The fear of repeating a wrong or a fear of repeating past failures can produce an anxiety that can be mistaken for lingering guilt. Rising to meet even the simplest of expectations can be difficult. We become angry at ourselves and guilt-ridden. The bar is so low. Why can't rise above it? But guilt isn't the culprit. Fear wears the mask of guilt, fooling us into wearing its chains.

Stephen Goforth

January 27, 2017

Love is Slow and Difficult

January 27, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

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

January 24, 2017

Black Swains

January 24, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

We have a natural tendency to look for instances that confirm our story and our vision of the world.

Seeing white swans does not confirm the nonexistence of black swans. There is an exception, however: I know what statement is wrong, but not necessarily what statement is correct. If I see a black swan I can certify that all swans are not white! If I see someone kill, then I can be practically certain that he is a criminal. If I don’t see him kill, I cannot be certain that he is innocent. The same applies to cancer detection: the finding of a single malignant tumor proves that you have cancer, but the absence of such a finding cannot allow you to say with certainty that you are cancer-free.

We can get closer to the truth by negative instances, not by verification.

Nissim Taleb, The Black Swain

January 23, 2017

articles of interest - Jan 23

January 23, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Making the most of social media MIT

Why Instagram is reinventing itself Recode

***ART & DESIGN

What’s the best font size for the web? Prototypr

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Making Friends Becoming (my site)

***FREE SPEECH

University debates whether Academic Freedom covers work considered Fake Science Inside Higher Ed

***LEGAL ISSUES

Student Sues College Over 'Social Justice' Activism Mandate Forbes

***TECHNOLOGY

Fired IT employee offered to unlock College’s data — for $200,000 Indianapolis Star

***BIG DATA & STATISTICS

A video explaining Machine Learning in a simple way University of Oxford

How Big Data, Deep Learning, Data Science & #AI have changed in the last year KD Nuggets

Assessing the frameworks for implementing Deep Learning Medium

Why physicists make great data scientists Wired

***RELIGION

Almost all U.S. presidents, including Trump, have been Christians Pew Research

Trump's Spiritual Adviser Talks About Relationship With President NPR

***MUSIC

In An Ever-Changing Music Industry, Cash For Hits Remains A Constant NPR

Inside Pandora's Quest to Take on Spotify, Apple Music & Amazon Billboard

***SCIENCE

The Fine Art of Sniffing Out Crappy Science Chronicle of Higher Ed

***PSYCHOLOGY

Kitty Dukakis: Electroshock Therapy Has Given Me A New Lease On Life NPR

***PHILOSOPHY

An Introduction to Hegel’s Philosophy of History: The Road to Progress Runs First Through Dark Times Open Culture

***HIGHER ED

What does Obamacare repeal look like on a college campus? Education Dive

Some Colleges Have More Students From the Top 1 Percent Than the Bottom 60 New York Times

***ONLINE CLASSES

Study Finds Simple Interventions can help certain online Learners persist Inside Higher Ed

Education Dept. Clarifies Rule Governing Online Courses Chronicle of Higher Ed

***HUMANITIES /STEM

Report that first Trump budget will try to kill arts and humanities endowments alarms many academics. Science programs in Energy Department could also face cuts Inside Higher Ed

The world couldn’t afford engineering degrees without philosophy majors Quartz

***STUDENT LIFE

Whose dorm rooms are dirtier, men's or women's? Here's the answer USA Today

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

At first, 55 schools faced sexual violence investigations. Now the list has quadrupled to 223 schools Washington Post

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Northwestern U Faculty encouraged to put mental health services info on their syllabi Inside Higher Ed

January 22, 2017

the statistical view

January 22, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

Christianity is not a statistical view of life. – Malcolm Muggeridge

January 22, 2017

a stone and a rusty nail

January 22, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

How do we keep from developing judgmental attitudes? This used to be my big hang-up when I first started counseling. Whenever people shared their problems with me, I found myself thinking,

“If he had stay away from the wrong crowd, this would never have happened.”

