attitude assumes success is a matter of approach and persistence. You have to ask what might be perceived as dumb questions until you figure it out. When I wrote that paper covered in red marks (and there were many of them) I had no idea I was just a few years away from working at a national news network where writing would be a central part of my job. 

Stephen Goforth  

BrainShift

Under the right circumstances, a subconscious neurobiological sequence in our brains causes us to perceive the world around us in ways that contradict objective reality, distorting what we see and hear. This powerful shift in perception is unrelated to our intelligence, morals, or past behaviors. In fact, we don’t even know it’s happening, nor can we control it. 

(We) found that it happens in two distinct situations: those involving high anxiety and those associated with major reward. 

Under these conditions, all of us would do something just as regrettable as the headline-grabbing stories above, contrary to what we tell ourselves. Phrased differently, we don’t consciously decide to act a fool. Rather, once our perception is distorted, we act in ways that seem reasonable to us but foolish to observers.

Robert Pearl writing in Vox

Articles of Interest - August 26, 2019

***JOURNALISM

BuzzFeed’s new MoodFeed recommends content based on how you’re feeling Tech Crunch  

Hispanic Journalists Group Cuts Ties To Fox News  NPR

The nation’s largest Hispanic journalism group says it no longer wants Fox News sponsoring its convention: Here’s why that’s a bad idea (opinion)  Michael Koretzky blog 

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA  

The rise of advertising activism  Axios

Streaming Video Will Soon Look Like the Bad Old Days of TV  New York Times

Google: Publishers Lose Half Of Ad Revenue From Cookie Blocking Media Post  

***FAKE NEWS

Pick a topic, and this website will generate realistic fake news about it  Fast Company 

They Crowdfunded for Their Dead ‘Baby Boy.’ Cops Say It Was This Doll  The Daily Beast

Misinformation Has Created a New World Disorder  Scientific American

Woman lied about cancer in attempt to get charity to fund £15k wedding  BBC

Misinformation Has Created a New World Disorder  Scientific American

***BIG DATA & AI 

Are we telling stories or just making a point/elucidating an argument and calling it narrative?  Medium 

What’s the difference between analytics and statistics? The Chief Decision Scientist of Google has an answer  Toward Data Science 

The validity of detecting data fabrication using statistical tools  Psyarxiv

While “data science is a team sport” watch for “the warning signs” of watering down the process by “searching for solutions explainable to absolutely everyone”  Nielsen

***INTERNET

Google is cracking down on its employees’ political speech at work  Vox 

How Do I Automatically Expand Gmail Conversations?  Life Hacker 

Why so many of your favorite YouTube videos are secretly infomercials  Washington Post  

***SOCIAL MEDIA 

Facebook's new "clear history" tool doesn't actually delete anything  New York Times

***PRIVACY & SECURITY 

Ransomware Attack Affects Computers In 22 Towns In Texas  NPR 

Just how much our digital lives are tracked: Basically there is no privacy on the internet  New York Times

How to Prevent Spammers From Infiltrating Your Google Calendar  Life Hacker 

***PRODUCING MEDIA

How Conan O’Brien and Other Top Hosts Are Tapping Into the Podcast Revolution  Variety

***PERSONAL GROWTH  

Pluck the Day   Becoming (my blog)

***WRITING & READING

In defense of reading the same book over and over again  Vox  

Gwyneth Paltrow hired personal book curator for her home  Page Six

***LITERATURE

Duplicity, Grace and Violence: New Spanish-Language Fiction New York Times 

Is Fan Fiction a Helpful Literacy Tool?  Jstor 

The religious dimensions of Toni Morrison's literature  Sojourners 

How can academics keep up with the literature? (sub. req.’ed)  Times Higher Ed

***POETRY 

New & Noteworthy Poetry From James Tate, Jana Prikryl and More  New York Times

Poetry book wins top award for theological writing  Premier

***GENDER    

STEM scholarships for women could face more Title IX  challenges  Ed Dive 

Women May Be More Adept Than Men At Discerning Pain  NPR

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES 

Justice Dept. sent anti-Semitic post to immigration judges  Associated Press

The algorithms that detect hate speech online are biased against black people  Vox

On Hyphens and Racial Indicators  Jstor 

Reflecting a demographic shift, 109 U.S. counties have become majority nonwhite since 2000 Pew Research Center  

