It's called if-then planning, and it is a really powerful way to help you achieve any goal. Well over a hundred studies, on everything from diet and exercise to negotiation and time management, have shown that deciding in advance when and where you will take specific actions to reach your goal (e.g., "If it is 4 p.m., then I will return any phone calls I should return today") can double or triple your chances for success.

Heidi Grant Halvorson, Nine Things Successful People Do Differently

July 29, 2017

a role to play

July 29, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

We have a role to play in one another’s wholeness. Dean Nelson

July 28, 2017

something glorious

July 28, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

The world is already full of successes. Do something glorious. Robert Pensky

July 27, 2017

reasoning someone out of something

July 27, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

You cannot reason someone out of something he or she was not reasoned into. Jonathan Swift

July 26, 2017

Be a rebel

July 26, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

Having a naysayer can be motivating. Rebel against a dream crusher from your past. -Jonathan Adler

July 25, 2017

sitting quietly

July 25, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. Blaise Pascal

July 25, 2017

articles of interest - wk of July 24

July 25, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

***BIG DATA & STATISTICS

The implications of deploying Blockchain's decentralised list-keeping technology to replace aspects of government Economist

Artificial intelligence is guesswork: A Bloomberg quicktake on AI Bloomberg

Apple launches a machine learning blog focused on research papers and the company’s findings TechCrunch

Quantum computing is coming for your data - and it may take decades for the hack to come to fruition Wired

Google releases facets: a visualization tool for big data Infoq

***TECHNOLOGY

Wanna Help Self-Driving Cars? Turn on Your Phone's Camera Wired

How Cyber Criminals Are Targeting You Through Text Messages NBC News

Microsoft Paint to be killed off after 32 years The Guardian

We’re moving toward a cashless society, and lots of people are going to be left behind ReCode

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Amazon launches shopping social network Spark for iOS Reuters

Twitter says it’s punishing 10 times more users for being abusive than it was a year ago Recode

***PRODUCING MEDIA

The Renaissance of the Humble Radio Drama: The medium offers unique opportunities for minority voices and independent creators Slate

***INTERNET

Ranking Websites by Demographics Quantcast

With its new feed, Google is preparing for the end of search Mashable

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

The Sinclair Revolution Will Be Televised. It’ll Just Have Low Production Values Bloomberg

Google's been running a secret test to detect bogus ads — and its findings should make the industry nervous Business Insider

Only Two-Fifths Of Ad Execs Say Their Agencies Don't Take Kickbacks Media Post

Media Companies Lose Out As Advertisers Promote Their Stories on Facebook BuzzFeed News

***JOURNALISM

Making a Correction 100 years later: A Hot Dog is not a Sandwich Courier-Journal

Google’s New Feeds Show You the Internet You Want to See Wired

Q&A: ProPublica’s Lena Groeger on data visualization and writing about design Columbia Journalism Review

Facebook Updates the ‘Journalism Project’ to Fight Fake News Fortune

The updated ‘Bloomberg Way’ style guide focuses on best practices for data and multiplatform journalism Poynter

The War on the Freedom of Information Act The Atlantic

Comic Book Journalists Discuss the Pitfalls of the Job And How To Break Into The Industry Bleeding Cool

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

NBC has 30 employees working on a daily news show exclusively for Snapchat Recode

Confessions of a New York Times Copy Editor: I hardly had time to go to the bathroom New York Times

Journalism is a public service. Why don’t we fund it like one? Columbia Journalism Review

Snopes, in Heated Legal Battle, Asks for Funds to Survive New York Times

***ART & DESIGN

The 5 Best Apps for Sketching on an iPad Pro Wired

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Getting Clarity on What’s Important Becoming (my blog)

***BUSINESS

Wisconsin company says it will put Microchips in employees BBC

Leadership: Reshaping Business Culture for a digital age McKinsey & Company

The company isn’t a family Signal v Noise

How Mobile Devices Perpetuate Weak Business Models Scholarly Kitchen

***GRAMMAR

Historical Plaque Memorializes the Time Jack Kerouac & William S. Burroughs Came to Blows Over the Oxford Comma (Or Not) Open Culture