“He should have known better.”

“A little common sense could have prevented this…”

“A good lecture show sort her out.”

One day I shared my difficulties with an older counselor, who said, “That used to be my problem, too- and this is how I overcame it.’

Reaching into a desk drawer he took out a stone and a rusty nail.

‘I keep these here,’ he said, "For a special reason. The stone to remind me of the text, 'Let him who is without sin.. be the first to throw a stone' and the nail to remind me what a Friend did for me a long, long time ago on a hill called Calvary."

Since then, whenever I counsel anyone who has gone astray, I say to myself, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

a Counselor

January 21, 2017

Conditions for creativity

January 21, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self. - Erich Fromm

January 20, 2017

Digital Dating and Divorce

January 20, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

You are three times more likely to divorce if you met online instead of face-to-face, according to researchers at Michigan State University. They also say online daters are nearly 30 percent more likely to break up in the first year. It might have to do with how each person first approaches the relationship. Nearly everyone who uses dating apps and websites immediately begins by looking for false information in their prospective partner’s profile. The researchers believe suspicion damages the relationship at an early stage. You'll find more details in the online journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

January 19, 2017

how to predict the future

January 19, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

The best way to predict the future is to invent it. - Alan Kay

January 16, 2017

articles of interest - Jan 16

January 16, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

***BIG DATA & STATISTICS

Report: Tremendous growth in data analytics education nationwide (Data literacy is now a baseline expectation in jobs of all kinds) Tableau

Big Data has all the properties of real world objects and are subject to real world physics Dzone

Hadoop security is no longer optional Datanami

“Bayes’ theorem may provide novel insights into pernicious mental problems that have so far defied explanation” Science News

The role of open source R in bringing Data Science to the masses InfoWorld

10 simple rules for effective statistical practice Data Science Central

***JOURNALISM

What is the Worth of Investigative Journalism? The Wire

Someone is trying to take down the Drudge Report BusinessInsider

Clare Hollingworth, reporter who broke news about start of World War II, dies at 105 Washington Post

Was BuzzFeed Right to Publish Accusations Against Donald Trump? (opinion) New York Times

***FAKE NEWS

Google Quietly Removes “Fake News” Language From Its Advertising Policy Media Matters

The Real Story About Fake News Is Partisanship New York Times

Fake news and the spread of misinformation (a gathering of resources) Journalists Resources

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Report: Video isn’t as popular with viewers as it is with advertisers Poynter

***GRAMMAR

Tpyos vs. Mispelings: a Presidential Matter Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LANGUAGE

Why Do Canadians Say 'Eh'? AtlasObscura

Talking to In-laws Can Be Hard. In Some Languages, It’s Impossible New York Times

How Old Is ‘Gaslighting’? Chronicle of Higher Ed

Decrying Dialects and Despising Speakers Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LITERATURE

On Optimism and Despair The New York Review of Books

The American Novel Since 1945: A Free Yale Course on Novels by Nabokov, Kerouac, Morrison, Pynchon & More Open Culture

The Opening Lines Of The World’s Most Famous Books Daily Infographic

***GENDER ISSUES

Survey Finds Gender Gap in Presidential Spouse Expectations Inside Higher Ed

Research production in high-impact journals of contemporary neuroscience: A gender analysis Science Direct

Top Divinity Schools: Use Gender-Neutral Language to Refer to God National Review

***FREE SPEECH

Student Painting Depicting Cops As Animals Sparks Tensions On Capitol Hill NPR

Techdirt's First Amendment Fight For Its Life (opinion) TechDirt

Free Speech Advocates, Publishers Wrestle With Questions Of Censorship NPR

***LEGAL ISSUES

The impact on scholarly publications if there were no intellectual property law and if scholarly publications were entirely open access UCLA Law Review

Uncle Sam’s hilarious offensive-trademark dilemma (opinion) New York Post

The Supreme Court began debating a case that will impact millions of students with disabilities Business Insider