***FREE SPEECH 

The global gag on free speech is tightening Economist

Don’t Use These Free-Speech Arguments Ever Again  The Atlantic

***LEGAL ISSUES  

Why Child Social Media Stars Need a Coogan Law to Protect Them From Parents Hollywood Reporter  

California Bar Investigator Begins Probe in Exam Leak  Big Law Business 

***CRIME & COURTS

Police Photoshopped His Mug Shot for Lineup: He's Not the Only One  New York Times 

Every crime map needs context. This USC data journalism project aims to scale it  Nieman Lab 

***RELIGION

The Rise of the Bible-Teaching, Plato-Loving, Homeschool Elitists  Christianity Today

Could Trump Drive Young White Evangelicals Away From The GOP?  FiveThirtyEight  

Judge orders veterans’ charity accused of misappropriating funds to cease operations A judge entered a court order prohibiting the Veterans Christian Network from operating  Chicago Sun-Times  

Christians targeted in Burkina Faso amid violence by Islamist militants Washington Post

Tourism To Israel Is On The Rise, With More U.S. Evangelical Christians Visiting  NPR

Trump is the evangelicals’ enforcer (opinion)  Washington Post  

North Carolina police officer fired for following the 'Billy Graham Rule,' lawsuit says NBC News

The Righteous Gemstones Shines Its Satire on a Televangelist Empire  Christianity Today

Megachurch pushes conversion therapy on Instagram, Facebook with #OnceGay  Daily Dot

Unearthed tapes, letters show Southern Baptist leaders’ support for pastor who faced sex scandal  Houston Chronicle

How anti-Semitic beliefs have taken hold among some evangelical Christian Washington Post  

Kentucky supreme court hearing case of Christian printer who refused to make gay pride t-shirts  Newsweek

An Existential Reading List for Middle-Aged Men (four Nazarene men and their annual retreat)  The Atlantic  

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

Why Some Christians ‘Love the Meanest Parts’ of Trump  The Atlantic

Theologians condemn Christian Nationalism in open letter  Washington Examiner

America Needed Spies During World War II: Many Missionaries Were Ready and Willing Christianity Today

MSNBC’s Joy Reid names every Trump-loving evangelical leader who refused to take her call on Trump’s ‘chosen one’ claim   Raw Story

***GOOD NEWS

Boy Scouts restore neglected historic black cemetery in Virginia  The Week 

Customer services representative 800 miles away helps save life of man having a stroke  mlive

Strangers take West Virginia man on 8-hour road trip so he can be there for his son's birth  The Week  

Mom and daughter discover new bug species when daughter over-waters flower garden  ABC News 

NJ Couple Buys Out Payless Store, Then Donates All the Shoes to a Women’s Shelter  NBC-10

***REALLY?!

Couple face up to six years in jail for taking sand from Italian beach  CNN  

Man lugging life-size doll found in dumpster raises alarm  KSHB

88-Year-Old Man Tried to Shoot Nephew at Work Due to Damaged Cuckoo Clock Fox-61

McDonald’s worker burned by ‘smoldering’ dollar bill given at drive-thru, cops say NewJersey.com

This German city will give you $1.1M if you can prove it doesn't exist Associated Press

A NASA astronaut is accused of hacking her estranged spouse's bank account from space NBC News

'I was grossed out': Doctors find brown recluse spider in woman's ear  KSHB

***ART & DESIGN

Persuasive Cartography: An Interview with Map Collector PJ Mode  Jstor

***MUSIC 

How Artist Imposters and Fake Songs Sneak Onto Streaming Services Pitch Fork

How Dave Brubeck’s Time Out Changed Jazz Music  Open Culture

Mister Rogers Demonstrates How to Cut a Record Open Culture

***SOCIAL ISSUES 

Silicon Valley’s Crisis of Conscience  New Yorker  

How many steps it takes to get an abortion in each state  Axios

***BUSINESS & FINANCE

Yes, You Actually Should Be Using Emojis at Work  WSJ 

Is My Millennial Co-Worker a Narcissist, or Am I a Jealous Jerk?  New York Times

The Next Recession Will Destroy Millennials  The Atlantic

***ENVIRONMENT

Perfect Storm Hits U.S. Recycling Industry  NPR 

Windmills and Batteries to Attract Billions in the Green Energy Revolution  Bloomberg 

