Articles of Interest - Feb 15

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Art in the Age of Big Data (Have technologies like Instagram and Pinterest made an artist out of all of us?)  The Guardian

Dear Mr. Know-It-All: Should You Delete Someone’s Facebook Account After They Die?  Wired

Twitter's returned boss has yet to turn it around  The Economist

How to Build a Twitter Following (and Why You Should a primer on tweeting for those who have never used the site or have underused it)  Chronicle of Higher Ed 

***SCIENCE

Reproducibility should be at science’s heart. It isn’t. But that may soon change  The Economist

What the discovery of gravitational waves means  The Atlantic

***TECHNOLOGY

Flash is dead, time to inform some publishers still dependent on it for their digital editions  Talking New Media

***BUSINESS

Most HR Data Is Bad Data (Managers are terrible at rating people's performance)  Harvard Business Review

***PSYCHOLOGY                           

Why people cheat (when people win against others, they tend to think they're better, or more deserving)  Washington Post

How People Learn to Become Resilient  The New Yorker

The Confidence Game: The Psychology of the Con and Why We Fall for It Every Time Economist

Exposed to a deluge of digital photos, we’re feeling the psychological effects of image overload  The Conversation

***NEUROSCIENCE

 New Clues to the Mystery of How Our Brains Keep Time  Wired

***PHILOSOPHY

Philosopher of the month: Plato  OUP Blog

***LANGUAGE

How Trump's use of words may be tied to his success  Nerdwriter YouTube video  

Fool ‘Ish’ Ways: a suffix that is taking on a life of its own  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***JOURNALISM

The thorny ethics of embedding with do-gooders  Columbia Journalism Review

Corrupt journalism doesn’t pay. Nor does abetting it  Washington Post

How Freelancers Can Create Their Own ‘Snow Fall’ For Free  Media Shift

Is John Oliver's Show Journalism?   NPR

How the Communist Party creates the world’s most-watched TV news show The Economist

Former student says journalism professor violated his free speech  Inside Higher Ed

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Journalism is a stressful career, but work doesn’t have to be miserable  Poynter

The Digital Dirt: How TMZ gets the videos and photos that celebrities want to hide  New Yorker

***STUDENT JOURNALISM

Protecting Student Journalists in a New-Media Era  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Newspaper Adviser Is Fired After Students’ Scoop Roils Maryland Campus   New York Times

Student Newspaper’s First Amendment Lawsuit Against University of Kansas Administrators Is Important Reminder about Need to Check Student Government Power  The Fire

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Cancer has ushered in new ways of being alive  Becoming

***THE INTERNET

How the Humble Index Card Foresaw the Internet  Popular Mechanics

***MUSIC & ART

Artists working with technology struggle to stay current  The Economist

Music Can’t Last Forever, Not Even on the Internet  Wired

Being Bilingual Changes the Architecture of Your Brain  Wired

***RESEARCH                                           

Researcher illegally shares millions of science papers free online to spread knowledge  Science Alert

***RACE & GENDER ISSUES

The ‘Jane Test,’ a New Way to Tell if Your Scripts AreSexist  Wired

Study finds Bias in How Male Students view female STEM students  Inside Higher Ed

Women considered better coders – but only if they hide their gender  The Guardian

Here's the presentation Google gives employees on how to spot unconscious bias at work  Business Insider

***BIG DATA  

Ted Cruz is mining supporters' personal data with #analytics--is voter surveillance by app the future of politics?  Associated Press

The Most Important Skill in Data Science: Mining and Visualizing your Data  Customer Think

Mistakes companies make approaching Big Data (#1-data is somehow opposed to intuition rather than enhancing it)  Wall Street Journal

***RELIGION

The leaders of Christianity's 2 biggest churches will meet for the first time in 1,000 years  Business Insider

The differences between the Catholic and Orthodox churches  The Economist

Church of England defends Richard Dawkins prayer tweet  BBC

Why are so many Christians biblically illiterate?  Fox News

Concern for Christians in the Middle East helps drive historic meeting between Catholic, Orthodox leaders  Pew Research

Death, the Prosperity Gospel and Me  NY Times

What the Death of Justice Antonin Scalia Means for Religious Liberty (The staunchly Catholic U.S. Supreme Court justice was known for his acidly conservative opinions, but ultimately, he prioritized the Constitution over the Church)  The Atlantic

Almost all U.S. presidents have been Christians  Pew Research

Why evangelicals are splintering and what it means for the GOP  LA Times

***STUDENT LIFE                             

Backgrounds and Beliefs of College Freshmen  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Have Millennials Made Quitting More Common?  Bloomberg

Survey: Nearly 1-in-10 Freshman plan to participate in campus protests  Inside Higher Ed

Among Millennials engaged in primaries, Dems more likely to learn about the election from social media  Pew Research

***HIGHER ED

Open letter to all students contemplating going to an evangelical college “Don’t let them ruin your life” (opinion) Pathos

Whither Wheaton: an evangelical college ponders its future  Religious News Service 

***HIGHER ED / MOUNT ST. MARY'S

Mount St. Mary's president says 'I'm not going to stop'  Baltimore Sun

Mount St. Mary’s University reinstates fired student newspaper adviser Student Press Law Center

How3 Crisis-Communications Experts Would Have Handled the Uproar at Mount St. Mary’s  Chronicle of Higher Ed

What's Up With the Mounts Saint Mary? (dissenting faculty members dismissed and trustees showing up at search committee meetings)  Inside Higher Ed

