true self
/We grow toward true self in a space where our growth is not driven by external demands but drawn forward, by love, into our best possibilities.
Parker Palmer
ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire
articles of interest - Feb 13
/***SOCIAL MEDIA
Is Google Maps trying to be a social network? The Verge
Yik Yak is secretly pivoting to group messaging The Verge
***PRODUCING MEDIA
The ear training guide for audio producers NPR
***TECHNOLOGY
Google figured out a way to zoom and enhance photos just like in the movies TheNextWeb
***BIG DATA & STATISTICS
A crash course in understanding numbers: A Field Guide to Lies and Statistics Economist
A Litany of Problems With p-values Statistical Thinking blog
A generalMachine Learning technique to make predictions applicable to large amounts of unstructured data Data Science Central
1300 tech experts were asked: Will the net overall effect of algorithms be positive or negative? Pew Internet
Google releases massive visual databases for Machine Learning Data Science Central
***JOURNALISM
Trump Accuses Media of Not Reporting Voices He Hears in Head The New Yorker
8 Ways to Write Shorter Stories Poynter
The boundaries of journalism — and who gets to make it, consume it, and criticize it — are expanding Harvard’s Nieman Lab
The New York Times Claws Its Way Into the Future Wired
Facebook is beginning to reach out to local newsrooms Poynter
Kellyanne Conway’s interview tricks, explained Vox
6 essential digital journalism tools from Reported.ly International Journalists’ Network
***FAKE NEWS
Want to resist the post-truth age? Learn to analyze photos like an expert would Quartz
Trump Accuses Media of Not Reporting Voices He Hears in Head New Yorker
Era of hoaxes, fake news keeps Snopes Writers Busy Union Tribune
Librarians take up arms against fake news Seattle Times
***STUDENT MEDIA
Remove gag from student journalists Seattle Times
***GRAMMAR
White House list of underreported Terror Attacks Riddled with Grammatical Errors Washington Post
***WRITING& READING
How to provide context when Writing about numbers Poynter
***LANGUAGE
We Just Added More Than 1,000 New Words to the Dictionary Merrian-Webster
How Not to Teach Chinese Chronicle of Higher Ed
Study about words’ effect on mood to be retracted after investigation finds evidence of data manipulation Retraction Watch
***LITERATURE
Joyce Carol Oates' New Novel Begins With An Abortion Doctor's Murder NPR
William Faulkner’s Home Illustrates His Impact on the South NPR
How A Jane Austen Character May Have Looked In Real Life NPR
***GENDER
In Just 5 Moves, Grandmaster Loses And Leaves Chess World Aghast NPR
***FREE SPEECH
How a polarizing election, a free-speech fight, and a real-life internet troll made the U. of Washington turn on itself Chronicle of Higher Ed
The ACLU Explains Why They're Supporting The Rights Of Milo Yiannopoulos NPR
Conspiring to stifle free speech is a crime: Glenn Reynolds USA Today
Brown U's campus speech faces its first test, with a scholar using racial and religious slurs Insider Higher Ed
How Canceling Controversial Speakers Hurts Students Chronicle of Higher Ed
***LEGAL ISSUES
***RELIGION
Mormons formally launch worldwide online college program Associated Press
Southern Baptist retailer removes black hip-hop artist’s album that includes the word ‘penis' Washington Post
100 evangelical leaders sign ad denouncing Trump's refugee ban CNN
Conflict Over Trump Forces Out an Opinion Editor at The Wall Street Journal The Atlantic
Christians Say Hollywood Ignores them but they ignore Great Films about Faith (opinion) Washington Post
***ART & DESIGN
The Met Makes Its Images of Public-Domain Artworks Freely Available through New Open Access Policy Met Museum
Netflix’s New Documentary Series About “the Art of Design” Premieres Today Open Culture
How font choices create contrasts in your design Poynter
***RESEARCH
Trial results need to be better presented, so that readers can understand and act on the results The BMJ opinion
The pros and cons of A.I. in publishing Science Friday
***HEALTH
The doctor’s dilemma: is it ever good to do harm? The Guardian
Thanks to AI, Computers Can Now See Your Health Problems Wired