***TECHNOLOGY

Cali College paid $28K cyber-ransom to hackers KABC

***BUSINESS

Continued Learning as a corporate Priority Economist

***PRODUCING MEDIA

Learn Digital Photography with Harvard University’s Free Online Course Open Culture

***RELIGION

Gay couple will pastor historic church in Washington Religious News Service

Evangelical Leaders Reject Compromise on LGBT and Religious Rights Christianity Today

Donald Trump's Inauguration Prayer Leader Choices Show His Values NPR

Controversial megachurch pastor Eddie Long dies at 63 Atlanta’s WPMT (FOX43)

***ART & DESIGN

Design thinking origin story plus some of the people who made it all happen Medium

How The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Changed Album Cover Design Forever Open Culture

***MUSIC

Classical Music Mashup II

Indie Rock Isn’t Dead Vice

From Mozart To Adele To Chance The Rapper, Measuring Album Sales Means Being Specific NPR

David Bowie Offers Advice for Aspiring Artists: “Go a Little Out of Your Depth,” “Never Fulfill Other People’s Expectations” Open Culture

***FILM

How the French New Wave Changed Cinema: A Video Introduction to the Films of Godard, Truffaut & Their Fellow Rule-Breakers Open Culture

***RESEARCH

Gates Foundation research can’t be published in top journals Nature

The Statistical Crisis in Science

***SCIENCE

On eve of Trump, Obama’s Energy Department announces new policy to protect scientists Washington Post

Identity Theft in the Academic World Leads to Junk Science SpringerLink

The Map of Physics Scholarly Kitchen

***HEALTH

Wearables Could Soon Know You’re Sick Before You Do Wired

Majority of Americans are one medical emergency away from financial ruin New York Post

A cardboard centrifuge separates blood cells from plasma Economist

Dangerous superbug appears to be spreading stealthily in US hospitals Stat News

***PSYCHOLOGY

Researchers Unravel Strange And Contradictory Feelings About Power NPR

Anti-Gay Counselor Gets $25,000 From Missouri State Courthouse News

***NEUROSCIENCE

As people age, the brain changes in both good ways and bad Economist

The Brain Scrambles Names Of People You Love NPR

***PHILOSOPHY

An Introduction to Confucius’ Life & Thought Through Two Animated Videos Open Culture

***PRODUCTIVITY

How to view and edit Word documents from Google Drive with ease Tech Republic

How to create and use templates in Google Inbox Tech Republic

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Which is one is the true artist? Becoming (my site)

***STUDENT MEDIA

Fake news, real solutions: The way educational institutions treat journalists makes a difference Medium

***STUDENT LIFE

Chula Vista Olympic Training Center under new ownership and operation (Point Loma Trust was selected by the City of Chula Vista to operate the training center) CW6

College graduates, on average, earned 56 percent more than high school grads in 2015 ABC News

Former student sues Univ. of Oregon law school Register Guard

***CRIME ON CAMPUS

University apologizes for handing out leaflets wrongly identified a man a rape suspect Connecticut Post

University punishes employee for reporting sexual harassment: Settles for $170,000 Idaho State Journal

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

Activists Fear Reversal Of Strict Rules On Campus Sexual Assault NPR

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Claiming Your Right to Say No to Writing a Letter of Recommendation Chronicle of Higher Ed

Iowa lawmaker looking to end tenure at public universities Press Citizen

When Students’ Prejudices Taint Reviews of Instructors Chronicle of Higher Ed

Scientific 'cartels' band together to cite each others' work Stat News

***HIGHER ED

Federal Data Show Hundreds of Vocational Programs Fail Meet New Gainful Employment Inside Higher Ed

Higher Ed Leaders Muted Response to Texas’ Bathroom Bill Inside Higher Ed

Lifelong learning is becoming an economic imperative The Economist

College grade inflation: Looking for a cause Journalists Resources

U.S. News & World Report releases its 2017 Best Online Programs rankings

WAC: California Baptist University to join conference in 2018-19 CBS4

***ONLINE CLASSES

The return of the MOOC: Established education providers v new contenders (Alternative providers of education must solve the problems of cost and credentials) Economist