What’s recyclable, what becomes trash — and why  NPR 

***HEALTH

Measles is on the rise: outbreak grows to over 1,200 cases in 30 states  Newsweek 

Why a Promising, Potent Cancer Therapy Isn't Used in the US  Wired

Detecting Fake Pills With Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance  Spectrum  

What Happens To Your Body & Brain If You Don't Get Sleep? Neuroscientist Matthew Walker Explains  Open Culture 

How Many Steps Should You Take a Day?  New York Times

The Complicated Issue of Transableism  Jstor 

***MEDICAL RESEARCH & TECHNOLOGY

Optic nerve stimulation to aid the blind  EPFL 

Scientists Attempt Controversial Experiment To Edit DNA In Human Sperm Using CRISPR  NPR

Smart sensors listen to healing wounds  BBC 

***TRAVEL

Seven Wonders of the World: The best 1-star reviews  Washington Post 

***SPORTS & GAMES 

Can Chess Survive Artificial Intelligence?  The New Atlantis  

Extreme Ironing: The Insane Sport You Probably Never Knew About Sad & Useless

***FOOD

Restaurants Are A Risky Business So They Often Resort To Tricks — Like Reusing Leftover Bread Digg

A deadly fungus could wipe out the world’s favorite banana—again Quartz  

Social media users are horrified after it emerges not everyone cleans the bottom of their dishes Daily Mail Online

***FAMILY & SOCIETY

A half-century after ‘Mister Rogers’ debut, 5 facts about neighbors in U.S. Pew Research

***ANIMALS 

Bird Twitter Is My Oasis in Internet Hell  Gizmodo 

The number of animal welfare citations is dwindling  Washington Post

***SCIENCE

Scientists transmit record amount of quantum data using "qutrit", a particle that can be polarized in three directions and carries more information than a quantum bit  MIT Tech Review

Space is dead: A challenge to the standard model of quantum  Big Think 

***PSYCHOLOGY 

How Memories Form and Fade  Cal Tech

Is psychological science headed for a split?  Psychology Today 

The age of comfort TV: why people are secretly watching Friends and The Office on a loop The Guardian 

A parking garage had 6 suicides in 4 years: Signs on the walls are trying to prevent more Washington Post

***NEUROSCIENCE   

Circuit found for brain's statistical inference about motion: Brain's equation for prediction looks like a Bayesian inference Science Daily 

The most-detailed, highest-resolution list of the components of the human brain ever compiled  Allen Institute

***POLITICS

Electoral College members can defy voters, court rules  Associated Press 

***RESEARCH 

Detection of data fabrication using statistical tools  Psyarxiv

Hundreds of extreme self-citing scientists revealed in new database  Nature 

The summer slump happens in scientific publishing, too  Massive Sci

Addressing research misconduct and improving scientific integrity in China  Science Direct 

Dozens of Canadian researchers have faced discipline for integrity breaches  The Globe & Mail 

***HIGHER ED

Pew survey finds majority of Republicans continue to hold negative views of higher ed  Inside Higher Ed

Handshake, popular career-services platform, now open to all students  Inside Higher Ed

What the Numbers Can Tell Us About Humanities Ph.D. Careers  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays  Vice  

***CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 

How the Supreme Court’s sex discrimination cases could affect BYU and hundreds of faith-based colleges  Deseret News  

Christian college mired in litigation  Ocone Enterprise 

Olivet Nazarene University Leader to Retire After 30 Years  US News

Historic Christian colleges are facing financial crises that are forcing big changes: Some haven’t survived  World Magazine 

***TEACHING

The Missing Course: Everything They Never Taught You About College Teaching  Inside Higher Ed

How teachers are preventing high-tech cheating in the classroom  USA Today 

What the Freshmen Know  Inside Higher Ed 

An Argument for Accepting Late Work  Faculty Focus

***ACADEMIC LIFE 

Kansas professor charged with secretly working on Chinese government program  Washington Examiner 

Mississippi prof, who went to Georgetown Prep with Brett Kavanaugh, sues HuffPost  Clarion Ledger 

Arizona Professor Showed QAnon Video in Class, Students Say  Phoenix New Times

***STUDENT LIFE

Bureaucrats Put the Squeeze on College Newspapers  The Atlantic

Robots bearing snacks are about to overrun college campuses  Cnet 

I Manipulated Lonely Teachers to Steal Tests in High School  Vice 

Want To Make Friends In College? Make Them Food In Your Dorm Room  Digg 

Most U.S. teens who use cellphones do it to pass time, connect with others, learn new things  Pew Research Center

When College Dormitories Become Health Hazards  New York Times

17 College Campuses That Tested Their Students's Sanity  BuzzFeed

Dorm to Table: College Start-Ups Take Aim at Food Industry  New York Times

Pluck the Day!