***PHILOSOPHY
Steve Bannon Cited Italian Philosopher Who Inspired Fascists New York Times
***PRODUCTIVITY
IFTTT: The smart person's guide Tech Republic
***PERSONAL GROWTH
Defining Success Becoming (my site)
***HIGHER ED
Betsy DeVos has family and likely financial connections to The College FixInside Higher Ed
Forged racist emails cause stir at University of Michigan Associated Press
Colleges Prepare for Chaos in Wake of Violent Protests Inside Higher Ed
17 Universities Join N.Y. Legal Challenge to Trump Immigration Ban Chronicle of Higher Ed
***HUMANITIES /STEM
Designing a Lab in the Humanities Chronicle of Higher Ed
'The Great Shame of Our Profession': How the humanities survive on exploitation Chronicle of Higher Ed
***STUDENT LIFE
The Number Of Hungry And Homeless Students Rises Along With College Costs NPR
Depression Strikes Today's Teen Girls Especially Hard NPR
How to prepare for disaster when you're studying abroad USA Today
***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT
Baylor is not alone in protecting athletes from punishment for sexual violence and other troubling behaviors for years Inside Higher Ed
Baylor Sanctioned By Big 12 After New Revelations About Sexual Assault Controversy NPR
Stanford Drops Lawyer Who Advised Students in Sexual Assault Cases New York Times
***ACADEMIC LIFE
If a high school senior displays a swastika at his school, should colleges be told? A teacher is being punished for doing just that Inside Higher Ed
Satirical academic social media accounts go serious to protest Donald Trump Inside Higher Ed
Collegiality and Disability Chronicle of Higher Ed
Academic writing under pressure from a culture of counting The London School of Economics and Political Science
are you in the mix?
/You don't have to be "deep" or constantly talking about profound issues. You just need to be "in the mix" so that you venture outside of your box. People who don’t peek out and over the lids of their cardboard hovels live in very small worlds. They may follow others into change, but they do not own it.
One way to clarify who is in the mix and who is not, is to ask, "Would I go to this person for advice when some significant life issue confronted me?" Not just for encouragement or some sage piece of advice--but because this person is a fellow struggler.
These types of friends and acquaintances are "in the fight" to move beyond white picket fences and 9-to-5 jobs. They whet your appetite for substantive relationships and make you want to become more than what you are. These are friends who are open to paradigm shifts in their own lives. They are not just focused on “straightening you out” so that you will become more like them. They want to grow like you do.
Stephen Goforth
The Marshmallow Test
/IN THE 1960s Walter Mischel, then an up-and-coming researcher in psychology, devised a simple but ingenious experiment to study delayed gratification. It is now famously known as the marshmallow test. In a sparsely furnished room Mr Mischel presented a group of children aged four and five from Stanford University’s Bing Nursery School with a difficult challenge. They were left alone with a treat of their choosing, such as a marshmallow or a biscuit. They could help themselves at once, or receive a larger reward (two marshmallows or biscuits) if they managed to wait for up to 20 minutes.
The marshmallow test is often thought of simply as a measure of a child’s self-control. But Mischel shows that there is much more to it. One of Mr Mischel’s early studies in Trinidad suggests that a preference for delayed rewards also can be a matter of trust. Children who grow up with absent parents, Mr Mischel surmised, may be less likely to believe that they will actually get the promised delayed reward from the stranger who is carrying out the experiment. Indeed, he found that children with absent fathers, in particular, were prone to opt for immediate rewards. He believes the test also shows how the ability to postpone rewards is closely related to vigorously pursuing goals and to holding positive expectations. These traits, in turn, help explain why waiting for marshmallows at the age of five has such a strong relationship to outcomes in adult life.
