who you become
/The most important thing in your life is not what you do; it's who you become. That's what you will take into eternity. Dallas Willard
ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire
Shrink the Change
/Our emotional side is an Elephant and our rational side is its Rider.
A sense of progress is critical, because the Elephant in us is easily demoralized. It’s easily spooked, easily derailed, and for that reason, it needs reassurance, even for the very first step of the journey.
If you’re leading a change effort… rather than focusing solely on what’s new and different about the change to come, make an effort to remind people what’s already been conquered.
A business cliché commands us to “raise the bar.” But that’s exactly the wrong instinct if you want to motivate a reluctant Elephant. You need to lower the bar. Picture taking a high-jump bar and lowering it so far that it can be stepped over.
If you want a reluctant elephant to get moving, you need to shirk the change.
Chip & Dan Heath, Switch
the old and the new
/There are two kinds of fools: one says, "This is old, therefore it is good"; the other says, "This is new, therefore it is better." -William R. Inge
What Google searches Teach us
/You may not be a data scientist. You may not know how to code in R or calculate a confidence interval. But you can still take advantage of big data and digital truth serum to put an end to envy — or at least take some of the bite out of it.
Any time you are feeling down about your life after lurking on Facebook, go to Google and start typing stuff into the search box. Google’s autocomplete will tell you the searches other people are making. Type in “I always …” and you may see the suggestion, based on other people’s searches, “I always feel tired” or “I always have diarrhea.” This can offer a stark contrast to social media, where everybody “always” seems to be on a Caribbean vacation.
As our lives increasingly move online, I propose a new self-help mantra for the 21st century, courtesy of big data: Don’t compare your Google searches with other people’s Facebook posts.
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz writing in the New York Times
Just the Right Amount of Practice
/Practice too little and you never become world-class. Practice too much, though, and you increase the odds of being struck down by injury, draining yourself mentally, or burning out. To succeed, students must “avoid exhaustion” and “limit practice to an amount from which they can completely recover on a daily or weekly basis.”
How do students marked for greatness make the most of limited practice time? The rhythm of their practice follows a distinctive pattern. They put in more hours per week in the practice room or playing field, but they don’t do it by making each practice longer. Instead, they have more frequent, shorter sessions, each lasting about 80 to 90 minutes, with half-hour breaks in between.
Add these several practices up, and what do you get? About four hours a day. About the same amount of time Darwin spent every day doing his hardest work, Hardy (G.H. Hardy was one of Britain’s leading mathematicians in the first half of the 20th century) and Littlewood (Hardy’s longtime collaborator John Littlewood) spent doing math, Charles Dickens and Stephen King spent writing. Even ambitious young students in one of the world’s best schools, preparing for an notoriously competitive field, could handle only four hours of really focused, serious effort per day.
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang writing in Nautilus
articles of interest - May 22
/***TECHNOLOGY
Pew finds most older Americans using the Internet, but also ‘largely disconnected from the digital revolution’ Talking New Media
How tech created a global village — and put us at each other’s throats Boston Globe
Digital gap between rural and nonrural America persists Pew Research
***BIG DATA & STATISTICS
The 5 most common Big Data quality issues.. and how to handle them KD Nuggets
MIT: protecting privacy with fake data sets to allow 3rd party distribution for development and education purposes Smart Data Collective
***SOCIAL MEDIA
How ProPublica Defines Success for Engagement Projects Media Shift
Twitter Changed Their Privacy Policy, So Update Your Settings Life Hacker
Facebook is trying yet again to cut clickbait headlines from your News Feed Recode
How WeChat (China’s most popular messaging app) Spreads Rumors, Reaffirms Bias, and Helped Elect Trump Back Channel
***PRODUCING MEDIA
The best portable battery chargers Digital Trends
Shoot 360 Video Like a Pro in 6 Simple Steps Wired
Americans no longer have to register non-commercial drones with the FAA Recode
***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA
The Atlantic bucks recent website trends by launching new, more dense home page design Talking New Media
New York Times will offer buyouts to editors in push to transform editing Poynter