“Carpe diem,” is taken from Roman poet Horace’s Odes, written over 2,000 years ago. As everyone and their grandmother knows by now, “carpe diem” means “seize the day.”

But “carpe diem” doesn’t really mean “seize the day.” As Latin scholar Maria S. Marsilio points out, “carpe diem” is a horticultural metaphor that, particularly seen in the context of the poem, is more accurately translated as “plucking the day,” evoking the plucking and gathering of ripening fruits or flowers, enjoying a moment that is rooted in the sensory experience of nature. “Gather ye rose-buds while ye may” is the famed Robert Herrick version.  

Gathering flowers as a metaphor for timely enjoyment is a far gentler, more sensual image than the rather forceful and even violent concept of seizing the moment. We understand the phrase to be, rather than encouraging a deep enjoyment of the present moment, compelling us to snatch at time and consume it before it’s gone, or before we’re gone.

“Seizing” the day brings up images of people taking what they can get, people who can get things done—active, self-reliant individuals who are agents in pursuit of their own happiness, reflected in the #YOLO-infused, instant-gratification-obsessed consumer culture that exhorts us to “Just Do It” by buying products.

Chi Luu writing in Jstor Daily

Showing Initiative

Many people wait for something to happen or someone to take care of them. But people who end up with the good jobs are the proactive ones who are solutions to problems, not problems themselves, who seize the initiative to do whatever is necessary, consistent with correct principles, to get the job done. 

Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Your Greater Goal

We often imagine that we generally operate by some kind of plan, that we have goals we are trying to reach. But we’re usually fooling ourselves; what we have are not goals but wishes. Our emotions infect us with hazy desire; we want fame, success, security – something large and abstract. 

Clear long-term objectives give direction to all of your actions, large and small. Important decisions became easier to make. If some glittering prospect threatens to seduce you from your goal, you will know to resist it You can tell when to sacrifice a pawn, even lose a battle, if it serves your eventual purpose.   

Robert Greene, 33 Strategies of War

Articles of Interest - August 19

***JOURNALISM

Journalists face job losses, low pay, attacks by Trump — and I want in  USA Today 

The news gets worse for local journalism Washington Post

Local newsrooms can now get extra legal help with their reporting   Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Matt Drudge Has Barely Changed Anything About The Drudge Report In The Last 20 Years  BuzzFeed News 

***FAKES

A Texas con artist made millions promising prisoners' families the thing they wanted most: To bring their children home  The Marshall Project 

How And Why People Come Up With Conspiracy Theories  NPR

These deepfakes of Bill Hader are absolutely terrifying  CNET

Maybe you know that article is satire, but a lot of people can’t tell the difference  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

Websites that peddle disinformation make millions of dollars in ads, new study finds  CNN

***TECHNOLOGY 

Amazon says its facial recognition can now identify fear CNBC

Teen's tweets from her smart fridge go viral after mother confiscates phone  The Guardian 

Octopus-Inspired Wearable Sensor  Nature World News 

***BIG DATA & AI 

A summer camp for the next generation of NSA Agents  New Yorker  

Re-Imagining big data in a post-Hadoop world  Datami

***SOCIAL MEDIA 

Why These Social Networks Failed So Badly  Gizmodo

 ***PERSONAL GROWTH 

D.E.S.C. when someone keeps repeating inappropriate behavior  Becoming (my blog)

Stephen Colbert's Perspective On Grief Brings Anderson Cooper To Tears During Powerful Interview  Digg

***WRITING & READING

Avoid Plagiarism With Google's New Assignments Tool  Life Hacker 

The Em Dash Divides New York Times

***LITERATURE

Video games are literature’s new frontier  Venture Beat 

A New Literary Timeline of African-American History  New York Times

Review of dystopian novel “The Memory Police”  Washington Post 

These Classic Books Are Surprisingly Fresh—and They're Free  Life Hacker

An overview of the amenities-heavy new libraries that are becoming tourist attractions across the world  New York Times  