An Appalling Breach of Faith at Mount St. Mary's (Disrespecting students and trampling the rights of faculty members at the Maryland university contradict the mission of Roman Catholic higher education) (opinion)  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***TEACHING

A Piece of the Learning Puzzle  (How the "jigsaw classroom" can help students to see a subject in both piecemeal and broad ways)  Chronicle of Higher Ed

2015 Online Report Card - Tracking Online Education in the United States  Online Learning Consortium

Reaching Students Who “Don’t Need Writing”  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Study: Faculty Development has Demonstrable Impact on Student Learning 

Inside Higher Ed

The Self-Obliterating Professor premium (The best teachers create a world where they're no longer needed-subscription)  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***HUMANITIES / STEM

Building a Bridge Between Engineering and the Humanities (opinion) Chronicle of Higher Ed

Expect the best!

Expect the best at all times. Never think of the worst. Drop it out of your thought, relegate it. Let there be no thought in your mind that the worst will happen. Avoid entertaining the concept of the worst, for whatever you take into your mind can grow there. Therefore, take the best into your mind and only that. Nurture it, concentrate on it, emphasize it, visualize it, prayerize it, surround it with faith. Make it your obsession. Expect the best, and spiritually creative mind power aided by God power produce the best.

Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking

Babies learning to walk can teach you something

A few years ago a group of American and Norwegian researchers did a study to see what made babies improve at walking. They discovered that the key factor wasn't height or weight or age or brain development or any other innate trait but rather (surprise!) the amount of time they spend firing during their circuit, trying to walk. These staggering babies embody the deepest truth about deep practice: to get good, it's helpful to be willing, or even enthusiastic, about being bad. Baby steps are the royal road to skill.

Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code

 

Articles of Interest - Feb 8


****SCIENCE

Simulating Scientific Sabotage, For Fun (a card game making light of the “wacky aspects of scientific research”) - The Scientist

Can the Placebo Effect Have Real Clinical Value? - Science Friday

****PSYCHOLOGY                         

Beware the rule-following co-worker, Harvard study warns - Washington Post 

Why so many straight women like to befriend gay men - Mashable

Social science: Online social networks do not change the fundamentals of friendship - The Economist

What people around the world mean when they say they’re happy - Washington Post 

4 creepy psychological tricks companies use to get you to buy things - Business Insider  

****NEUROSCIENCE

Trauma prompts the brain to focus on survival, not 'peripheral details' - CBC

Brain volume changes after cognitive behavioral therapy - Science Daily 

Brain scans to catch depression before it starts - FoxNews

Review of the book "Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body by Jo Marchant (opinion) - Washington Post

Listening to Music While Reading Complex Sentences Affects Musical Experience - Neuroscience News

***SOCIAL MEDIA

The definitive list of what everyone likes on Facebook (The most (and least) popular interests on Facebook, as revealed by its new Preferred Audience tool) - The Verge 

Twitter's timeline will soon show tweets out of order - the Verge 

Twitter Beefs Are Now Front Page News in The Boston Globe – Wired

***WRITIN’ AND READIN’

How to Prune Jargon From Your Popular Writing - Chronicle of Higher Ed

***GRAMMAR

Why 2015’s word of the year is rather singular - The Economist

Oh, Commas - Chronicle of Higher Ed 

The Fall and Rise of the Singular They - Slate's Lexicon Valley   

***LANGUAGE

Sarah Palin's English (her speeches on the campaign trail aren’t simple; they are actually incredibly complicated) - New York Times

***LITERATURE

Is Amazon Planning Hundreds Of Bookstores? Analysts Doubt It - NPR

Brash, worldly and wickedly funny, Eka Kurniawan may be South-East Asia’s most ambitious writer in a generation - The Economist

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Is One Braaaaaaainy Mashup - Wired

Is English literature since 1918 really such a man’s world? (A new book celebrating the best writing of the past century follows a well-worn script when it comes to equality) – The Guardian

The 10 Best First Dates In Literature - Bustle

What Would Shakespeare Make of Trump? - Chronicle of Higher Ed

The adoption of Greek literature by the Romans was more unlikely than it appears in hindsight – The Economist

Shakespeare’s Badass Quarto (On the trail of a centuries-old Hamlet mystery-subscription required)  - Chronicle of Higher Ed

#1000BlackGirls and the Importance of Diversity in Children’s Literature - JSTOR

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM/MEDIA

Patch Rebounds after Split from AOL - Wall Street Journal

Podcasts are gaining audience, but have yet to attract the biggest advertisers - The Economist

Why the NYT Is Looking to Cut Costs, Even Though It Turned a Profit - New York Times

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Unfocusing increases Creativity - Becoming (my blog)

Your reaction to this confusing headline reveals more about you than you know (The science behind why some people embrace uncertainty, and others don't) - Washington Post

Stanford psychologist explains why spacing out and goofing off is so good for you - Washington Post

Things to Say Instead of Sorry – Business Insider

***THE INTERNET

Google will start warning web users about deceptive download buttons  - The Verge 

***RESEARCH                                           

Bogus Iran-Based Journal Allows Up to 40% Plagiarism - Scholarly Open Access

Research quality declines with scientists’ age, study finds - Times Higher Ed

How can social media be used to increase article citation? - Sage Connection

***POLITICS

American Political Jargon - Bloomberg

Do Political TV Ads Still Work? - NPR

***POLITICS & RELIGION

Jesus reads Donald Trump and Ted Cruz: Jimmy Kimmel – Salon

Marco Rubio, an Evangelical Catholic? The dynamics of religious hybrids – KPCC podcasts