from The Economist
articles of interest - Feb 6
/***SOCIAL MEDIA
Don't Fall For This 'Facebook Customer Service' Scam : All Tech Considered NPR
Facebook changes feed to promote posts that aren’t fake, sensational, or spam Tech Crunch
What teens want Snapchat to spend its big IPO bucks on Mashable
***JOURNALISM
OPINION: Remembering the real victims of the #BowlingGreenMassacre College Heights Herald (student newspaper of Western Kentucky University)
Advocates Fear Trump's Stance Against Media Will Block Flow Of Information NPR
Reuters orders reporters to cover Trump like an authoritarian regime: Expect ‘physical threats’ Raw Story
***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM
The Guardian has gone from 15,000 to 200,000 paying 'members' in the past year Digiday
***GRAMMAR
Trump’s ‘Use’ of ‘Quotation Marks’ Chronicle of Higher Ed
***LANGUAGE
DC to get Language Museum called ‘Planet Word’ Washington Post
This Is Why You Probably Hate Slam Poetry, According to a Linguistic Scholar VICE
Language in 2016, seen through Google Search Trends Flowing Data
Merriam-Webster gets a little bit cheeky USA Today
***LITERATURE
James Joyce, Catholic Writer? Jstor
***GENDER
Why Single Women Are Buying Homes at Twice the Rate of Single Men Bloomberg
Data science is creating a tidal wave of opportunity for women to get into executive leadership Recode
***DIVERSITY
Study finds students' negative diversity experiences, though less common than positive ones, hinder cognitive development and student learning Inside Higher Ed
***FREE SPEECH
Bills Across The Country Could Increase Penalties For Protesters NPR
Breitbart speaker at Berkeley stirs debate over free speech Associated Press
***LEGAL ISSUES
The Copyright Barons Are Coming. Now’s the Time to Stop Them Wired
Art Briles dropped his lawsuit against Baylor after months of fighting SB Nation
Judge Gorsuch’s dissent in the case of a 13-year-old arrested for making fake burps in class Washington Post
Whistleblower gets court backing in defamation case — but at a cost Retraction Watch
California to decide whether personal device communication is public record The Stack
***TECHNOLOGY
A playwright and a children’s novelist among those on a team helping Microsoft give it's personal digital assistant some personality Financial Times
Google has patented a drone for videoconferencing Recode
***BIG DATA & STATISTICS
There’s still an important place fo old-school assembler hackers in the brave new world of Deep Learning Pete Warden
How secure is your Hadoop installation? It’s easy to deploy w/poor security while tightening it requires effort Naked Security
The rise of the Bayesians.. looking to automate the scientific method using small data systems Wired
A Pandas cheat sheet for Data Scientists in Python Data Camp
The search for abductive reasoning.. where the machine takes action on incomplete info based on an educated guess Data Science Central
The declining authority of #statistics & the experts who analyze them is at the heart of the “post-truth” crisis The Guardian
***RELIGION
3 Things You Should Know About Jerry Falwell Jr. Chronicle of Higher Ed
Report: Average Christian Spends 37% Of Prayer Time Saying Word ‘Just’ Babylon Bee
The Johnson Amendment, Which Trump Vows to ‘Destroy,’ Explained
New York Times
Campuses Are the Place for Difficult Conversations About Faith Chronicle of Higher Ed
Parents who believe in 'faith healing' charged after daughter, 2, dies from untreated pneumonia New York Daily News
You have to be Christian to truly be American? Many people in the U.S. say so Washington Post
Most Americans oppose churches choosing sides in elections Pew Research
Only 1 in 7 Senior Pastors Is Under 40 Christianity Today
Town rallies after being forced to remove Christian flag WREG-TV
Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi writes choral music for Birmingham Cathedral Telegraph
***STUDENT LIFE
Trump temporarily banned immigration from 7 countries — here's how many students from each attend college in the US Business Insider
