ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire
We're Lost Our Mirrors
/Societies have rites of passage to help members deal with change. When these cues are missing and we have nothing in our lives to affirm that change is appropriate and timely, we’ve lost our mirrors. This is when a dependable support system can step up to make the difference. Just like the recovering alcoholic needs reminders about what a healthy identity looks like, we need a trusted circle of friends to remind us that the change in our lives is both positive and necessary. And we need that circle to encourage us to embrace the new identity and not the old one.
Stephen Goforth
thruth springs
/Truth springs from argument amongst friends. –David Hume
your day!
/Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So... get on your way. -Dr. Seuss
keeping your soul
/To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That’s what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul-would you understand why that is much harder? -Ayn Rand
articles of interest - Dec 12
/***SOCIAL MEDIA
Instagram Launches Live Video Life Hacker
Facebook is working on a new feature that will showcase lists of curated content from publishers directly in the News Feed Business Insider
Users Aren't Enough: Why Yik Yak Is The Latest Casualty Of A Changing Market Fast Company
College students explain why Yik Yak dropped off on campus USA Today
Facebook Backs 360-Degree Live Streams Media Post
***BUSINESS OF MEDIA
Native ads are still very confusing to many readers Harvard’s Nieman Lab
Quartz Global Executives Study: The Media Habits of the World’s Busiest People Quartz
***INTERNET
New Wayback Machine – Beta Chronicle of Higher Ed
Pick out live radio streams from an image of a globe Boing Boing
***JOURNALISM
The year of augmented writing Harvard’s Nieman Lab
When Did the Media Become a “Watchdog?” Daily Jstor
***FAKE NEWS
Weather Channel to Breitbart: Stop using us to mislead public on climate change CBS News
Most Americans Who See Fake News Believe It, New Survey SaysBuzzFeed News
A BuzzFeed News Poll found that 75% of American adults who were familiar with a fake news headline viewed the story as accurate BuzzFeed News
Why The Fake News Debate Gets It Wrong Forbes
The Cynical Gambit to Make ‘Fake News’ Meaningless The Atlantic
Washington Post fake news story blurs the definition of fake news Columbia Journalism Review
6 Tips for Identifying Fake News Scientific American
***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM
The NYT to unveil enhanced, redesigned Arts section Friday, new digital features and services Talking New Media
Breaking News is shutting down Poynter
***SCIENCE
Editorial: “Is science in big trouble?” Elsevier
***HEALTH
U.S. Dementia Rates Are Dropping Even as Population Ages New York Times
***PSYCHOLOGY
When A Psychologist Succumbed To Stress, He Coined The Term 'Burnout' NPR
The Science of Why We Laugh Open Culture
***PHILOSOPHY
Ryan Holiday Sells Stoicism as a Life Hack, Without Apology New York Times
***PERSONAL GROWTH
Closing Doors that seem like opportunities Becoming (my blog)
Self-Control Is Just Empathy With Your Future Self The Atlantic
The Story of Two Friends Who Changed How We Think About the Way We Think (a new book by From Michael Lewis) New York Times
New Study: Pessimism May Be Bad for Your Heart UPI
***WRITING& READING
A letter to my writing students on why they have more freedom to create than they seem to think Chronicle of Higher Ed
***LANGUAGE
‘Fascism’ could be the word of the year, Merriam-Webster says Boston Globe
***LITERATURE
Bibliomania, the Dark Desire For Books That Infected Europe in the 1800s Atlas Obsura
A Beginner’s Guide To Icelandic Literature The Reykjavik GrapeVine
***GENDER ISSUES
Author discusses new book about how arrival of women in American higher education changed colleges’ sense of moral mission Inside Higher Ed
New Research: Sexist men have psychological problems Washington Post
U.S. transgender people harassed in public restrooms: landmark survey Reuters
***FREE SPEECH
Restrictive Campus Speech Policies See Record Decline The Fire
Public University Threatens Student with Expulsion for Anti-Lynching Protest The FIRE
A review of newspaper theft and vandalism at colleges across the country SPLC
***LEGAL ISSUES
Ex-coach Art Briles sues Baylor officials for libel, conspiracy ESPN
What Legal Recourse Do Victims Of Fake News Stories Have? NPR
Yes, You Can Post That Negative Online Review, Says Congress NBC News
Songwriters Accuse Radio Stations of 'Illegal Cartel' NBC News
Shirley Caesar Sues DJ Suede Over Unauthorized #UNameItChallenge Song HipHopDX
***BIG DATA
Spelling out the ABCs of Bayesian statistics in layperson’s terms RW Connect
17 Microsoft Researchers: Past the past the Tay chatbot to what's ahead in AI Fortune