***RACE & GENDER ISSUES

How to stop the sexual harassment of women in science: reboot the system - The Conversation

Baylor faces accusations of ignoring sex assault victims - ESPN 

No, There Was No Debate About Removing An MLK Quote At The University Of Oregon (student newspaper story misunderstood) - Huffington Post

***LEGAL ISSUES

Judge Gives Monkey Second Chance to Sue for Copyright Infringement  - MotherBoard

***TECHNOLOGY

Why the iPad Is Going Extinct - New Republic

At Berkeley, a New Digital Privacy Protest (university installs data-tracking program with little notice or consultation)– New York Times

***BUSINESS

The fashion for making employees collaborate has gone too far - The Economist

***BIG DATA

Hadoop At 10: Milestones And Momentum - Information Week

Hadoop vs Spark. Which is superior? Better yet.. what if we used them both together? -Datamation

Projection: global Hadoop market to hit more than $84 billion in revenue in 5 years - Inside Big Data 

Who loves where Big Data analytics are going? Dictatorships and rogue nations - Forbes 

***RELIGION

Charismatic Christianity thrives among people on the move - The Economist  

Pentecostalism in South Korea - The Economist  

Oscar-Favorite 'Spotlight' Screens at the Vatican for Pope's Sex Abuse Commission - Yahoo News

While the government talks up family values, marriage break-ups are soaring - The Economist

Some Still Misleading America About Thomas Jefferson History News Network  

German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his fight against the Nazis - Jerusalem Post

****PHILOSOPHY

Philosopher of the month: Plato - OUP Blog

***HIGHER ED

Practically all young people now go to school, but they need to learn a lot more there - The Economist

Low Income, High Graduation Rate (Two new studies suggest many colleges may be too quick to write off low-income students and community college transfers) - Inside Higher Ed

Wheaton of Illinois and professor it tried to fire over her statements about God reach deal under which she will leave - Inside Higher Ed

Questions Linger After Tenured Wheaton College ProfessorAgrees to Leave - TIME

***TEACHING

Unwarranted praise of student writing is counterproductive, but too much negativity is far more damaging - Chronicle of Higher Ed

****STUDENT LIFE                                                              

Ignore the moral panic about lazy, self-obsessed millennials. The world will be fairer when they run it - The Economist

Commitment for Millennials: Is It Okay, Cupid?

***HUMANITIES /STEM

What Is The Value Of An EducationIn The Humanities? - NPR

***SEXUAL ASSAULT ON CAMPUS

Alabama student paper devotes issue to sexual assault - Crimson  

A Closer Look at 7 Common Requirements in Resolved Federal Sex-Assault Inquiries (subscription) (As Title IX complaints have multiplied, the government has issued more expansive mandates for the colleges it has investigated)

How (not) to manage a PR crisis on campus (school slow to respond to campus crime) - CBC

 

Give people you don’t know a fair chance

When you look at a person, any person, remember that everyone has a story. Everyone has gone through something that has changed them, and forced them to grow. Every passing face on the street represents a story every bit as compelling and complicated as yours. We meet no ordinary people in our lives. 

Renee Jones (read more here)

Articles of Interest - Feb 1

***SOCIAL MEDIA

How Two Guys Built the Ultimate GIF Search Engine - Bloomberg

Snapchat: Not just for kids anymore (subscription) - The Week magazine

The End of Twitter - New Yorker

One Billion People Now Use Whats App – Wired

****PSYCHOLOGY                         

New Clues to How the Brain Maps Time - Quantam

Best apps... For mental health therapy (subscription) - The Week

Psychologists have found that a spiritual outlook makes humans more resilient to trauma – Quartz

****PHILOSOPHY

Concordia philosophy professor publishes book on religious diversity – The Concordian

***PERSONAL GROWTH

The day pain died.. Oct. 16, 1846 - Becoming (my blog)

***BIG DATA

Here's a nice summary of what's at stake in the practical ethics of machine intelligence - Fast Forward Labs

Crisis in Intel education (the intellectual acumen of the national security community is rapidly declining) - Vice News

How Big Data is changing disruptive innovation - Harvard Business Review

***GRAMMAR

Them, Themself, and They - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Samuel Johnson's great English Dictionary of 1755 (prescriptivism v descriptivism) - The Economist

***LANGUAGE

How‘-Phobic’ Became a Weapon in the Identity Wars - New York Times

This Little Red Book Confronts Sexism in the Chinese Language – Wired

***LITERATURE

Taking Literature to the Streets (From vending machines to coffee sleeves, a number of projects around the world are using guerrilla marketing tactics to promote) – The Atlantic 

***JOURNALISM

6 Quick Ways to Spot Fake News - Snopes

A Code of Ethics for Journalism Nonprofits – The New Yorker

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Politico implodes - Washington Post

Crowdfunding enables diverse new frontier for journalism projects - Pew Research

***RACE & GENDER ISSUES

Researchers have found a major problem with ‘The Little Mermaid’ and other Disney movies - Washington Post

Study finds "driving while black" really is a crime in Florida - Vox

Vice launches a paid summer fellowship for “underrepresented communities” – Harvard’s Nieman Lab

Does diversity look different at a Christian university? – Inside Higher Ed

Representative Barbies - Jstor

***SEXUAL ASSAULT ON CAMPUS

White House launches a cappella contest to combat campus assault - USA Today 

***FREE SPEECH

A statement at the heart of the debate over academic - Economist

***LEGAL ISSUES

Copywrong: Students often clash with administrators over copyright law - Student Press Law Center

