Unleashing Change

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Allow a sense of pragmatism to hang over every project. This will help to make room for other possibilities besides our originally chosen path. If you fall in love with your creation and marry your effort, you may join the most frustrated of groups--people who fight the process rather than allowing their efforts to become living documents of creativity, which are always in process. You have to make room in your head for change to be a part of that process rather than seeing it as something extra, a burden beyond what is necessary. Make room for change before you start your task and then you'll be ready to adopt to shifting circumstances, new revelations, and emerging goals.

 

Stephen Goforth

articles of interest - May 1

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***SOCIAL MEDIA

The saga of a YouTube family who pulled disturbing pranks on their own kids  The Washington Post

Leaked document reveals Facebook conducted research to target emotionally vulnerable and insecure youth  News Australia

Yik Yak, the once popular and controversial college messaging app, shuts down  USA Today

***PRODUCING MEDIA

Digital Publishing: How the New York Times and Washington Post are Changing the Podcast Field   Editor & Publisher

People Don’t Want Something Truly New, They Want the Familiar Done Differently  Medium

How YouTube’s Shifting Algorithms Hurt Independent Media  New York Times

***INTERNET

The secret lives of Google raters  Ars Technica

***TECHNOLOGY

The Impact of Virtual Reality on Learning  Campus Technology

***JOURNALISM

Digital transformation in newsrooms means focusing on readers not platforms  Medium

The Media Bubble is Real — And Worse Than You Think  Politico

In Mexico, ‘It’s Easy to Kill a Journalist’  New York Times

Will Twitter Replace The Photojournalist?  Forbes

Northwestern journalism school lets accreditation lapse (Dean: the process is "flawed" and not useful)  Chicago Tribune

***FAKE NEWS

Hate the News? Wikipedia’s Co-Founder Wants You to Edit It  Wired

The Future Of News Is Visuals (And How This Millennial-Led Startup Is Reinventing It)  Forbes

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales launches Wikitribune, a large-scale attempt to combat fake news  Nieman

Facebook tapped a New York Times vet to help fight fake news and make money for publishers  Business Insider

It turns out people are very bad at estimating the magnitude of the fake news problem  Nieman Lab

What Web Page Structure Reveals on News Quality  Monday Note

***BIG DATA & STATISTICS

A look at Structural Equation Modeling: a framework for data analysis composed of a family of related methodsKD Nuggets

A peek inside the ‘black box’ of #MachineLearning systems; checking the logic of Neural Networks   Stanford

Where we stand with automated Machine Learning ..and where it is likely going KD Nuggets

In much of science, Bayesian methods are becoming increasingly central to finding small needles in huge haystacks  The Conversation

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

IHeartMedia shares drop amid warning it may not survive another year  My San Antonio

Twitter to launch 24/7 news streaming service with Bloomberg  Venture Beat

***PERSONAL GROWTH

When you plan a trip to Italy but land in Holland  Becoming (my blog)

***LITERATURE

Why You Love the Smell of Old Books  Daily Jstor

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

Anti-Semitic Incidents Spike Since Election, Jewish Watchdog Says  NBC News

Policing for civil forfeiture profit  The Week Magazine

How to Be an Ally to New Minority Scholars (opinion)  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Is it OK to eat at a barbecue joint when the founder was a white supremacist?  The New Yorker

School of Medicine is in danger of losing its accreditation because of a lack of diversity  Stat

Can College Cure Racism?  Daily Jstor

The ‘hotbed of anti-Semitism’ isn’t a foreign country: It’s U.S. college campuses  Washington Post

***FREE SPEECH

Students campuses nationwide issue statement calling free speech  Inside Higher Ed

Addressing the Real Crisis of Free Expression on Campus (opinion from the President of the Newseum)  Newseum Institute

Too PC Or Not PC? The Debate Over Free Speech On Campus  1a.or

***LEGAL ISSUES

Judge blocks release of unpublished Prince songs  Minnesota Public Radio

White House official says 'we've looked at' changes to libel laws that would restrict press freedom  ABC News

Supreme Court won't review San Diego minister's lawsuit against gay therapy ban  Reuters 