You’re not getting value from your Data Science -here’s why Harvard Business Review
***ART & DESIGN
How Pablo Picasso And Diego Rivera Influenced Each Other NPR
How Big Data is set to change the art market: Sophisticated data tools aim to improve knowledge and boost confidence The Art Newspaper
How To Understand a Picasso Painting: A Video Primer Open Culture
***RELIGION
Evangelicals propose truce over LGBTQ rights in hopes of ‘Fairness for All’ LGBTQ Nation
Fairness for All: Evangelicals Explore Truce on LGBT and Religious Rights: It worked in Utah, But national effort by the CCCU and NAE will be more complicated Christianity Today
Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council Bridges Religious Lines To Fight Discrimination NPR
The Book of Mormon touted as fourth most influential work in American literature Salt Lake Tribune
Evangelical preacher ruins Christmas by telling dozens of kids waiting to see Santa that he is not real The Daily Mirror
***MUSIC
Jazz Recordings With a Sense of History and Discovery New York Times
Patti Smith Sings Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rains Gonna Fall” at Nobel Prize Ceremony & Gets a Case of the Nerves Open Culture
The Genius of Paul McCartney’s Bass Playing in 7 Isolated Tracks Open Culture
When It Comes To CDs In 2016, Mozart Outsells Beyonce, Adele And Drake NPR
***STUDENT MEDIA
A College Newspaper Takes the Right Stand Bloomberg
Should You Enroll in Adulting School? NY Mag
Illinois accused of billing scheme at University radio station Chicago Tribune
***STUDENT LIFE
Immigrant students share what college means to them, and their fears as they wait for Donald J. Trump and his administration to take office Chronicle of Higher Ed
Recreational marijuana legal in your state? Not on campus USA Today
***ACADEMIC LIFE
Helping Professors Find Time to Think: The mission of faculty development has begun to broaden beyond the traditional focus on teaching Chronicle of Higher Ed
Montana State University professor fights firing Bozeman Daily
On-campus cybersecurity sometimes impedes academic freedom Business Insider
***HIGHER ED
Baylor and U. of Louisville Get Heat From Accreditor Chronicle of Higher Ed
NCAA Rules Ex-Official at Cal State-Northridge Committed Academic Misconduct Chronicle of Higher Ed
Building a Network to Help First-Generation Students Succeed Chronicle of Higher Ed
Why Universities Need Scholarly-Communications Experts (opinion) Chronicle of Higher Ed
Some colleges are refusing to call themselves 'sanctuary' campuses because states could cut their funding Business Insider
Mike Pence's Voucher Program in Indiana Was a Windfall for Religious Schools Mother Jones
***TEACHING
Why I Don’t Edit Their Rough Drafts Chronicle of Higher Ed
How Can Students Be Taught to Detect Fake News and Dubious Claims? (sub. req.’ed) Chronicle of Higher Ed
***RESEARCH
Reproducibility Crisis Timeline: Milestones in Tackling Research Reliability PLOS
Dear plagiarist’: A scientist calls out his double-crosser Stat News
***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT
A Sex-Assault Case Pits Privacy Against Transparency Chronicle of Higher Ed
Former Students Say Stanford Tried To Buy Its Way Out Of Title IX Investigations BuzzFeed News
Stanford releases a "questions and answers" article to refute various reports about the institution's handling of sexual-assault cases Stanford Press Release
A Sexual Assault Survivor Chronicle of Higher Ed
to do right
/To do right because of reputation, to do right because it is the correct thing, to do right to escape criticism, all such motives will fail sooner or later. To do right because I love is the one and only lasting motive. "Love never fails." G. Campbell Morgan
to be trusted
/To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved. –George MacDonald
to be blind
/To be blind is bad, but worse it is to have eyes and not to see. – Helen Keller
dream and believe
/To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe. -Anatole France
not a bystander
/Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander. -Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC
Why is it so impossible to get everything done?
/Several research studies have shown that people never get more done by blindly working more hours on everything that comes up. Instead, they get more done when they follow careful plans that measure and track key priorities and milestones. So if you want to be more successful and less stressed, don’t ask how to make something more efficient until you’ve first asked, “Do I need to do this at all?”
Simply being able to do something well does not make it the right thing to do. I think this is one of the most common problems with a lot of time-management advice; too often productivity gurus focus on how to do things quickly, but the vast majority of things people do quickly should not be done at all.