Freedom ofInformation Acts (The Idealist puts Aaron Swartz’s legacy at the center of the copyright debate) – Bloomberg Businessweek

Why Colleges Hide Behind This One Privacy Law All The Time - Huffington Post

***DESIGN

The ‘Memoire’ Typeface Changes Like a Memory as You Use It - Wired

***RELIGION

5 key findings about faith and politics in the 2016 presidential race - Pew Research

Alabama pastor on Syrian refugees: ‘God gave us specific instructions to destroy these people’ – Yellow Hammer News

***STUDENT LIFE                                              

Millions of young people in U.S. and EU are neither working nor learning - Pew Research 

United States of Adderall – Huffington Post

This infographic shows how big the student loan bubble is going to grow - Business Insider

***HIGHER ED

The crisis in intelligence education (the intellectual acumen of the national security community is rapidly declining) - Vice

Inside the secret gay movement at one of America’s most homophobic colleges - Fusion  

Wheaton Professor Claims White Privilege & Sexism Are Behind Larycia Hawkins Controversy - Patheos

***HUMANITIES /STEM

Feeding English Majors in the 21st Century (A new course teaches undergraduates in the humanities how to market themselves for the new economic normal) - The Chronicle of Higher Ed

Computer Science, MeetHumanities: in New Majors, Opposites Attract (Stanford University sees such integration as a way to bring in students who are drawn to the arts but feel that they need computing skills for their careers) The Chronicle of Higher Ed

****ACADEMIC LIFE

Are Academics Disproportionately Gay? – Inside Higher Ed

Academics Get Real (Adjuncts and tenure-line faculty members unite on Twitter under #realacademicbios to pull back the curtain on their emotional lives) – Inside Higher Ed

#Delete AcademiaEdu or Don't? (Controversy about Academia.edu considering charging users to promote their work illustrates the delicate subject of the role money plays in scholarly publishing) - Inside Higher Ed

***TEACHING

The Limits of Facts in Teaching - Chronicle of Higher Ed

 

 

 

 

Articles of Interest - Jan 25

***SOCIAL MEDIA

The fastest-growing ‘news’ site of 2015 was an obscure content farm for moms - Washington Post

Nearly Half of Twitter’s Senior Leaders Are Leaving – Wired

4 ways to tell if a picture was Photoshopped just by glancing at it – Tech Insider

Nielsen Will Now Use Your Facebook Chatter for TV Ratings - Wired

***BIG DATA  

Automating Legal Advice: AI and Expert Systems - Bloomberg

Google's new free, 3-month course on Deep Learning - The Verge

Here's a nice summary of what's at stake in the practical ethics of machine intelligence - Fast Forward Labs 

Need a simple explanation of Hadoop for the uninitiated? - Smart Data Collection

How Big Data is flatting the #music industry as algorithms replace talent-scout bar crawls with data-created music - Dataconmy

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Ultimate Reality - Becoming (my blog)

***WRITIN’ AND READIN’

The 20 Most Influential Academic Books of All Time: No Spoilers - Open Culture

Scholars Talk Writing: Ideally you want to be an id on the first draft and a superego on the second' - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Ursula Le Guin Gives Insightful Writing Advice in Her Free Online Workshop - Open Culture 

***LITERATURE

The Open Syllabus Project Gathers 1,000,000 Syllabi from Universities & Reveals the 100 Most Frequently-Taught Books- Open Culture

A doctor’s mission: Showing why literature matters to medicine – Dallas Morning News

***RESEARCH                                           

Yahoo Releases Largest Cache of Internet Data - Wall Street Journal

***RACE AND GENDER ISSUES

Prominent Medieval Scholar’s Blog on ‘Feminist Fog’ Sparks an Uproar - Chronicle of Higher Ed

***FREE SPEECH

Digital rights non-profit argues against banning anonymous speech platforms like Yik Yak - Student Press Law Center

Watch What You Say: How fear is stifling academic freedom (subscription) - Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LEGAL ISSUES

Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law - Slate

Florida appeals court reverses order to ‘unpublish’ information – Columbia Journalism Review

****SCIENCE

Quantum Links in Time and Space May Form the Universe’s Foundation – Wired

****PSYCHOLOGY                         

Even Facebook can’t help you have more than 150 real friends - Washington Post

Florida Governor Wants to Know why all Pscyhology Majors aren’t Employed - Inside Higher Ed

Lumosity to Pay $2M to Settle FTC Charges Over 'Brain Training' – NBC News

****PHILOSOPHY

When Philosophy Lost Its Way New York Times

***TECHNOLOGY

The Way You Buy and Use Apps Is About to Change Big Time - Wired

***HISTORY

The history of the world, as you’ve never seen it before - Washington Post

***MEDIA

Nielsen To Use Facebook And Twitter In New Social TV Ratings - NP

***JOURNALISM

MU professor Melissa Click, who called for ‘muscle’ to remove reporter, charged with assault - KansasCity.com

How well do you speak Journalism Jargon? - Contently

A new data journalism tool – and a new way of reporting uncertainty - Online Journalism Blog

What journalists get wrong about social science, according to 20 scientists - Vox

How Data Journalism is Impacting the Industry – CTOvision

Are intelligent agents the beginning of the end for journalism as we know it? - Phys Org

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

A News Team Was Fired For Reportedly Playing Cards Against Humanity At Work - Buzz Feed