You probably didn't need this survey to tell you that millennials are pessimistic USA Today
***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT
U. of California Will Pay Student $1.15 Million to Settle Sexual-Assault Suit Chronicle of Higher Ed
***RESEARCH
It Just Got Much Harder To Know What’s Going On In US Animal Research Labs BuzzFeed News
A Crime in the Cancer Lab The New York Times
The high-tech war on science fraud The Guardian
The “What does not kill my statistical significance makes it stronger” fallacy Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
***SCIENCE
Scientists protest immigration ban with boycotts of journals, conferences Stat News
The Map of Mathematics: Animation Shows How All the Different Fields in Math Fit Together Open Culture
Getting a scientific message across means taking human nature into account The Conversation
***HEALTH
Printed human body parts could soon be available for transplant Economist
Heat, Humidity And Aging Make Medicine Less Potent NPR
***PSYCHOLOGY
Your Personality Changes When You Move to a New Place NY Mag
A dangerous wait: Colleges can’t meet soaring student needs for mental health care Stat News
***ETHICS
Your Students Crave Moral Simplicity. Resist Chronicle of Higher Ed
***PERSONAL GROWTH
It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become.." Becoming (my site)
***HIGHER ED
Nearly 600 colleges object to Trump’s travel ban Washington Post
Christian Colleges Balance Faith and Politics in Response to Trump’s Ban on Refugees (sub. req.’ed) Chronicle of Higher Ed
With Falwell as Education Adviser, His Own University Could Benefit New York Times
Colleges may be happy Falwell will lead review of higher ed regulations, but students and parents should be worried Washington Post
***TEACHING
Is 'Inclusive Access' the Future for Publishers? Inside Higher Ed
Study explores effect of data dashboards on student performance Inside Higher Ed
New open-access journal Prompt
Teaching materials for visualization Flowing Data
***STUDENT MEDIA
Federal rule change frees student journalists from Institutional Review Board requirements Student Press Law Center
NLRB: Big-time college football players at private institutions should be considered employees Inside Higher Ed
It's no gag: Major-college athletes gain legally protected right to speak with media Student Press Law Center
***ACADEMIC LIFE
AAUP says institutions need to defend professors targeted for online harassment due to their political views Inside Higher Ed
inhibition
/John Mazziotta pulled out a neurology textbook with pictures of a woman kneeling and praying next to a man who was also kneeling and praying. The woman, Mazziotta explained, had suffered brain damage and could no longer inhibit certain actions. She had not the slightest interest in kneeling and praying at that moment, but she could not stop herself from doing what brains want to do, imitate the action they see, like a monkey behind the glass at a zoo, making faces back at you.
Another thing to remember, Mazziotta said, is that many of the brain’s systems are running all the time. “Think of an airplane,” said Mazziotta. “Most people think that when it lands it has its engines on low and it’s just floating in. But that’s not always so; in landing, an airplane often has to be at full throttle in case it has to react quickly if something happens.” The brain, too he says, is set up to be whirring all the time. Even when we think of it as resting, its neurons are often firing at a low level, ready and waiting, so it can react in time before, for instance, it’s eaten by a bigger, quicker brain.
The brain is working constantly, and one of the tasks it works at is to inhibit itself from a variety of actions. It is striving to resist the urge to raise the coffee cup like the guy across the table, and striving not to do a number of things that might not be in its best interest. As the brain develops- in children and, science is now learning, in teenagers- it is this very inhibition machinery that is being fine-tuned.
“Development,” says Mazziotta, "is progressive inhibition.”