***JOURNALISM
In a private meeting, President Trump allegedly urged Comey to imprison journalists Poynter
Murdered journalist Javier Valdez on the risks of reporting in Mexico BBC
Mexicans stage 'A Day Without Journalism' to protest deadly attacks on the news media LA Times
The Evolution of Citizen Journalism: How 3 Modern Outlets Are Updating the Model PBS Media Shift
Voice of San Diego to Spin Off New Organization to Support Good Journalism Everywhere Voice of San Diego
Politwoops: Explore the Tweets that politicians Didn't Want You to See ProPublica
Data journalism syllabus: From numeracy to visualization and beyond Journalism Resources
Quartz’s David Yanofsky on coding as a journalist Columbia Journalism Review
***FAKE NEWS
7 key reference points for navigating the post-truth era, alternative facts, and fake news Business Insider
The Seth Rich conspiracy shows how fake news still works Washington Post
Has Fake News Changed Behavior? Daily Infographic
Why Fact Checking Matters & How to Do It Video Strategist
***PERSONAL GROWTH
Tech created a global village-and put us at each other’s throats Becoming (my blog)
Be Yourselves: We behave differently on different social media 1843 magazine
***HIGHER ED
Federal Lawmakers Begin New Push for Student-Outcomes Data Chronicle of Higher Ed
Why Haven't MOOCs Eliminated Any Professors? Inside Higher Ed
Mizzou likely to cut hundreds of positions amid expected 7 percent enrollment drop St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Dealing With Controversial Speakers on Campus Chronicle of Higher Ed
***HUMANITIES /STEM
Author Interview: What Are the Arts and Sciences? A Guide for the Curious Inside Higher Ed
***WRITING& READING
Local professors to students: No 'plz,' please in emails Houston Chronicle
The ‘Realistic’ Research Paper Chronicle of Higher Ed
Paper About Plagiarism Contains Plagiarism Neuroskeptic
***GENDER
Baylor faces another Title IX lawsuit over alleged 2012 gang rape by football players Sports Illustrated
Many in Orthodox Christian countries have conservative views on gender roles Pew Research
Fake article sets off Debates over gender studies and open-access journals Inside Higher Ed
***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES
The Atlantic's "My Family's Slave" cover story: Filipinos defend Alex Tizon from Western backlash Quartz
A Creationist Sues the Grand Canyon for Religious Discrimination The Atlantic
In U.S. metro areas, huge variation in intermarriage rates Pew Research
How students benefit from having teachers of same race Journalism Resources
***FREE SPEECH
Reince Priebus admits Trump administration has looked into changing the First Amendment The Week
Northwestern Students protest ICE representative’s visit to campus Daily Northwestern
Student group files lawsuit against professor CNN
How Missouri Used Shared Governance to Preserve Free Speech on Campus Chronicle of Higher Ed
***LEGAL ISSUES
Can You Copyright Your Dumb Joke? And How Can You Prove It's Yours? NPR
Patent trolls take it on the chin in new Supreme Court ruling Tech Crunch
Facebook Defeats Lawsuit Over Material Support for Terrorists Technology & Marketing Law Blog
***RELIGION
Way More Americans May Be Atheists Than We Thought FiveThirtyEight
The Second Coming Of Televangelist Jim Bakker BuzzFeed News
Why Trump’s tax plan would mean less money for churches Washington Post
Pregnant at 18. Hailed by Abortion Foes. Punished by Christian School New York Times
How “Race Tests” Maintain Evangelical Segregation (opinion) Religious Dispatches
***ART & DESIGN
Take a Trip Through the History of Modern Art with the Oscar-Winning Open Culture
How Fonts Are Fueling the Culture Wars Back Channel
***MUSIC
Inside the Offices Where the Music Never Stops and Everyone Is DJ Bloomberg
***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT
Sexual Assaults at Southwestern Community College Prompts Protest San Diego Free Press
Lawsuit claims Howard University shamed and did not help sexual violence victims USA Today
***SCIENCE
Physicists Can’t Agree on What Science Even Means Anymore Wired
What's Wrong with Science? BBC
The Map of Chemistry: New Animation Summarizes the Entire Field of Chemistry in 12 Minutes Open Culture
***HEALTH
Training medical students how to teach helps them embrace ambiguity Stat News
***PSYCHOLOGY
Why We Lie: The Science Behind Our Deceptive Ways National Geographic
***NEUROSCIENCE
What causes that feeling of being watched BBC
What’s behind the myth that you only use 10 percent of your brain? The Verge
Bloomberg story provides clear-eyed view of trendy neurofeedback brain-training clinics Health News Review
***PHILOSOPHY
Does the philosophy literature have a plagiarism problem? Retraction Watch
Change in philosophy poses threat to devoted profs at Catholic university Life Site News
***ETHICS
Society's Moral Fracturing Leads To Dangerous Places NPR
Teaching robots right from wrong 1843 magazine
Facebook's internal rulebook on sex, terrorism and violence is Leaked The Guardian