TVNZ presenter accepts apology from pregnancy critic - The New Zealand Herald

Pew: $6.3M raised for journalism projects on Kickstarter in 6-year period – USA Today

The New York Times celebrates 20 years on the worldwide web, as newspaper business prepares for more challenges ahead – Talking New Media

***STUDENT JOURNALISM

College newspaper playing major role in FBI investigation into Kent State professor’s ISIS ties - Fox8

****STUDENT LIFE                                                      

Mizzou is Encouraging Students to Report Anyone Who Makes Fun of a Classmate - National Review

21 Pictures People Not In College Will Never Understand - BuzzFeed

Campus Backlash over College President’s Plan to get ride of at-Risk Freshmen: Drown the Bunnies - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Generation Uphill (The millennials are the brainiest, best-educated generation ever. Yet their elders often stop them from reaching their full potential) - The Economist

****JOBS

6 LinkedIn tips to help maximize your job search - USA Today   

****ACADEMIC LIFE

 Professor Says She Was Fired Unconstitutionally For Cursing - Huffington Post

Fired LSU Professor’s Lawsuit Challenges Federal Title IX Guidance - Chronicle of Higher Ed

***HIGHER ED

Ed Dept to publish a list of religious colleges that have received Title IX exemptions - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Undergraduate success linked to meaningful interaction with professors, studying a variety of fields and having classroom talks that go to issues of ethics and life - Inside Higher Ed

***TEACHING

Confessions of a MOOC professor: three things I learned and two things I worry about - The Conversation

TurnItIn Expands Beyond Plagiarism - Inside Higher Ed

***SEXUAL ASSAULT ON CAMPUS

How A Stanford Student Accused Of Assaulting Multiple Women Graduated - Huffington Post

Survey: 21% of Undergraduate Women Have Been Sexually Assaulted in College - Bureau of Justice Statistics

How Much Should a University Have to Reveal About a Sexual-Assault Case? (how universities misuse FERPA) - New York Times

***RELIGION

Americans may be getting less religious, but feelings of spirituality are on the rise - Pew Research

In Defense of Theology - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Why Trump Is Winning Over Christian Conservatives - TIME

 

Sailing into Adventure

Three Englishmen decided to sail across the English Channel on a whim and a 7-foot dinghy in May of 2011. Eleven hours later they greeted rescuers with cries of “Bonjour,” thinking they had reached the coast of France. But the trio had traveled just two miles from where they had launched their tiny boat. One of the rescuers told the media that the smallest of waves might have capsized them.

It’s easy to laugh at the young men. They only brought a single paddle with a bottle of wine on their big adventure. Yet how often we are likewise adrift, thinking only of the fun we'll have during our journey, unaware we are going nowhere?

Stephen Goforth

When we’re anxious, things smell bad

When we are tense, two parts of our brains that normally keep to themselves wind up talking to each other. The result? Researchers say that normally neutral odors become olfactory offenses. And it gets worse the more stressed out we get. A University of Wisconsin-Madison study found the offensive smells make us even more anxious creating a vicious stinky cycle. Details are in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Stephen Goforth

the audience effect

The effort of communicating to someone else forces you to pay more attention and learn more. You can see this audience effect even in small children.

In one of my favorite experiments, a group of Vanderbilt University researchers in 2008 published a study in which several dozen 4- and 5-year-olds were shown patterns of colored bugs and asked to predict which would be next in the sequence. In one group, the children simply repeated the puzzle answers into a tape recorder.

In a second group, they were asked to record an explanation of how they were solving each puzzle.

And in the third group, the kids had an audience: They had to explain their reasoning to their mothers, who sat near them, listening but not offering any help. Then each group was given patterns that were more complicated and harder to predict.

The results?

The children who didn’t explain their thinking performed worst. The ones who recorded their explanations did better—the mere act of articulating their thinking process aloud seemed to help them identify the patterns more clearly. But the ones who were talking to a meaningful audience—Mom—did best of all. When presented with the more complicated puzzles, on average they solved more than the kids who’d explained to themselves and about twice as many as the ones who’d simply repeated their answers.

Researchers have found similar effects with adolescents and adults.

Interestingly, the audience effect doesn’t necessarily require a big audience. This seems particularly true online.

Clive Thompson, Smarter Than you Think

Articles of interest - Jan 18

***THE INTERNET

Sadly, the Internet Isn’t Making the World a Better Place - MIT Technology Review

****SCIENCE

Vial and Error: Science’s wonders are oft built on blunders - Chronicle of Higher Ed

String Theory Meets Loop Quantum Gravity (Two leading candidates for a “theory of everything,” long thought incompatible, may be two sides of the same coin) - Quantam Magazine

****PSYCHOLOGY                         

Many Black Students Don’t Seek Help for Mental-Health Concerns, Survey Finds - Chronicle of Higher Ed

How the sound of your own voice can affect your mood - Vox

The Joy of Psyching Myself Out (Is it possible to think scientifically and creatively at once?) - New York Times

Can a brain scan uncover your morals? - The Guardian

****PHILOSOPHY

Plato’s Cave Allegory Animated Monty Python-Style - Open Culture

 ***PERSONAL GROWTH

Controlling Emotions - Becoming (my blog)

How to Take Advantage of Boredom, the Secret Ingredient of Creativity - Open Culture

***GRAMMAR     

Our National Anthimeria - Chronicle of Higher Ed

So They Say: Fallout from the expansion of "they" - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Everyone Uses Singular 'They,' Whether They Realize It Or Not - NPR