Five novels win China's top literature award   Xinhuanet

***POETRY

Someone painted bullet holes on face of Emily Dickinson in art display  Mass Live  

Emily Dickinson’s ‘scraps of paper’ inspire art installation at poet’s Amherst conservatory Boston Globe

The Unsung Influence Of Poetry On Iron Maiden  Kerrang 

Elizabeth Thomas uses her writing to make sense of the world  Courant 

On the Gleefully Indecent Poems of a Medieval Welsh Feminist Poet  Lit Hub 

How a Scottish Borders boy became a leading Australian bush poet  BBC 

***GENDER    

Nearly 200,000 trans people have been exposed to conversion therapy, study says  NBC News

The Hazards of Writing While Female  The Atlantic  

Christian Women’s Shelter Doesn’t Need to Admit Trans Woman, Court Rules  Daily Signal 

StoryCorps: Transgender Woman Recalls Coming Out To Her Family In The 1960s  NPR

MSU suggests employees avoid saying 'I apologize,' 'no problem,' 'sir,' 'ma'am'  Campus Reform

Two-thirds of published poets are male, so does poetry have a gender issue?  Irish Times 

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

The 1619 Project  New York Times 

***CRIME & COURTS

Inside The Prison Where Inmates Set Each Other On Fire and Gangs Have More Power Than Guards 

***BORDER ISSUES 

Trump’s 'Invasion' Was actually a Corporate Recruitment Drive  The Atlantic 

Ruling limits border agents’ ability to search cellphones  LA Times

Documents Allege Serious Medical Neglect Inside Otay Mesa Detention Center  Voice of San Diego

***PRIVACY & SECURITY 

FBI seeks to monitor Facebook, oversee mass social media data collection  zdet

Security Researcher’s ‘NULL’ Vanity Plates Cause Glitch That Lands Him $12,000 in Parking Tickets  Gizmodo  

Microsoft warns Windows 10 users to update immediately CNN

Facial recognition tech misidentified 26 California lawmakers as criminals  Engadget 

***INTERNET

Computer Science Professors Says We Can Probably Make Email Better For Everyone  NPR 

***RELIGION

Hillsong Songwriter Marty Sampson Says He’s Losing His Christian Faith  Relevant Magazine  

The reputation of the gospel is at risk (opinion)  Washington Post 

U.S. Missionary With No Medical Training Sued After Malnourished Ugandan Children Died At Her Center  NPR

Oregon pastor and stripper team up to raise money for migrant kids after sweeping ICE raid  The Hill

A new priest’s more traditional approach has split one of Portland’s oldest Catholic churches Oregon Live 

Southwestern Distances Itself from Paige Patterson in Sex Abuse Lawsuit  Christianity Today  

Bid to allow some married priests engages celibacy debate  Washington Post 

Methodist Church closer to official split over LGBTQ issues Washington Times 

Billy Graham's Grandson Back in the Pulpit following Cheating Scandal  Christian Headlines

What HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones gets right about evangelicals Vox

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

Reviews of Netflix Documentary The Family 

***GOOD NEWS 

3-year-old uses lemonade sales to buy baby supplies for mothers in need  ABC-11

FBI agent reunited with abducted baby he helped rescue decades ago  NBC News 

Indiana boy convinces mayor to put up 'turtle crossing' signs near ponds  ABC News

Warm-hearted Uber driver surprises fast food worker with a new dress after hearing her struggles  Digg 

He Gave a Bike to a Refugee Girl. 24 Years Later, She Got to Thank Him  New York Times  

Man invites police to help mow lawns in all 50 states  Associated Press

***REALLY?! 

Lil Nas X’s hit song is leaving one Massachusetts town without its ‘Old Town Road’ street signs Mass Live 

Architect goes blind, says he's actually gotten better at his job  CBS News 

Burglar Carefully Wipes Down His Fingerprints — While Staring Directly Into Security Camera (with video) Digg 

Man says emotional support alligator helps his depression  New York Post

Man Implicates Himself After Using Stolen Credit Card And Signing As ‘Thief’  CBS Pittsburgh 