If you think about it, it’s actually kind of ironic that we complain we have so little time, and then we prioritize like time is infinite. So do your best to focus on what’s truly important, and not much else.
articles of interest - Dec 5
/***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA
How eSports are pioneering new media models Digiday
***TECHNOLOGY
I Swear to God This Is a Real Graph From Thomas Friedman's Latest Book Gizmodo
Netflix will let you download video to go, but not movies and shows from Disney Recode
Radio, Music and Technology: It’s Been a Long Strange Trip A Journey of Musical Things
***SOCIAL MEDIA
While We Weren’t Looking, Snapchat Revolutionized Social Networks NYTimes
***PRODUCING MEDIA
Forgotten audio formats: Wire recording Ars Technica
***BUSINESS OF MEDIA
Can Advertising Be a Science? Jstor
Digital publications are thriving in Europe where legacy media is weak Poynter
***BIG DATA
How Machine Learning may transform medicine: A Google algorithm can see a common eye disease as good as many experts Technology Review
Data firm in talks for role in White House messaging – and Trump business The Guardian
The promise/challenge of healthcare Big Data: drug discovery/getting the right treatments to the right patients Harvard Business Review
China turns Big Data into Big Brother: Wants to assign scores for eligibility on everything from loans to education Technology Review
The failure to ID fake news may not be the result of faulty machine learning algorithms Data Science Central
***LANGUAGE
You tell me that it’s evolution? Scientists have reached no consensus on the origins of language Economist
***LITERATURE
A Virginia School District Has Banned "To Kill a Mockingbird" Esquire
The 10 Best Books of 2016 - The New York Times
My Passion for Literature Succumbed to Reality New York Times
***RESEARCH
Why research papers have so many authors Economist
Ten simple rules for structuring papers bioRxiv
Detecting and avoiding likely false-positive findings – a practical guide Wiley Online Library
***WRITING& READING
How To Find A Writing Group, Because Every Aspiring Author Needs A Support Group Bustle
The Death of Cursive Writing Chronicle of Higher Ed
***RACE
New book argues that sometimes faculty members of color going up for tenure are judged by a higher standard than are their white peers Inside Higher Ed
Here’s a Rundown of the Latest Campus-Climate Incidents Since Trump’s Election Chronicle of Higher Ed
Rosa Parks and the Power of Oneness Jstor
The non-verdict of the police officer who killed Walter Scott is a national embarrassment (opinion) Vox
***FREE SPEECH
Trump takes aim at First Amendment CNN
An FBI Error Opens A Window Into Government Demands For Private Info FiveThirtyEight
Free-Speech Groups Describe Campus Media as Besieged Chronicle of Higher Ed
***LEGAL ISSUES
Online law degrees flourish under tight supervision: Hybrid courses offer face-to-face and internet-enabled classes Financial Times
Photographer Sues VICE for Unauthorized Use of Expectant Couple PDN Pulse
Art Bell and Michael Savage, radio hosts, at opposite ends of federal defamation suit Washington Times
Lawyer sues 20-year-old student who gave a bad Yelp review, loses badly Ars Technica
U.S. top court takes Christian-affiliated hospital pension case Religion News Service
Intellectual Property Problems at Universities: The public at large suffers when institutions spend time and money locking down too many private rights Inside Higher Ed
Court punts Kansas social-media expulsion case: Where does a public university's authority to regulate what students say on social media during off-campus personal time begin and end? Student Press Law Center
CBS Sues YouTuber for Posting Episodes of 'The Andy Griffith Show' Hollywood Reporter
Duran Duran Loses Case, Brought In Britain, Over American Copyrights Billboard
***FILM
14 of the best films of the 21st century, ranked by historical accuracy Quartz
***RELIGION
The Evangelicalism of Old White Men Is Dead (opinion by Tony Campolo) New York Times
Amy Grant Reveals Why She Doesn't Want to Be Labeled a 'Christian' Artist Gospel Herald
Christian Refugees Fleeing ISIS Grounds Flock To Parish Of Jordan Priest NPR
Amy Grant lives her life by two rules: Love God and love everybody else no matter what Fox News
I Think I Lost My Faith. How Do I Get Out Of My Office Bible Study? FiveThirtyEight