***LANGUAGE

The case of the missing “u”s in American English - Quartz

The totes amazesh way millennials are changing the English language - Washington Post

***LITERATURE

On Oscar Wilde and Plagiarism - Public Domain Review

An Introduction to the World of Haruki Murakami Through Documentaries, Stories, Animation, Music Playlists & More - Open Culture

What Your First Fictional Crush From Literature Says About You Bustle

***MUSIC & ART

Download 650 Soviet Book Covers, Many Sporting Wonderful Avant-Garde Designs (1917-1942) - Open Culture

All of Bach is Putting Bach’s Complete Works Online: 100 Done, 980 to Come - Open Culture

Will Big Data Write The Next Hit Song? - Datacomony

***RESEARCH                                           

Wikipedia at 15: Millions of readers in scores of languages - Pew Research

Excuses for Plagiarism by Researchers - Retraction Watch

Fake study on moms’ kisses risked sowing confusion just for a laugh - Stat News

The Most-Edited Wikipedia Pages Over The Last 15 Years - FiveThirtyEight

At 15, Wikipedia Is Finally Finding Its Way to the Truth – Wired

The scholarly database JSTOR, recognizing its role as a starting point for research, sees major growth in its ebook program – Inside Higher Ed

***RACE AND GENDER ISSUES

A new survey explains one big reason there are so few women in technology - Vox

Female professors are woefully outnumbered at med schools nationwide - Stat News

When Teamwork Doesn’t Work for Women (In economics, women don’t get full credit for work done with men, says a new study) - New York Times

***HISTORY

7 Little-Known Martin Luther King, Jr. Facts You Weren't Taught in History Class - Mic

***MEDIA

Media, Journalism and Technology Predictions 2016 - Digital Newsreport

Four Keys to Creating a Great Audio Interview - Orbit Media

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Twitter is not broken, and they should stop trying to fix it - Vox

Please watch this video before deciding whether Instagram fame is right for you - Washington Post

Death Hoaxes, Like-Farming, and YouClickbait? Likebait? Why it matters - Snopes

I Found Out My Secret Internal Tinder Rating And Now I Wish I Hadn't - Fast Company 

How to Build an Empathetic Social Media Strategy for Times of Tragedy - Moz

The White House Is Now on Snapchat (And Every Other Platform) - Wired

Periscope Now Drops Live Video Into Your Twitter Timeline 

Hey Millennials, Your Mom Is About to Follow You on Snapchat - Wired

***BIG DATA  

A suite of easy-to-use web tools for beginners that introduce concepts of working with data - Data Basic

5 major data analytics missteps beginners make - Information Management

Favorite 2015 books for data science beginners, machine learning resources, managing data projects - FastForward Labs

Does MIT's advances with the Data Science Machine change the human element in the Big Data process? - - Dataconomy

8 open source Big Data mining tools some suitable for beginners-some remarkably robust for the pro - DataMation

FTC: concerns over how you handle Big Data related to discrimination & privacy - Computer World

A look inside the Facebook algorithm, the human element behind it and the place of user control - Slate

The Secret Weapon of Predictive Analytics: Contextual Integration - Data Informed

I asked a computer to be my life coach. Personal #analytics gets a workout - NPR

How ‘The Revenant’ — and Big Data — Will Change Movies Forever – Yahoo Tech

***RELIGION

Division Over Social Issues Threatens Global Split Among Anglican Churches - NPR

Are Trump's Values Consistent With Evangelicals? - NPR

The Duggars: Sexual Abuse in the Christian Homeschooling Movement - Jstor

New charges against allege Bill Gothard sexually abused women – Washington Post

Trump: Christianity 'under siege' - The Hill

Supreme Court to Consider Churches’ Rights to State Grants (Justices to review whether funds must be offered on same terms as for secular groups) – Wall Street Journal

Christian denominations grapple with graying clergy, ways to appeal to the young – Houston Chronicle

***JOURNALISM

Fifty Years of FOIA: As the Freedom of Information Act turns 50, journalists are innovating new ways to use the law - Harvard's Nieman Lab

Here are some more predictions for journalism in 2016 - Harvard's Nieman Lab

Snopes' Field Guide to Fake News Sites and Hoax Purveyors - Snopes

The Problem With Journalism Is You Need an Audience - Gawker

Journalism in the movies – Financial Times

Is Making a Murderer ‘Advocacy Journalism’? – The Wrap

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Al Jazeera America is closing because ‘our business model is simply not sustainable…’ - Poynter

****JOBS

5 tips for facing your networking fears - Biz Journals

Code School Udacity Promises Refunds if You Don’t Get a Job - Wired

***SEXUAL ASSAULT ON CAMPUS

Being A Sexual Assault Survivor In College Often Comes With Huge Bills (Experts are noticing the Education Department is increasingly ordering colleges to include financial remedies for victims) - Huffington Post

How 46 Title IX Cases Were Resolved  - Chronicle of Higher Ed

****STUDENT LIFE                      

Pretty Girls Make (Higher) Grades - NPR

The Number Of College Students Seeking Mental Health Treatment Is Growing Rapidly - Huffington Post