Harvard/MIT Report Analyzes 4 Years of MOOC Data Campus Technology

***TEACHING

Contemplative Listening (opinion; sub. req.’ed) Chronicle of Higher Ed

January 14, 2017

the Beauty of Evil

January 14, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

Simone Weil said, “Nothing is so beautiful, nothing is so continually fresh and surprising, so full of sweet and perpetual ecstasy as the good; no desert is so dreary, monotonous, and boring as evil. But with fantasy it's the other way around. Fictional good is boring and flat, while fictional evil is varied, intriguing, attractive, and full of charm.”

The media strikingly bear out Simone Weil’s contention. In their offerings it’s almost invariably Eros rather than Agape that provides all the excitement. Success and celebrity rather than a broken and contrite heart that are made to seem desirable.

Good and evil, after all, constitute the essential theme of our mortal existence. In this sense, they may be compared to the positive and negative points which generates an electric current; transpose the points, and the current fails, the lights go out, darkness falls and all is confusion.

So it is with us. The transposition of good and evil in the world of fantasy created by the media leaves us with no sense of any moral order in the universe, and without this, no order whatsoever, social, political, economic or any other, is ultimately attainable.

Malcolm Muggeridge

(in a speech to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in 1978)

January 07, 2017

Bridging the Generation Gap with Reading

January 07, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

And then one day, she asked him what he was reading. He had just started “The Hunger Games,” a series of dystopian young-adult novels by Suzanne Collins. The grandmother decided to read the first volume so that she could talk about it with her grandson the next time they chatted on the phone. She didn’t know what to expect, but she found herself hooked from the first pages, in which Katniss Everdeen volunteers to take her younger sister’s place in the annual battle-to-the-death among a select group of teens.

The book helped this grandmother cut through the superficialities of phone chat and engage her grandson on the most important questions that humans face about survival and destruction and loyalty and betrayal and good and evil, and about politics as well. Now her grandson couldn’t wait to talk to her when she called—to tell her where he was, to find out where she was and to speculate about what would happen next.

Will Schwalbe, Books for Living

January 09, 2017

articles of interest - Jan 9

January 09, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

***SOCIAL MEDIA

The best Social Media Conferences to attend in 2017 HootSuit

Telling Facebook you've changed your phone number – the weird T&Cs you've unwittingly signed up to The Guardian

The Desire to Live-Stream Violence The Atlantic

Using Social Media, Students Aspire To Become 'Influencers' NPR

Vine app will shut down and become Vine Camera on January 17th The Verge

Study: Half of American Internet Users Have Been Harassed or Abused Online MediaShift

So Who's Behind all Those Snarky Tweets from Windy's Washington Post

***CODING & SOFTWARE

This Video Explains How GitHub Works As Simply As Possible Life Hacker

List of companies using the free programming language R ListenData

***TECHNOLOGY

Computers have got much better at translation, voice recognition and speech synthesis But they still don’t understand the meaning of language Economist

The quest to create animals with human organs has a long history – and it is now becoming a reality BBC

How voice technology is transforming computing Economist

***BIG DATA & STATISTICS

10 simple rules for effective statistical practice Data Science Central

Willing to try Javascript for Machine Learning? Here are some useful libraries KD Nuggets

Battling the Tyranny of Big Data: When an algorithm tells us what to do but we know it is wrong Bloomberg

The 10 Coolest Big Data Products Of 2016 CRN

A video about how Bayesian inference works Flowing Data

How to create a Best-Fitting regression model? Data Science Central

5 expensive myths about Apache Hadoop News Factor

Machine Learning Algorithms: A Concise Technical Overview LinkedIn

***ART & DESIGN

What UX Designers Can Learn from Psychology Prototyprio

***PRODUCING MEDIA

Hacks, tips and tricks for mobile journalists Journalism.co.uk

How to Go Live: Facebook Live Streaming for News Publishers Video Strategist

***JOURNALISM

The Debate Over Whether Journalists Should Call Donald Trump’s False Statements ‘Lies’ Is a Red Herring New York Mag