U.S. top court takes Christian-affiliated hospital pension case Religion News Service
If the U.S. had 100 people: Charting Americans’ religious beliefs and practices Pew Research
2016 Philanthropy Trends: Americans Donate Record $373 Billion NPR
Georgia Baptists urge crackdown on illegal immigration Baptist News
***MUSIC
How One Composer Turns Science Into Serious Drama Wired
***JOURNALISM
The failure to ID fake news may not be the result of faulty Machine Learning Algorithms Data Science Central
Protecting Journalism from Donald Trump The New Yorker
Journalists in the age of Trump: Lose the smugness, keep the mission Washington Post
Washington Post Editor Marty Baron Has a Message to Journalists in the Trump Era Vanity Fair
How to engage readers with digital longform journalism American Press Institute
***INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
How The San Francisco Chronicle rebuilt its investigative team Poynter
Investigative journalism is hard work. Spotlight shows why it's so important Vox
Ida Tarbell: A pioneer in document-driven investigative journalism iNewsSource
***FAKE NEWS
Fake news almost destroyed Abraham Lincoln Quartz
To Fix Fake News, Look To Yellow Journalism Jstor
A Browser Extension That Shows You Your Filter Bubble New York Magazine
Fake news crackdown threatens religious news Religion News Service
Why Snapchat And Apple Don't Have A Fake News Problem BuzzFeed News
Four Hard Truths about Fake News Jstor
***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM
Activists Think the FCC's Broadcast Spectrum Auction Could Save Local Journalism Vice
Politico co-founder’s new media startup is eyeing $10,000 subscriptions — eventually Recode
Voice of San Diego is spearheading a team to help other smaller news outlets build membership programs Harvard's Nieman Lab
***STUDENT MEDIA
Standoff between student newspaper and Sac State may leave Hornet homeless Sacramento Bee
Media organizations release report revealing threats to student journalism Daily Cal
Who Still Lives at Home with Their Parents? Priceonomics
***STUDENT LIFE
The Trump Bros Have Found Their Safe Space (white male college students who supported Donald J. Trump) BuzzFeed News
***SCIENCE
Flossing and the Art of Scientific Investigation New York Times
***HEALTH
Artificial Intelligence Could Dig Up Cures Buried Online Wired
The promise/challenge of healthcare Big Data: drug discovery/getting the right treatments to the right patients Harvard Business Review
The true story of America’s sky-high prescription drug prices Vox
Diabetics are hacking their health, because traditional systems have failed them Tech Republic
***NEUROSCIENCE
What your brain looks like on God: spiritual experience triggers same areas as sex and gambling Telegraph
***ETHICS
Want to Be an Ethical Shopper? Get DoneGood’s Chrome Extension Wired
***PERSONAL GROWTH
We are actors in a play Becoming (my blog)
***HIGHER ED
University hit by Ransomware: Network crippled by extortion software The Register
Liberty issues tone-deaf statement after hiring new athletic director USA Today
Christian University offers internships with Planned Parenthood Star Telegram
Can a Christian school be both ethical and athletic? Liberty raises the question again Washington Post
University student gets a zero because her art project violated dress code BongBong
Catholic college leaders pledge solidarity with undocumented students Washington Post
***TEACHING
Resisting the Post-Thanksgiving Doldrums Chronicle of Higher Ed
***CRIME ON CAMPUS
Campus police reflect on dangers of the job Inside Higher Ed
Student suspect arrested in fatal stabbing of USC professor on campus LA Times
***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT
UVA dean Nicole Eramo "vindicated" but not "healed" after Rolling Stone story CBS News
Improving your inner circle
/I reviewed my life when I turned forty. I had the desire to keep going to a higher level and to make a greater impact, but I realized that I had leveraged my time as much as I possibly could, and it would have been impossible to sharpen the focus on my priorities any more than it already was. In other words, I could not work harder or smarter. That left me only one choice: learning to work through others.
John Maxwell, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
the extra mile
/There is no traffic jam on the extra mile.