***HIGHER ED

Oregon Cancels Branding Contract, Will Spend Money on Academics 

The 13 Best ‘Onion’ Stories About Higher Education

5 Ways Elite-College Admissions Shut Out Poor Kids – NPR

Can Statements Faith Be Compatible Academic Freedom – Inside Higher Ed

Wheaton College and creationism (opinion) – Patheos

***TEACHING

Small Changes in Teaching: The First 5 Minutes of Class - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Communicating with Students: A Suggestion About Email - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Mapping a MOOC Reveals Global Patterns in Student Engagement - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Can Teaching Methods Be Patented  (Experts attempt to make sense of Khan Academy's patent application for A/B testing in education -- and whether it can even be patented) – Inside Higher Ed

seeing who's a winner

What matters most in a music competition—the music, right? Before you answer, consider this study: Some volunteers were asked to guess which performers won classical music competitions after listening to audio of the contest. Others were given audio and video of the performances. A third group got the video with no sound. Despite not hearing a note, the last group, going off of video without audio, guessed the winners better than the volunteers who could actually hear the performances. These volunteers were not just music fans—they were amateur and professional musicians. Both these volunteers and the actual judges of the contests allowed the visual image to outweigh the music itself when judging its value.

Researcher took the study one step further by trying to figure out what made the difference. If you think it was the attractiveness of the performer, think again. The social cues related to passion and creativity provided the biggest indication as to which performances would be judged award winning.

Often what we say we value (in this case, the music itself) takes a backseat to what we really value (the performer's visual presentation flare and appearance).

Details of the study are in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. You can read it here.

Stephen Goforth

articles of interest - Jan 11

***SOCIAL MEDIA

How This 26-Year-Old Los Angeles Artist Became a Periscope Celebrity - ABC News

The World’s Top-Earning YouTube Stars 2015 - Forbes

Who Controls Your Facebook Feed - Slate

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Hints Its 140 Character Limit Could End - Wired

How Facebook Makes Us Dumber - Bloomberg

 ***BIG DATA  

What the software line drawn from 2006 to 2016 tells you about the next decade of Big Data - Datanami

Clever Algorithms do not eliminate the need for care when drawing connections between cause and effect - Harvard Business Review (Recognizing two particular limitations of algorithms is the first step to managing them better)

Predictive or Prescriptive analytics? Perhaps both - Business News Daily

Lots of people call themselves Data Scientists-how to know you have the real thing before  building it into your org - Predictive Analytics World

Four analytics trends to watch in 2016:  #3-IoT propels businesses to explore geospatial - IT pro Portal

Data storytelling in 2016: changes in the way journalists report the news & how businesses interact with their data - Computer World

***WRITIN’ AND READIN’

Code-Switching to Improve Your Writing and Productivity - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Writing Fantasies (subscription) - Chronicle of Higher Ed

***GRAMMAR     

Sorry, grammar nerds. The singular ‘they’ has been declared Word of the Year - Washington Post

Word(s) of the Year 2015 - Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LANGUAGE

NPR's Code Switch Team Explores Political Correctness On College Campuses - NPR

***LITERATURE

Graphic Novelist Named National Ambassador For Young People's Literature - NPR

Are There Any Unforgivable Sins in Literature? - New York Times

Why lawyers love Shakespeare - Economist

Why the British Tell Better Children’s Stories - The Atlantic

***RESEARCH                                           

You Can’t Trust What You Read About Nutrition - FiveThirtyEight

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Free yourself from negative people - Becoming (my Blog)

When Are You Really an Adult? - The Atlantic

Kendrick Lamar: I can't change the world until I change myself first - NPR

***JOURNALISM

Reclaiming spin - Columbia Journalism Review

18 Of The Most Hilarious Media Corrections Of 2015 - BuzzFeed

What to expect from data storytelling in 2016 - Computer World

A journalism professor was fired this week - Michael Koretzky (opinion)

New Book Highlights Historic Black Newspaper - NPR

ProPublica Launches the Dark Web’s First Major News Site - Wired

A new program at Medill places engineering and journalism students together in the Bay Area - Poynter

Outfits, Graphics, and the News Room: Why the News Looks the Way It Does - JStor

These will be the 5 biggest sports journalism stories in 2016 - Poynter

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Consumers Can't Tell Native Ads From Editorial Content - Media Post

Fox Chicago producer's sexist cold call on women's hats iced by GM - Chicago Tribune

The state of automated journalism - Harvard's Nieman Lab

New York Times: The homepage still plays a prominent role - Journalism.co

****STUDENT LIFE

The whole 'working as a barista after college' thing is a myth - Business Insider

****PSYCHOLOGY                         

Revolutionary Neuroscience Technique Slated for Human Clinical Trials - Scientific American

Do These Jeans Make Me Look Unethical? - NPR

Anatomy Of Addiction: How Heroin And Opioids Hijack The Brain - NPR

****PHILOSOPHY

Philosophers want to know why physicists believe theories they can’t prove - Quartz

The Enlightenment is often miscast as the ‘Age of Reason’ - Wall Street Journal (In truth, it dethroned rational philosophy in favor of sociology and psychology.)