***RELIGION

Religion Could Be More Durable Than We Thought  NPR

Consecration of gay bishop against church law, says United Methodist top court  Religion News Service

The Christian Agenda Behind Inmate Education: For prisoners, learning often comes with evangelical strings attached  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Sub-Saharan Africa experienced largest increase in religious restrictions in 2015  Pew Research Center

SoCal Megachurch Sued Over Investment Fraud  Courthouse News

Alvin Plantinga wins Templeton prize  Catholic News Agency

Evangelicals of Color at a Crossroads   Religious Dispatches

Share on Twitter Share via Email If it doesn’t stem its decline, mainline Protestantism has just 23 Easters left  Washington Post

Anti-discrimination measure or blow to religious freedom? California bill sparks debate on employer codes of conduct   LA Times

Among white evangelicals, regular churchgoers are the most supportive of Trump  Pew Research Center

***MUSIC

How Ed Sheeran perfected the art of being a mainstream misfit  Vox

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

Doing the Right Thing in Sexual-Misconduct Cases (opinion)  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Expelled for sex assault, young men are filing more lawsuits to clear their names  Washington Post

San Diego State University will pay a former student $10,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a former student who said he was wrongly accused and suspended for a sexual incident  Union Tribune

The AP conducted a year-long investigation into student-on-student sexual assault in schools  Associated Press

Sociology Chair steps down, denies alleged harassment among faculty is the cause  Daily Camera

NY community college president resigns after he is recorded blaming alleged assault victim  Associated Press

***HEALTH

End-of-life care: A better way to care for the dying  The Economist

***RESEARCH

6 Common Flaws To Look Out For in Peer Review  Publons

Va. man pleads guilty to scamming $500,000+ in federal education funds, science grants  WJLA

107 Studies Published in a Cancer Journal Have Just Been Retracted  Science Alert

***HIGHER ED

Analysts and some colleges worry Blackboard is stretching itself too thin  Inside Higher Ed

Colleges Rush to Ramp Up Online Classes (sub. req’ed)  Wall Street Journal

White Religion Profs at Seminary Apologize for Tweet where they posed as Gang Members   Inside Higher Ed

Small private colleges stand to lose both money and student diversity in continually seeking to outbid each other for students, a new study warns  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***TEACHING

Paraphrasing tools, freely available online, can fool plagiarism detection software, study finds  Inside Higher Ed

A troubling new way to evade plagiarism detection software(And how to tell if it’s been used)  Retraction Watch

***STUDENT MEDIA

High school journalists' investigative feat fuels calls for legal reforms  Student Press Law Center

***STUDENT LIFE

First Year Students are More Politically Polarized that Ever  Inside Higher Ed

Half of millennials could be competing with robots for jobs  The Washington Post

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Blind Spots that Require New Faculty Roles (a new analysis of survey data by USC researchers)  The Changing Faculty

 

Lovable

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No sooner do we believe that God loves us than there an impulse to believe that he does so, not because he is love, but because we are intrinsically lovable.. But then, how magnificently we have repented.. (so) we next offer our own humility to God’s admiration. Surely, he’ll like that? If not that, our clear-sighted and humble recognition that we still lack humility. Thus, depth beneath depth and subtlety within subtlety, there remains some lingering idea of our own, our very own, attractiveness.

It is easy to acknowledge but almost impossible to realize for long, that we are mirrors whose brightness if we are bright, is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us. Surely we must have a little – however little – native luminosity?

We want to be loved for our cleverness, beauty, generosity, fairness usefulness. The first hint that anyone is offering us the highest love of all is a terrible shock.