***RESEARCH
Citation Performance Indicators: A Very Short Introduction The Scholarly Kitchen
Does It Matter Whose Name Appears After the (c) When Using Creative Commons The Scholarly Kitchen
A Sokal-Style Hoax on Gender Studies: The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct Skeptic
***TEACHING
Digital course materials have gotten only slightly more accessible to students with disabilities Inside Higher Ed
You Can’t Automate Good Teaching Chronicle of Higher Ed
***STUDENT LIFE
Baby boomers are actually way more entitled than millennials New York Post
How Generation Z, Millennials (and the rest of us) consume media: 7 key trends The Media Briefing
Christian high school bans student for her hairstyle WCTV
Colleges Are Using Price Discrimination—Here's How to Fight It Life Hacker
***ACADEMIC LIFE
Tenured Prof Fired for asking Why Private Catholic School didn’t notify Minority faculty that they could have been in danger Inside Higher Ed
Graduate student who is subject of Title IX critic’s new book sues for defamation and invasion of privacy Inside Higher Ed
this is success
/Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. -Winston Churchill
off his guard
/Surely what a man does when taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is. –CS Lewis
bricks
/A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. -David Brinkley
the secret
/The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
illusions
/Our illusions can ravage us as mercilessly as violence or disease. And the illusions of others, when they take on lives of their own, are even more dangerous. -Nicholas Christopher
rising
/Rising above the fray is a grown up thing to do.
We're all a Mess
/I have spent the past five years peeking into people’s insides. I have been studying aggregate Google search data. Alone with a screen and anonymous, people tend to tell Google things they don’t reveal to social media.
While spending five years staring at a computer screen learning about some of human beings’ strangest and darkest thoughts may not strike most people as a good time, I have found the honest data surprisingly comforting. I have consistently felt less alone in my insecurities, anxieties, struggles and desires.
Once you’ve looked at enough aggregate search data, it’s hard to take the curated selves we see on social media too seriously. Or, as I like to sum up what Google data has taught me: We’re all a mess.
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz writing in the New York Times
articles of interest - May 15
/***JOURNALISM
The secret deal the Associated Press made with the Nazis during WWII Washington Post
Mobile Journalism Isn’t Just Producing Content. It’s Knowing How Mobile Content Affects Engagement PBS Media Shift
How Woodrow Wilson’s Propaganda Machine Changed American Journalism Good Men Project
America’s growing news deserts Columbia Journalism Review
Chicago Tribune wins decision in FOIA case against College (court rules in favor of releasing records in the possession of a public college's fundraising organization) Chicago Tribune
Facebook downranks News Feed links to crappy sites smothered in ads TechCrunch
Poynter President resigns for role at Medill School of Journalism Saint Peters Blog
***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM
Sinclair Requires TV Stations to Air Segments That Tilt to the Right New York Times
Mixed reality, computer vision, and brain–machine interfaces: Here’s the future The New York Times’ reborn R&D lab sees Harvard’s Nieman Lab
***FAKE NEWS
Google and Facebook aren't fighting fake news with the right weapons LA Times
News, False and Fake Chronicle of Higher Education
Infographic: How ‘Fake News’ and Bogus Content Are Changing the Way Consumers Look at Brands Ad Week
Russia Has Weaponized Fake News to Sow Chaos New Republic
***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA
Buying spree brings more local TV stations to fewer big companies Pew Research Center
As Viewers Drift Online, Advertisers Hold Fast to Broadcast TV New York Times
***GRAMMAR
The use of Oftentimes Rises Chronicle of Higher Education
Being a Declarative (or Interrogative, or Imperative, or Exclamative) Chronicle of Higher Education
***WRITING& READING
An Editor sees Editing Slips in Online News LA Times
***LANGUAGE
Linguistics Breakthrough Heralds Machine Translation for Thousands of Rare Languages Technology Review
When American Schools Banned German Classes Jstor
***LITERATURE
This Is What Happens to Your Brain When You Read Poetry New York Mag
***GENDER
Testosterone makes men less likely to realize when they're wrong, a new study shows Science Daily
N.H. Rep. Robert Fisher lambasted by women at hearing about his role in misogynistic online forum Concord Monitor
***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES
Professor calls diversity training workshop to which colleagues were invited a “waste,” setting off debate about inclusiveness and civility Inside Higher Ed
Fenway Incidents Prompt Questions About Hate Speech At The Ballpark NPR