***HIGHER ED

California Accreditor Loses Appeal - Inside Higher Ed

Public records deflate myths about "profitable" college athletics - Student Press Law Center

***HUMANITIES /STEM

'Manifesto for the Humanities' - Inside Higher Ed

Professors consider how to sell English major to students parents administrators - Inside Higher Ed

***TEACHING

Assessing the Process Not the Product of Learning - Chronicle of Higher Ed

New analysis offers more evidence against the reliability of student evaluations of teaching - Inside Higher Ed(they’re actually better at gauging students’ gender bias and grade expectations)

Setting Boundaries as an Empathetic Teacher - Chronicle of Higher Ed (How to keep some emotional distance from the personal traumas of your students)

***SEXUAL ASSAULT ON CAMPUS

 A tool to Track Hundreds of Federal Sexual-Assault Investigations - Chronicle of Higher Ed

The Legal Limits of ‘Yes Means Yes’ - Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LEGAL ISSUES

2015 Year in Review for Student and Faculty Rights on Campus - The Fire

Are Legal Restrictions On Disparaging Personal Names Unconstitutional?–In re The Slants - Technology & Marketing Law Blog

Two courts reaffirm protections for opinions based on disclosed facts - Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Kent State University agrees to $145,000 settlement of federal lawsuit over assistance animals - Cleveland Plain Dealer

End of the Line for Google Books Lawsuit? - Inside Higher Ed

Google Defeats Copyright Lawsuit Over Waze Data - Technology & Marketing Law Blog

***RELIGION

Donald Trump At Evangelical Liberty University Jan 18 - International Business Times

Wheaton professor denounces efforts to fire her - Chicago Tribune

In treatment of professor, Wheaton shows split among US Evangelicals - Christian Science Monitor

The Real Reason Wheaton College is Terminating Larycia Hawkins: Loving the Common “Enemy”  - Patheos

Do Black Lives Matter to evangelicals? - Washington Post (opinion)

'Insider Movements' book called 'dangerous' - Baptist Press

Franklin Graham’s promised land - The Economist

This Is What It’s Like To Be Christian And Live Under ISIS - BuzzFeed News

Classicists' Christian Problem - Chronicle of Higher Ed

 

The freak-out test

If I were feeling really anxious what would I do? If we would pick up the phone and call six friends, one after another, with the aim of hearing their voices and reassuring ourselves that they still love us, we’re operating hierarchically. We’re seeking the good opinion of others.

Here’s another test. Of any activity you do, ask yourself: If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it? If you are alone on a planet a hierarchical structure makes no sense. There’s no one to impress. So, if you’d still pursue that activity, congratulations.

If Arnold Schwarzenegger were the last man on earth, he’d still go to the gym. Stevie Wonder would still pound the piano. The sustenance they get comes from the act itself, not from the impression it makes on others.

Now: What about ourselves as artists?

If we were freaked out, would we go there first? If we were the last person on earth, would we still show up at the studio, the rehearsal hall, the laboratory?

Steven Pressfield. The War of Art

the active brain

Being a bookworm, jotting down your thoughts and completing other tasks that keep your brain active may help you stay sharp in your later years.

A study published on July 3, 2013 in the journal Neurology revealed that reading, writing, and doing other mentally-stimulating activities at every age helped stave off memory problems.

"Our study suggests that exercising your brain by taking part in activities such as these across a person's lifetime, from childhood through old age, is important for brain health in old age," study author Robert S. Wilson said in a press release. Wilson is senior neuropsychologist of the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

Study participants who reported the most reading and writing later in life were able to slow their memory decline by 32 percent compared to people with average mental activity. Those who reported the lowest mental stimulation in their later years had a 48 percent faster memory decline compared to the average.

Read more from the BBC here

Wings are best grown after you jump off the cliff anyway

Life after college is like getting hit by a bus you didn’t see coming because you were too busy texting to look both ways before crossing the street. And why would you? You’ve crossed that street every single day at the exact same time for 20 years and a bus has never run over you before. Here’s the thing: Up until this point, your entire life has been hinged upon a concept of preparation and reward. You study for a test, you get a good grade. You exhibit good behavior, you don’t get thrown in detention. You do your chores, you get an allowance. 

The real world doesn’t really care about any of that. Sometimes you fail when you should have succeeded. Sometimes you’re punished when you’ve done nothing wrong. Sometimes you lose, even when you did everything in your power to win. So lay down your ego and stop waving that degree around like it’s a Get Out Of Jail Free card. Jump in. Grow your wings.

Alex McDaniel

Profanity

Someone once said, “Profanity is a lazy man’s way of trying to be emphatic.” I choose not to swear, not only for religious reasons, but also because it shows a lack of creativity on the speaker's part. Profanity is similar to using "good" to describe everything. The game was good. The example was good. That's good writing. Good video. What does that mean? It's inexact and lazy. Like the overuse of the word "good," profanity doesn't say much of anything. It's the spewing of emotions. While there is value in expression, dumping raw emotion on others may just fool us into thinking we are serving up honesty when actually we are hiding our feelings from ourselves.

Be more exact or wait until you know what you want to say. At least don't use bland and overworked terms. Profanity is a way to tell others, "See? I really, really mean what I'm saying. I'm stomping my little foot and throwing a little fit verbally. What I'm saying is important because I am using these magical naughty words."

Stephen Goforth

Coming to terms with the unknown

A Dutch experiment gave subjects a series of 20 jolts of electricity. The group was divided between those who knew they were getting 20 strong shocks and those who were told they would receive 17 mild shocks and 3 intense jolts. The second group wasn't told which shock was coming when.

The researchers found the group that did not know what was coming had a higher level of anxiety - even though they received fewer hits than the other group. The group facing uncertainty sweated more and their hearts beat faster.

Oddly enough, the anticipation of the unknown creates more stress for us than knowing something bad is going to happen to us. We prefer knowing the bad news is a sure thing over suspecting there may be bad news to come.

It’s hard to come to terms with the unknown. When we know what we are facing, we can go ahead and grieve and move forward. But when we don’t know whether to grieve or not, or how much to grieve, we are stuck in the land of uncertainty.

Stephen Goforth