CS Lewis, The Four Loves

articles of interest - wk of April 24

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***SOCIAL MEDIA
How Social Media Is Changing the Conversation Surrounding Addiction (opinion)  Ad Week

The Platform Effect: In France, Snapchat takes the lead in producing political content  Digiday

How WeChat Spreads Rumors, Reaffirms Bias, and Helped Elect Trump  BakcChannel

Facebook’s plans to augment reality are as dystopian as they are smart  The Verge

Pinterest is killing off its ‘Like’ button and wants you to know it’s different from Facebook and Instagram  Recode

Not everyone in advanced countries uses social media  Pew Research Center

LinkedIn Officially Unveils Matched Audiences Platform  Media Post

How to See If Your Instagram Posts Have Been Shadowbanned  Life Hacker

***PRODUCING MEDIA

This Handy Tool Makes It Easy To Visualize Whatever System You Can Imagine  Digg

Here’s How Much Money You Can Make With Memes  High Snobiety

An Interview With @youvegotnomale Who Literally Makes Memes for a Living  Vice

***INTERNET

Sneaky Exploit Allows Phishing Attacks From Sites That Look Secure  Wired

China’s internet giants go global  Economist

***JOURNALISM

The narrative journalists challenge: Seeing stories from a human perspective'  Journalism.co

Great local reporting stands between you and wrongdoing. And it needs saving  Washington Post

How Deeply Do Americans Distrust Mainstream Media Really?  Vanity Fair

***FAKE NEWS

How A False Story About A Husband And Wife Being Twins Ended Up On Major News Websites  BuzzFeed

France has a fake news problem, but it’s not as bad as the US  The Verge

***PERSONAL GROWTH

This is perhaps the biggest differences between highly successful students and mediocre ones  Becoming (my site) 

4 Things that set Successful CEOs apart  Harvard Business Review

How Elon Musk Learns Faster And Better Than Everyone Else  Medium

For most of history, people didn’t assume they deserved to be happy. What changed? (opinion)  Quartz

***GRAMMAR           

For the Love of God, Stop Putting Two Spaces After a Period  Mel

Adverbs and United Airlines  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LANGUAGE

Seven Linguist-Backed Tips for Making Powerful Protest Signs  Life Hacker

A Linguistics Lover's Tour of the World  Atlas Obscura

Trump’s Elements of Style  McSweeney’s

***LITERATURE

Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria  The Atlantic

***GENDER 

Impact of Social Sciences – Female scientists are considerably more likely to be mistakenly cited as if they were males and vice versa  The London School of Economics and Political Science

'The Handmaid's Tale' Is Among A Resurgence Of Dystopian Literature  NPR

Crime and gender: A partial explanation for why men commit more crime  Journalists Resources

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

California College canceled classes for two days after sit-in and protests over issues of race, workload and a leaked report in which faculty appeared to be insulting students  Inside Higher Ed

WKU student leaders urge free tuition for black students as slavery reparations  Lexington Herald Leader

Asian Americans used to be portrayed as the villains. How did they become a ‘model minority’?  The Washington Post

Census may change questions on race, Hispanic origin for 2020  Pew Research Center   

***FREE SPEECH

It's difficult for public institutions to meet legal tests and keep speakers from campus  Inside Higher Ed

Berkeley Campus On Lockdown After Loose Pages From ‘Wall Street Journal’ Found On Park Bench  The Onion

***LEGAL ISSUES

Supreme Court Asked to Save Abbott and Costello "Who's on First?" Copyright   Hollywood Reporter

This Is Spinal Tap’s $400 Million Lawsuit  Bloomberg

A Worrisome Harbinger of Changes in Copyright Law  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Conservatives Groups Sue Berkeley Over Ann Coulter Cancellation  New York Times

The on again, off again relationship between FOIA and White House visitor logs Muck Rock

***TECHNOLOGY

Smartphones are common in advanced economies, but digital divides remain  Pew Research Center

Cloning voices:Imitating people’s speech patterns precisely could bring trouble Economist

***BIG DATA & STATISTICS

Big Data analysis shows aspects of Western media coverage infected with Russian propaganda  Technology Review

***RELIGION

Christian Teen Magazine 'Brio' Returns With A 'Biblical Worldview'  NPR

Russia Labels Jehovah's Witnesses An Extremist Group  NPR

Sub-Saharan Africa will be home to growing shares of the world’s Christians, Muslims  Pew Research

Former Baptist state exec sues North American Mission Board for libel, interference in business relationships  Baptist News

A WikiLeaks prosecution would endanger the future of US journalism  The Guardian

Dispute heats up over who should keep "Lunar Bibles" from Apollo 14 mission  Associated Press

Catholic college in Kansas wipes ‘yoga’ from names of classes   the Kansas City Star