Lies, Journalism and Objectivity New York Times

As Journalism Becomes Even More Dangerous, Newsrooms Must Address Psychological Trauma PBS MediaShift

Does nonpartisan journalism have a future? (opinion) The Conversation

Why Meryl Streep wants you to support the Committee to Protect Journalists Daily Dot

Washington Post to Create Rapid Response Investigative Team Washington Post

***FAKE NEWS

Fake news? That’s a very old story Washington Post

Higher ed takes on fake news epidemic Education Dive

Hoaxy Visualizes the Spread of Online News (Hoaxy is a new tool created as an antidote to the spread of fake news) Chronicle of Higher Ed

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Can the news be saved?: 2017’s emerging media outlets face just as many challenges as old media Salon

Why did the Los Angeles Times take so long to run an investigation? (there are questions also about its editorial decision-making) The Guardian

Tronc If You Want to Save Journalism Bloomberg

Medium lays off a third of its staff as it searches for a new business model The Verge

Why Medium Failed to Disrupt the MediaBloomberg

'The underbelly of the internet': How content ad networks fund fake news Digiday

***STUDENT MEDIA

Report: US College Newspapers Assailed for Negative Stories Voice of America

A college newspaper takes the right stand Delaware Online

These Local Freshmen Saved Their College Newspaper from Going Out of Print Honolulu Mag

***PERSONAL GROWTH

to be creative Becoming (my site)

Why Focusing on Yourself Helps You Get Over Someone Else Life Hacker

***GRAMMAR

Which is preferable, "If only it were," or "if only it was"? Chronicle of Higher Ed

***WRITING& READING

Portrait of the Artist as a Case Study Chronicle of Higher Ed

Trump pick Monica Crowley plagiarized multiple sources in 2012 book CNN

***LANGUAGE

Survey looks at foreign language programs' response to decade-old call to transform teaching Inside Higher Ed

2016’s grim words of the year Economist

***LITERATURE

Danger ahead: Collapse of Southern literature? Charlotte Observer

Author Discusses his new book on the State of the Classics Inside Higher Ed

How China uses Shakespeare to promote its own bard Economist

***GENDER ISSUES

'National Geographic' Tackles Changing Gender Norms Worldwide NPR

The Benefits of Gender Balance in a System’s Presidential Offices Chronicle of Higher Ed

***RACIAL ISSUES

Can We Really Measure Implicit Bias? Maybe Not Chronicle of Higher Ed

***SCIENCE

Using evolutionary dynamics and game theory to understand personal relations MIT News

***HEALTH

Japanese white-collar workers are already being replaced by artificial intelligence in Medical Insurance Co. Quartz

Today’s new drugs come through the pipeline no faster than 20 years ago, report finds Stat News

Diagnosing illness by smell: A prototype device to detect the scent of disease Economist

Obama vs. Trump: 5 ways they clash — or don’t — on health and science Stat News

The AI effort to crack biology, accelerate drug discovery, & upend clinical care Economist

Can data analytics aid in end-of-life care decisions? Managed Health Care

Lies, Damned Lies, and P Values: the number of "positive" but wrong medical studies may be higher than you think MedPage Today

***FREE SPEECH

Anger at a cop killer, a plea for clemency, and a fight over free expression at American U Washington Post

U.S. Supreme Court will not examine tech industry legal shield Reuters

A Lawyer Rewrote Instagrams Terms of Use in "Plain English" so kids would know their Privacy Rights Denver Post

***LEGAL ISSUES

'Star Trek' Fan Film Dispute Goes to Jury Trial in Big Ruling Hollywood Reporter

What law firms and law departments should know about Machine Learning algorithms Inside Counsel

***PSYCHOLOGY

Mariah Carey Feeds the Schadenfreude Cycle The Atlantic

What happens when narcissists become parents Washington Post

There’s a Problem With a Bunch of Psychology Textbooks New York Magazine

A Unified Theory of Mental Illness: How Everything from Addiction to Depression Can Be Explained by the Concept of “Capture” in Psychology Open Culture