Faculty and Students Assail Texas A&M President’s Criticism of Professor Chronicle of Higher Education
As White Supremacists Push Onto Campuses, Schools Wrestle With Response NPR
***FREE SPEECH
Don't blame millennials for free speech crisis on college campuses The Hill
Federal court ruling recognizes students' First Amendment right to make recordings on school grounds Student Press Law Center
Answering a call for speech codes from The Washington Post The FIRE
The States Where Campus Free-Speech Bills Are Being Born: A Rundown Chronicle of Higher Education
***LEGAL ISSUES
Fair Use Too Often Goes Unused Chronicle of Higher Education
Why Do Law Professors Write Law Review Articles? Publish or perish, but is there a point to it? Above the Law
***BIG DATA & STATISTICS
Reporting the findings: Absolute vs relative risk Health News Review
Under Trump, inconvenient data is being sidelined Washington Post
MIT: protecting privacy w/fake data sets to allow 3rd party distribution for development & education purposes Smart Data Collective
Why a good predictive data analytics model is never finished Silicon Angle
The 6 biggest decisions an organization must make when deploying big data architecture Tech Republic
Why it may be better to have fewer predictors in machine learning models? KD Nuggets
How to tell when you need a better analytics platform Smart Data Collective
***SOCIAL MEDIA
The many risks that academics face in trying to court social-media success The Atlantic
***PRODUCING MEDIA
Big Ideas From BEA 2017 on Podcasting, Live Streaming, Google Tools PBS Media Shift
Become an Instagram Influencer With This Mobile Photo Gear Wired
How to shoot on iPhone 7 Apple
***RELIGION
Church of England investigates appointment of rogue bishop in sign of conservative breakaway Christian Today
Telling the story of my departure from American evangelicalism (opinion) Religious News Service
Jakarta's Minority Christian Governor Convicted Of Blasphemy NPR
Televangelist's planned resort in San Diego gets a major redesign Union Tribune
Did TBN ministers Paul, Jan Crouch cover up 13-year-old granddaughter’s rape allegation? Orange County Register
Christian researcher claims feds rejected Grand Canyon study based on his religion The Arizona Republic
Christian printer doesn’t have to make pro-gay shirts, appeals court rules Lexington Herald Leader
Christian Teacher Who Said Gay People “Deserve To Die” Resigns After Backlash San Luis Bispo
Women bloggers spawn an evangelical ‘crisis of authority’ Religious News Service
Record Few Americans Believe Bible Is Literal Word of God Gallup
Can Cannabis And Christ Coexist? These Devout Southern Christians Think So Buzz Feed
Operation World Mapmaker Shuts Down Due to Donor Shifts Christianity Today
The evangelical courtiers who kneel before the president’s feet Religion News ServiceFacing Global Persecution, Christian Leaders Urge U.S. For More Protection NPR
***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT
There’s been a big change in how the news media covers sexual assault Washington Post
***PSYCHOLOGY
Why You Shouldn't Tell People about Your Dreams Scientific American
***NEUROSCIENCE
Neuroscience shows that our gut instincts about only children are right Quzrtz
These Table Tops Are The Same Shape, But Your Brain Won't Let You See It Digg
***PHILOSOPHY
A Graphic Novel About 17th-Century Philosophy The Atlantic
Philosopher who argued for God wins Templeton Prize The Oakland Press
A Graphic Novel About 17th-Century Philosophy The Atlantic
***ETHICS
Moral Law: Americans Agree on More Morality, Disagree on Method Christianity Today
Scientists Raise Concern By Wanting To Create Synthetic Human Genomes NPR
Crispr Makes It Clear: The US Needs a Biology Strategy, and Fast Wired
***RESEARCH
China publishes more science research with fabricated peer-review than everyone else put together Quartz
Science publishers try new tack to combat unauthorized paper sharing Nature
***PERSONAL GROWTH
10,000 hours of deliberate practice is not enough Becoming (my blog)
***HIGHER ED
Harvard Library Drops Fines The Harvard Crimson
Private colleges and universities increase tuition discounting again Inside Higher Ed
Somewhere Over the Rainbow: Wheaton College Would Like to Pretend Its LGBTQ Students Don’t Exist Religious Dispatches
Receptive Audience At Liberty University Praises Trump's Accomplishments NPR
***TEACHING
Students Don’t Always Recognize Good Teaching, Study Finds Chronicle of Higher Education
What Are Students Rating When They Rate Instructors? Inside Higher Ed
U can’t talk to ur Prof like this (opinion) New York Times
***STUDENT MEDIA
Keene State president responds to student journalism dispute Sentinel Source
Fired from Student Newspaper for Posting Video Clip (opinion) National Review
***STUDENT LIFE
How Long-Term Adderall Use Affects The Brain Quora
***CRIME ON CAMPUS
Campus Police Forces Adopt Body Cameras Inside Higher Ed
sometimes
/Sometimes a nation abolishes God, but fortunately, God is more tolerant.