Man Accused of Stalking Sent Woman 10,000 Texts  NBC Washington 

Missing dentures found stuck in throat 8 days after surgery  Associated Press

Too Much Karaoke Sent a Man to the Hospital with a Collapsed Lung  Live Science

Clinton: Woman reports her car stolen, while running from police in that car  WQAD.com

$12.3M payout for infant burned in Madigan operating-room fire delayed as feds consider appeal  The Seattle Times 

***ART & DESIGN

Cultural Regions Of America, Visualized  Digg

10 best Chrome extensions for designers  UX Design

***MUSIC 

Are men singing higher in pop music?  Pudding 

The 30 best films about music, chosen by musicians The Guardian

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA  

Verizon to sell Tumblr to WordPress owner  Reuters  

U.S. Pay-TV Subscriber Losses More Than Triple To 1.5M In Q2 – Report – Deadline  Deadline

UK's 'The Spectator' To Launch U.S. Monthly Print Magazine  Media Post

Friends is hitting theaters for show's 25th anniversary  Entertainment Weekly 

***BUSINESS & FINANCE 

Learn & Practice On How To Fire Employees In Virtual Reality   VR & Fun

***ENVIRONMENT 

India’s holiest river is drying up  National Geographic 

Extreme climate change has reached the United States: Here are America’s fastest-warming places Washington Post

 ***HEALTH 

Smog And Other Air Pollution Is Linked To Lung Damage  NPR

Healthy tips on preparing for surgery  Washington Post 

Why Some Doctors Purposefully Misdiagnose Patients  The Atlantic 

Dozens of Young People Hospitalized for Breathing and Lung Problems After Vaping  New York Times 

Pakistan’s doctors are getting fired in Arab countries. Blame its unreliable medical degrees  The Print 

Nearly 100 People Have Reported Lung Diseases That May Be Linked to Vaping, and the CDC Is Getting Involved  TIME 

***MEDICAL RESEARCH & TECHNOLOGY

Tissue model reveals role of blood-brain barrier in Alzheimer’s  MIT

Scientists discover new pain-sensing organ  The Guardian 

Engineers Have Found A Way To Use Sweat For Some Medical Tests  NPR 

***TRAVEL

FAA Bans Recalled MacBook Pros From Flights  Bloomberg

***SPORTS & GAMES

Chess champ’s formidable opponent: Red tape  Washington Post 

Welcome to the World of Competitive Wiffle Ball  The Ringer

When the internet Chases you from your Home  New York Times

***FOOD

This Is The Most Popular Ice Cream Shop In Every State  Delish 

The 33 Best BBQ Joints in America  Thrillist 

Pumpkin Spice Spam Is Real And Coming Out This Fall  Delish 

***FAMILY

The Weird History of Baby Cage, The Oddest Parenting Trend of the ’20s  Fatherly  

***ANIMALS  

Amazing octopus found in a rock pool in Cornwall  Cornwall Live  

These Scientists Gave Ecstasy To Octopuses And Discovered Something Unexpected  Gentside 

It will soon be a crime in Alabama to misrepresent a pet as a service animal   AL.com  

***SCIENCE 

A dozen science sites around the US  Washington Post  

Chemists make first-ever ring of pure carbon  Nature 

Scientists know gravity exists: They just don’t know how it works  Washington Post  

***PSYCHOLOGY 

A psychiatry publication goes from open access to subscription  Healio    

***PHILOSOPHY

John Rawls and the Remaking of Political Philosophy  Harvard Magazine 

Philosopher Portraits: Famous Philosophers Painted in the Style of Influential Artists  Open Culture 

***RESEARCH 

When so many email addresses on journal articles don’t work, we have a problem  Nature Index 

US Faculty Survey 2018 Reveals Uncertainty about Fraudulent Research Practices  Ithaka S+R

Survey of Chinese biomedical researchers: Vague understanding of general concepts related to research integrity  T&F Online  

When I read an article, I often have the sinking feeling that the authors didn’t actually read some of the papers they are citing  Journal of Cell Science 

Due to the publication of the article by the supervisor without the knowledge of a college student, this article is retracted  International Journal of Infection 

What difference do retractions make? An estimate of the epistemic impact of retractions on recent meta-analyses   Bioxiv

Four erroneous beliefs thwarting more trustworthy research   eLife Science

UC faculty members quit Cell Press editorial boards over impasse with publisher  Science Mag 

Here is how fake scientific journals are bypassing detection filters  Down to Earth