***PHILOSOPHY

Why We Need to Teach Kids Philosophy & Safeguard Society from Authoritarian Control in Education, Philosophy, Politics Open Culture

***ETHICS

'Facebook Live' torture video raises ethical questions for social media giant CNN

***RELIGION

A Memoir Of Taking Christianity 'To The Extreme' NPR

The Curious Case of Christians and Alcohol (opinion) HeartSupport

Carrie Underwood faces backlash after performance at evangelical event Rolling Stone

Marvin Gorman, Assembly of God televangelist brought down by Jimmy Swaggart, dies at 83 NOLA

How Martin Luther has shaped Germany for half a millennium: The 500th anniversary of the 95 theses finds a country as moralistic as ever The Economist

The future of evangelicalism in America Religious News Service

***RELIGION & POLITICS

The New Congress Is 91% Christian. That’s Barely Budged Since 1961 New York Times

Faith on the Hill: The religious composition of the 115th Congress Pew Research Center

Evangelicals should be deeply troubled by Donald Trump’s attempt to mainstream heresy (opinion) Washington Post

***HIGHER ED

Average College Degree Pays off by age 34 CNN

When Colleges Rely on Adjuncts, Where Does the Money Go? Inside Higher Ed

Claudio Sanchez Predictions For What Will Happen In Education In 2017 NPR

***ONLINE CLASSES

280 Free MOOCs Getting Started in January Open Culture

Trainwreck: The Teach to One Math Experiment in Mountain View, CA Is a Cautionary Tale About the Perils of Digital Math Education Open Culture

***HUMANITIES /STEM

Why STEM Majors Need the Humanities Chronicle of Higher Ed

***TEACHING

What Technology Addiction Means for Educators MyStudent Voice

We Know What Works in Teaching Composition Chronicle of Higher Ed

How Can We Minimize Grade Challenges? Chronicle of Higher Ed

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Claiming Your Right to Say No to Writing a Letter of Recommendation Chronicle of Higher Ed

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

In Letter to College Presidents, Biden Urges Continued Fight Against Sexual Assault Chronicle of Higher Ed

How Publicity Might Sway Reporting of Campus Sexual Assaults Chronicle of Higher Ed

Few Colleges Use Controversial Sexual Misconduct policy adopted by Stanford Inside Higher Ed

January 07, 2017

making ideas safe

January 07, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

The university is not engaged in making ideas safe for students. It is engaged in making students safe for ideas.

Clark Kerr

January 07, 2017

She lost everything

January 07, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

Those flames are shooting out of what was once my kitchen

Exactly one week after I moved out of my Atlanta apartment and drove to another state with all my belongings, the woman who took over my lease called me. She had lost all her everything in a massive fire that morning. The apartment was in an old house--which burned to the ground.

I didn't really believe her. I thought she was exaggerating. Until I spoke to my former landlord and saw a video posted online by one of the Atlanta TV stations. Flames could be seen shooting out of my kitchen window. There were shots of dazed tenants standing in the street watching firefighters snuff the smoldering remains.

The fire started directly below where I used to sleep. Would I have been awake at six in the morning when it started? The woman who took my spot just happened to be awake at that early hour and got out before the blaze took everything she had—except for what she had in her hands.

If I had stayed another week in Atlanta, what would I have picked up as I rushed out of the house? And if I had been there and not woke up when smoke filled the apartment—was I ready for the end of my life?

Stephen Goforth

January 06, 2017

to live in freedom

January 06, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

To live in freedom, one must grow used to a life full of agitation, change, and danger.

Alexis de Tocqueville

January 06, 2017

False Guilt

January 06, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

Real guilt is a conviction over wrong, a belief about actions. False guilt is only a feeling of goodness or badness, not attached to specific acts. Don't honor false guilt by giving it a place in your life it doesn't deserve.

Stephen Goforth