Selfishness and Self-love
/If it is a virtue to love my neighbor as a human being, it must be a virtue and not a vice-to love myself since I am a human being too. There is no concept of man in which I myself am not included. A doctrine which proclaims such an exclusion proves itself to be intrinsically contradictory. The idea expressed in the Biblical “Love thy neighbor as thyself!” implies that respect for one’s own integrity and uniqueness, love for and understanding of one’s own self, can not be separated from respect for and love and understanding of another individual. The love for my own self is inseparably connected with the love for any other self.
The affirmation of one’s own life, happiness, growth, freedom, is rooted in one’s capacity to love, i.e., in care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge. If an individual is able to love productively, he loves himself too; if he can love only others, he can not love at all.
The selfish person.. can see nothing but himself; he judges everyone and everything from its usefulness to him; he is basically unable to love. Does not this prove that concern for others and concern for oneself are unavoidable alternatives? This would be so if selfishness and self-love were identical. But.. selfishness and self-love, far from being identical, are actually opposites.
Eric Fromm, Man for Himself
Attributes of a high-performing Leader
/A decade long study published in Harvard Business Review set out to identify the specific attributes that differentiate high-performing CEOs:
Our findings challenged many widely held assumptions. For example, our analysis revealed that while boards often gravitate toward charismatic extroverts, introverts are slightly more likely to surpass the expectations of their boards and investors.
We were also surprised to learn that virtually all CEO candidates had made material mistakes in the past, and 45% of them had had at least one major career blowup that ended a job or was extremely costly to the business. Yet more than 78% of that subgroup of candidates ultimately won the top job.
We discovered that high-performing CEOs do not necessarily stand out for making great decisions all the time; rather, they stand out for being more decisive. They make decisions earlier, faster, and with greater conviction. They do so consistently—even amid ambiguity, with incomplete information, and in unfamiliar domains. In our data, people who were described as “decisive” were 12 times more likely to be high-performing CEOs.
Read more about the CEO Genome Project in the Harvard Business Review
obliquely
/Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely at an angle. - Andre Gide
simple
/Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains. Steve Jobs
Twice as Miserable
/People hate losses.. Roughly speaking, losing something makes you twice as miserable as gaining the same thing makes you happy. In more technical language, people are “loss averse.” How do we know this?
Consider a simple experiment. Half the students in a class are given coffee mugs with the insignia of their home university embossed on it. The students who did not get a mug are asked to examine their neighbor’s mugs. Then, mug owners are invited to sell their mugs and nonowners are invited to buy them. They do so by answering the question “At each of the following prices, indicate whether you would be willing to (give up your mug/buy a mug).”
The results show that those with mugs demand roughly twice as much to give up their mugs as others are willing to pay to get one. Thousands of mugs have been used in dozens of replications of this experiment, but the results are nearly always the same. Once I have a mug, I don’t want to give it up. But if I don’t have one, I don’t feel an urgent need to buy one.
What this means is that people do not assign specific values to objects. When they have to give something up, they are hurt more than they are pleased if they acquire the very same things.
Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein, Nudge