Barbara Strauch, The Primal Teen
articles of interest - Jan 30
/***SOCIAL MEDIA
Twitter Tries, One More Time, to Help You Figure Out Twitter Wired
Facebook News Feed Algorithm: Percent of a Video Watched By Users GivenWeight Ad Week
***PRODUCING MEDIA
One Dataset, Visualized 25 Ways Flowing Data
Lessons from Knight Investments in digital audio and Podcasting Medium
***INTERNET
Zerg Rush: The Story Behind Google's Best Easter Egg The Daily Dot
Google and the Misinformed Public Chronicle of Higher Ed
Google Maps now shows you how hard it is to find parking Daily Dot
***BIG DATA & STATISTICS
The declining authority of #statistics & the experts who analyze them is at the heart of the “post-truth” crisis The Guardian
The best data scientists get out from behind their computers and talk to people and gather “soft data” Harvard Business Review
Some Apache Hadoop myths: The devil is in the very expensive details CIO
The goals of AI, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning: "creating an intelligent machine" Codes of Interest
***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA
List of the top Media Co's by Social Media Performance Shareablee
***JOURNALISM
Four more journalists get felony charges after covering inauguration unrest The Guardian
How Mary Tyler Moore Inspired a Generation of Female Journalists Vanity Fair
Journalists around the country are joining a Slack channel devoted to FOIA and Trump Poynter
Mary Tyler Moore and women in journalism CBS News
Police Are Making It Impossible To Use Drones To Document Protests Vocativ
***FAKE NEWS
Psychologists say they can inoculate people against fake news CBC
Google has banned 200 publishers since it passed a new policy against fake news Recode
Media orgs like San Diego-based Snopes lead the charge against fake news City Beat
When is a false claim a lie? Here’s what fact-checkers think Poynter
Fake News Is About to Get Even Scarier than You Ever Dreamed Vanity Fair
***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM
Gannett slashes more than 140 jobs at NJ newspaper group New York Post
Women’s March on Washington Raises Ethical Questions for Media Outlets WWD
***WRITING & READING
Sorry, But Speed Reading Won’t Help You Read More Wired
The Mystery and Occasional Poetry of, Uh, Filled Pauses Atlas Obscura
Academics don't have to be great writers, but they do have to realize that it's their job to create interest in their topics Chronicle of Higher Ed
Five ways to skip content when checking a Word document for spelling errors Tech Republic
***LANGUAGE
Watch a New Yorker Copy Editor Take a Hacksaw to a Recent Donald Trump Speech Mediate
It is America’s greatest word—arguably, the world’s greatest—and it deserves regular recognition Chronicle of Higher Ed
***LITERATURE
George Orwell Explains How “Newspeak” Works, the Official Language of His Totalitarian Dystopia in 1984 Open Culture
WSU professor uses big data to research Shakespearean texts Wichita
A Free Course on Dante’s Divine Comedy from Yale University Open Culture
Publisher printing more copies of George Orwell's '1984' after spike in demand CNN
Ian McKellen Reads a Passionate Speech by William Shakespeare, Written in Defense of Immigrants Open Culture
How Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ can inspire those who fear Trump’s America The Conversation
***GENDER ISSUES
Trans* in College Inside Higher Ed
6-Year-Old Girls' Gendered Beliefs About Intelligence The Atlantic
***FREE SPEECH
When Horse Diapers and Freedom of Religion Collide WSJ
***LEGAL ISSUES
Judge Sides With University In Legal Fight With Student Newspaper NPR
Don’t Expect the First Amendment to Protect the Media New York Times
The Most Important Law in Tech Has a Problem: How “safe harbor” turned into a protector of privilege BackChannel
Actress in Viral Video Can’t Prevent Video From Being Made Into an Advertisement–Roberts v. Bliss Technology and Marketing Law Blog
***RELIGION
ISIS magazine calls for attack on First Baptist Dallas KXAS-TV (NBC5)
A large Colorado congregation just became LGBT-inclusive. Here’s why it matters Religious News Service
Tennessee Megachurch Withholds Funds From SBC Over Support of Mosque Construction The Christian Post
Amy Grant's daughter donates kidney to best friend The Tennessean
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg meets with Waco pastors Waco Trib
The fascinating science behind Ouija boards Daily Dot
The Tyranny of Politeness (opinion) Religious Dispatches
Why Christians Fall Prey to Fake News Christianity Today
***ART & DESIGN
An Artist Put Wax Butts Around Miami to Expose Everyday Sexual Harassment The Creators Project
Art Exhibition Celebrates Drawings By The Founder Of Modern Neuroscience NPR
The Rise and Fall of Comic Sans (video) Scholarly Kitchen
Richard Prince has disowned his Ivanka Trump work The Guardian
Jimmie Durham and the Art of Interruption jstor