***MUSIC

New, Interactive Web Site Puts Online Thousands of International Folk Songs Recorded by the Great Folklorist Alan Lomax  Open Culture

***FILM

Filmmaker Shows Us How Fake Nature Documentaries Really Are  Digg

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

Yahoo’s Demise Is a Death Knell for Digital News Orgs  The Atlantic

The Guardian pulls out of Facebook’s Instant Articles and Apple News  Digiday

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus (book review)  New York Times

***SCIENCE

An Interactive Visualization of Hegel’s Science of Logic (Available on Github)  Open Culture

***HEALTH

Why are we dragging our feet when more automation in health care will save lives? (opinion)  The Conversation

***PSYCHOLOGY           

Why Conspiracy Theories Are So Appealing  Life Hacker

Why Some People Are Born Anxious  Life Hacker

***PHILOSOPHY

The philosopher's guide to understanding the 'self'  The Week

Philosopher Andrew Taggart is helping Silicon Valley executives define success  Quartz

***PRODUCTIVITY

Why Multitasking Is Bad for You  TIME

Can Placebos Work If You Know They're Placebos?  NPR

***ETHICS

The new Oprah movie about Henrietta Lacks reopens a big scientific debate  Vox

***RESEARCH

Retractions of neurosurgical papers are on the rise, says a new paper that finds that duplicated publications and plagiarism were the top reasons for retraction  World Neurosurgery  

The 20% Statistician: Five reasons blog posts are of higher scientific quality than journal articles  Daniel Lakens

Conflict Over Sociologist's Narrative Puts Spotlight on Ethnography  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***HUMANITIES /STEM

Why My Humanities Degree Is Anything But Useless (opinion)  Unwritten

Hey, Computer Scientists! Stop Hating on the Humanities (you need ethics training)  Wired

***TEACHING

Creative Ways to Help Students Recover From Failure (opinion; sub. req'ed) Chronicle of Higher Ed

Getting Our Students Wrong  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***STUDENT LIFE

Millennials don’t switch jobs any more than Gen Xers did  Pew Research Center

As colleges embrace e-sports, there are thorny questions about who, if anyone, profits  LA Times

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Aftermath of a Professor's Suicide: A death this week leads to renewed discussions about academics and mental health  Inside Higher Ed

Are Full-Timers and Administrations Maintaining a Caste System that Excludes Adjuncts  Academe Blog

Nontenured Faculty Should not be assessed by Student Evaluations in this Politically Charged Atmosphere (opinion)  Inside Higher Ed

What sets apart highly successful students

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One of the major differences we found between highly successful students and mediocre ones: average students think they can tell right away if they are going to be good at something. If they don't get it immediately, they throw up their hands and say, "I can't do it." Their more accomplished classmates have a completely different attitude-and it is largely a matter of attitude rather than ability. They stick with assignments much longer and are always reluctant to give it up. "I haven't learned it yet," they might say, while others would cry, "I'm not good at history, music, math, writing, or whatever." Traditional schooling rewards quick answers-the person with the hand up first. But an innovative work of the mind, something that lasts and changes the world, demands slow and steady progress. It requires time and devotion. You can't tell what you can do until you struggle with something over and over again.

Ken Bain, What the Best College Students Do

Focusing on the Bright Spots

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Suppose that you go to bed tonight and sleep well. Sometime, in the middle of the night, while you are sleeping, a miracle happens and all the troubles that brought you here are resolved. When you wake up in the morning, what’s the first small sign you’d see that would make you think, “Well, something must have happened – the problem is gone!”

The miracle question doesn't ask you to describe the miracle itself; it asks you to identify the tangible signs that the miracle happened. Once (someone has identified) specific and vivid signs of progress... a second question is perhaps even more important. It's the Exception Question: "When was the last time you saw a little bit of the miracle, even for just a short time?"

There are exceptions to every problem and that those exceptions, once identified, can be carefully analyzed, like the game film of a sporting event. Let's replay that scene, where things were working for you. What was happening? How did you behave? That analysis can point directly toward a solution that is, by definition, workable. After all, it worked before.

Chip & Dan Heath, Switch