two ways
/There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking. – Alfred Korzybski
articles of interest - Nov 28
/***TECHNOLOGY
A 10-Digit Key Code to Your Private Life: Your Cellphone Number New York Times
***BIG DATA
Google’s AI translation tool seems to have invented its own secret internal language Tech Crunch
Better Questions to Ask Your Data Scientists Harvard Business Review
Artificial Intelligence can now judge books by their covers, determine genre at a glance Nature World News
10 Big Data Trends for 2017 Dzone
Big Data in search of unique data sets fuels market for small satellites Space News
Deep learning, model checking, AI, the no-homunculus principle, and the unitary nature of consciousness Andrew Gelman
***ART & DESIGN
The Most Influential Images of All Time TIME
***SOCIAL MEDIA
How Facebook Is Transforming Disaster Response Wired
Facebook’s Stumbles Expose Flaws in Its Plan to Rule Advertising Wired
***PERSONAL GROWTH
The Joy of Third Place Becoming (my blog)
***TEACHING
New website seeks to register professors accused of liberal bias and “anti-American values” Inside Higher Ed
Most Students Don’t Know When News Is Fake, Stanford Study Finds Wall Street Journal
Millions Have Dyslexia, Few Understand It NPR
***WRITING& READING
9 Online Tools to Help Writers Find a Literary Agent Media Shift
Don’t Look Now, But 2016 Is Resurrecting Poetry Wired
Who doesn’t read books in America? Pew Research
Book Publishers Scramble to make sense of Trump’s Rise to Victory New York Times
J.M. Coetzee on the Pleasures of Writing: Total Engagement, Hard Thought & Productiveness Open Culture
***LANGUAGE
'Atlas Obscura' Explores Roots Of The So-Called Mid-Atlantic Accent NPR
***LITERATURE
Are There Really Only 6 Plots In All Of Literature? Bustle
Richard Rorty’s 1998 Book Suggested Election 2016 Was Coming New York Times
Great 19 Century Poems Read in French: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine & More Open Culture
Why literature matters in debate about race and immigrants The Conversation
An Animated Introduction to George Orwell Open Culture
***GENDER ISSUES
How Early Feminist Writer Margaret Fuller’s Memoirs Were Rewritten Jstor
***RACE
White Power Leader's New Target: Colleges Inside Higher Ed
Two Jewish professors on different campuses are harassed with anti-Semitic threats at a time when swastikas have appeared at a number of institutions Inside Higher Ed
***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT
News organizations file suit against College for access to sexual assault records WRAL TV
Women who reported gang rape by Baylor football players reach settlement with school ESPN
Sexual Violence Might Reshape the Female Brain OZY
***BUSINESS
Google HR boss explains the only 2 ways to keep your best people from quitting Business Inside
***RELIGION
Most say their churches remained above the electoral fray this year Pew Research
***MUSIC
China’s newest export hit is classical music Economist
Don't Give up on the Guitar Bloomberg
***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA
Will 2017 Be Better For Radio? Radio Ink
***JOURNALISM
A guide to public records and the Trump Presidential Transition MuckRock
What TV journalists did wrong — and the New York Times did right — in meeting with Trump Washington Post
Two NPR designers left their comfort zones to create an experimental podcast for kids Nieman Labs
Maneuvering a new reality for US journalism Columbia Journalism Review
My ProPublica Move: From Blogging and Teaching Back to Deep Digging on Climate Dot Earth
The tech/editorial culture clash Columbia Journalism Review
***FAKE NEWS
The CNN porn scare is how fake news spreads The Verge
Fake News and the Internet Shell Game New York Times
For the ‘new yellow journalists,’ opportunity comes in clicks and bucks Washington Post
Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say Washington Post
An Exercise to Sift for Sources Amid a Blitz of Fake News New York Times
***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM
Why The Wall Street Journal is cutting print sections and refocusing on its core coverage Harvard’s Nieman Lab
***STUDENT LIFE
The Myth of the Sports Scholarship (sub. req’ed.) Chronicle of Higher Ed
***HEALTH
Big Data Coming In Faster Than Biomedical Researchers Can Process It NPR
***PSYCHOLOGY
Why Very Smart People Are Happiest Alone Big Think
***PHILOSOPHY
Socrates: The Father Of Western Philosophy (video) Seeker
A philosophy competition is asking the public to submit their most controversial, puzzling questions Quartz
How a Philosophy Professor Found Love in a Hidden Library New York Times
***HIGHER ED
Education, Not Income, Predicted Who Would Vote For Trump FiveThirtyEight
A ‘Netflix for Education’? Why LinkedIn’s New Product Should Give Us Pause (opinion) Chronicle of Higher Ed
Seeking students, public colleges reduce out-of-state prices Associated Press
These 15 Ridiculous Rules For Women Used To Be Enforced On College Campuses Vira Nova
Feast or Famine' for Humanities Ph.D.s: Some doctorate earners emerge with high levels of debt, while a growing number have none Inside Higher Ed
The Title IX Lives of Christian Colleges Christianity Today
no heavier burden
/There is no heavier burden than a great potential. --Linus, "Peanuts"
there is someting
/There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.
- Fred Rogers (Mister Rogers)
Happiness vs Growth
/You stop to visit a friend to find her five year old is running around in diapers. Your friend explains, “That’s the way he likes it and as long as he’s happy, then it's all right with me.” You’d probably say to yourself, if not out loud, “That’s not love. Love works to see children grow up and take on responsibility as they are able.”
If I love you, I can’t just be looking out for what makes you happy. When happiness and growth collide, real love chooses growth. If there's someone in your life and you are wondering if he or she really loves you, ask yourself this question: Is this person seeking what’s in your best interest? Even when you don’t fully understand why they are doing what they are doing? Is this person willing to sacrifice your favor in order to see you grow?
Stephen Goforth