***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT
Former Baylor financial aid officer Files Title IX lawsuit ESPN
Education Dept. Releases Latest List of Title IX Investigations, After Failing to Do So Chronicle of Higher Ed
Russia parliament votes 380-3 to decriminalize domestic violence USA Today
New Baylor lawsuit alleges 52 rapes by football players in 4 years while current Liberty University AD was in charge at Baylor Dallas Morning News
Newspaper gets records hearing in sexual assault investigation of Utah State University Student Press Law Center
***RESEARCH
How likely are academics to confess to errors in research? Times Higher Ed
***SCIENCE
John Arnold Made a Fortune at Enron. Now He’s Declared War on Bad Science Wired
Professor Who Helped Expose Crisis in Flint Says Public Science Is Broken Chronicle of Higher Ed
USDA Scientists Have Been Put On Lockdown Under Trump BuzzFeed News
***HEALTH
How to Spot Fake Health News BBC
3D-Printer Creates Skin Made From Human Cells Vocativ
Wider Racial Gap Found in Cervical Cancer Deaths New York Times
No original reporting: Fox News story rehashes news release for story on autism and fecal transplants Health News Review
***PSYCHOLOGY
Why Time Seems to Speed Up as We Get Older: What the Research Says Open Culture
China wakes up to its mental-health problems Economist
7 lessons from psychology that explain the irrational fear of outsiders Vox
***NEUROSCIENCE
Tests suggest the methods of neuroscience are left wanting The Economist
***PHILOSOPHY
Motivated Reasoning: A Philosopher On Confirmation Bias NPR
***PERSONAL GROWTH
The Mask of Guilt Becoming (my site)
How Being Bored Out of Your Mind Makes You More Creative Wired
***HIGHER ED & IMMIGRATION
Colleges Scramble After Trump’s Executive Order Bans Citizens of 7 Muslim Countries Chronicle of Higher Ed
Campus administrators detail their plans for undocumented students New York Times
Top academics lash out at Trump’s ‘un-American’ immigration ban Stat New
Princeton University Dean Warns Against Travel Abroad for Students, Scholars after President Trump's Immigration Order WCAU Philadelphia (NBC10)
How universities have vowed to help protect undocumented students USA Today
What You Need to Know About Colleges and the Immigration Ban Chronicle of Higher Ed
***HIGHER ED
Hackers are locking colleges’ data away and demanding payment to return it. But paying the ransom raises new issues, experts say Inside Higher Ed
Concealed Carry Weapon Laws and College Campuses National Conference of State Legislatures
Colleges and inequality: New data show that joining the 1% remains unsettlingly hereditary Economist
Hundreds of students, alumni from DeVos’s Christian college oppose her nomination as education secretary Washington Post
***TEACHING
Study: Easy grading is actually a symptom of poor assessment practices rather than a cause Inside Higher Ed
Are great teachers poor scholars? Brookings
***STUDENT LIFE
Study: Vanishing child care centers on college campuses impacts student access Education Dive
the Mask of Guilt
/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
Love is Slow and Difficult
/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
Black Swains
/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
articles of interest - Jan 23
/***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
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
the statistical view
/Christianity is not a statistical view of life. – Malcolm Muggeridge
a stone and a rusty nail
/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
Conditions for creativity
/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
Digital Dating and Divorce
/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.
how to predict the future
/The best way to predict the future is to invent it. - Alan Kay
articles of interest - Jan 16
/***BIG DATA & STATISTICS
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
From Mozart To Adele To Chance The Rapper, Measuring Album Sales Means Being Specific NPR
***FILM
***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
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
Harvard/MIT Report Analyzes 4 Years of MOOC Data Campus Technology
***TEACHING
Contemplative Listening (opinion; sub. req.’ed) Chronicle of Higher Ed
the Beauty of Evil
/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)
Bridging the Generation Gap with Reading
/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
articles of interest - Jan 9
/***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
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
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
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
***PHILOSOPHY
***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
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
***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