The Value of Redundancy in Research, or, In Research, Redundancy Has Value  Scholarly Kitchen

***HIGHER ED

Moody's Maintains Negative Outlook for Higher Ed  Inside Higher Ed 

College Campuses: Are They Too P.C.? (opinion)  New York Times

What This Title IX Case About Hazing Means for Women on Campus  MS Magazine  

Court Victory for Foreign Students Enrolled in Fake College  Inside Higher Ed

Cincinnati Christian University May Lose its Accreditation if Financial Problems and Other Issues Aren’t Resolved  City Beat 

Camp at Oklahoma Christian University brings together missionary families Oklahoman

Methodist University Hires a Muslim Chaplain  PJ Media  

Are faith-based ideas about sex spurring a consent conversation at Christian colleges?  Deseret News

***TEACHING 

Banning laptops or other note-taking devices from the classroom is an extreme stance that isn’t right for every student  Inside Higher Ed

'Substantial doubt' that Cincinnati Christian University keeps accreditation Cincinnati

How Calling on Random Students Could Hurt Women  Chronicle  

Could eye-tracking software help catch students cheating on exams?  T&F online

How Do We Teach With Primary Sources When So Many Voices Are Missing? Ed Week

***STUDENT MEDIA   

Court report supports Lantern case for Ohio State records  The Latern 

***ACADEMIC LIFE 

Fired University of Illinois professor, has lost his court bid to be reinstated  News-Gazette 

The firing of a university tennis coach accused of sexual harassment may have been motivated by public arm-twisting  Inside Higher Ed 

Professor exonerated for quoting iconic black writer at The New School The FIRE

***STUDENT LIFE

India Sets Weight Limits On Students' Backpacks  NPR

Graduate Students Are Increasingly Shouldering The Country's Student Debt NPR

Alabama girl wore tux for senior portrait. Her school yearbook left her picture out NBC News

D.E.S.C.

When someone keeps repeating inappropriate behavior:

Describe the other person’s behavior objectively (be specific and don’t switch from talking about the action to the motive)

Express your feelings (as related to the goal but don’t relive the feelings)

Specify what you want to see changed (and what you are willing to change, don’t merely imply that you’d like a change) 

Give explicit Consequences if there is change (reward) or no change (punishment)

Pascal’s Wager

Pascal’s argument (written in the 1600’s) went like this: Suppose you concede that you don’t know whether or not God exists and therefore assign a 50 percent chance to either proposition How should you weight these odds when decided whether to lead a pious life? If you act piously and God exists, Pascal argued, your gain – eternal happiness - is infinite. If, on the other hand, God does not exist, your loss, or negative return, is small – the sacrifices of piety. To weigh these possible gains and losses, Pascal proposed, you multiply the probability of each possible outcomes by its payoff and add them all up, forming a kind of average or expected payoff. 

In other words, the mathematical expectation of your return on piety is one-half infinity (your gain if God exists) minus one-half a small number (your loss if he does not exist). Pascal knew enough about infinity to know that the answer to this calculation is infinite, and thus the expected return on piety is infinitely positive. Every reasonable person, Pascal concluded, should therefore follow the laws of God. Today this argument is know as Pascal’s wager. 

Pascal’s wager is often considered the founding of the mathematical discipline of game theory, the quantitative study of optimal decision strategies in games.

Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

Real Love and Fidelity

It may be said that fidelity secures itself against unfaithfulness by becoming accustomed not to separate desire from love. For if desire travels swiftly and anywhere, love is slow and difficult; love actually does pledge one for the rest of one’s life, and it exacts nothing less than this pledge in order to disclose its real nature. That is why a man who believes in marriage can no longer believe seriously in ‘love at first sight’, still less in the ‘irresistible’ nature of passion…which is an alibi invoked by the guilty.   

Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World 

Mottos

Learned from childhood (not necessarily verbalized)
 
a. Measure up (you’re climbing a ladder to get to ahead and when you get there it’s already been moved 3 rungs up)
b. Don’t let your guard down. People won’t like you.
c. You can’t trust a man until he’s 6 feet under 
d. Sex is dirty. So save it for the one you love. 
e. Good Christians don’t show negative emotions
 
You must let go of false messages from your childhood and carry your OWN cross. Not someone else’s.
 
What mottos have you had to battle and what effect have they had on your life?

David Seamonds