***WRITING & READING

The death of reading is threatening the soul (opinion: Phillip Yancey) Washington Post

Of fake PR, serial commas, and four-letter words (opinion) Saipan Tribune

***LANGUAGE

Why do humans speak so many languages? Quartz

Correct Latin word installed on UT memorial to Tower sniper’s victims Austin Statesman

Hemingway’s Cuban English Chronicle of Higher Ed

The Accent Whisperers of Hollywood New York Times

Why it’s so hard to teach English-as-a-second-language students how to use a, an, and the, Chronicle of Higher Ed

What Do You Call This Hat?The strange case of the knit cap and its many, many regional names Atlas Obscura

Generic-you has important implications for how people derive meaning from experience Science Mag

***LITERATURE

Amazon launched 22 years ago this week — here's what shopping on Amazon was like back in 1995 Business Insider

On Teaching, but Not Loving, Jane Austen The Atlantic

***GENDER

Months After ‘Transracialism’ Flap, Controversy Still Rages at Feminist Philosophy Journal Chronicle of Higher Ed

No one is well-served by sexism in Japan Economist

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

Sikh Scholar Harassed Over Photo of Another Man in Turban Inside Higher Ed

The Largest U.S. Latino Advocacy Group Changes Its Name, Sparking Debate NPR

***LEGAL ISSUES

After Supreme Court Decision, People Race To Trademark Racially Offensive Words NPR

***MUSIC

A breakdown of Beyoncé’s revenue shows how little musicians make out of streaming Quartz

How SoundCloud's broken business model drove artists away The Verge

Hip-hop is bigger than rock music for the first time, thanks to nobody buying albums Quartz

Making Music and Art Through Machine Learning Y Combinator

A Single Life: An Oscar-Nominated Short About How Vinyl Records Can Take Us Magically Through Time Open Culture

***SOCIOLOGY

The Field Study Handbook Wired

***HEALTH

Just Thinking That You're Slacking On Exercise Could Boost Risk Of Death NPR

Surgery Is One Hell Of A Placebo FiveThirtyEight

The Pentagon’s handling of munitions and their waste has poisoned millions of acres, and left Americans to guess at the threat to their health ProPublica

Study combines neuroimaging with machine learning to predict, with 96% accuracy, whether high-risk 6-month-old babies will develop autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by age 2 SharpBrains

Most people addicted to opioids receive no treatment Economist

Protecting interns and other physicians from depression and suicide (opinion) Stat News

***SCIENCE

Ten Simple Rules for Scientific Fraud & Misconduct HAL

I’m a Scientist and the Trump Administration Reassigned Me for Speaking up About Climate Change Washington Post

The Rich get Richer: Relatively few NIH grantees get lion’s share of agency’s funding Science Mag

Some scientists hate NIH’s new definition of a clinical trial Science Mag

***PSYCHOLOGY

The Emerging Science of Computational PsychiatryMachine learning, data mining, and artificial intelligence are revolutionizing the study and understanding of mental illness MIT Technology Review

Psychology’s Replication Crisis and the Grant Culture: Righting the Ship Sage Publication

A psychologist explains the hard limits of human compassion Vox

New report on mental health on college campuses: Colleges: colleges, are struggling to provide adequate mental-health services for students National Council on Disability

***RESEARCH

Upholding Research Integrity and Publishing Ethics Wiley

So-called Scientific journals accept a Star Wars-themed spoof paper Discover Magazine

***RELIGION

Mother makes plea to parents over treatment of her special needs son at church Huffington Post

The age of white Christian America is ending. Here's how it got there Vox

ASU sanctions church for misconduct Tucson.com

Revisiting Ayn Rand’s anti-religious philosophy Religion News Service

Is Surfing More Sport or Religion? The Atlantic

Christian theme park claims it is ‘taking back’ the rainbow from the LGBTQ Sacramento Bee

***HIGHER ED

Wright State University makes million-dollar boosts to athletics spending while cutting every category of academic funding Inside Higher Ed

Troubled Colleges Rebrand Under Faux-Latin Names BuzzFeed

Minority serving institutions Completion Rates Higher Than Federal Data Indicate American Council on Education

Small Christian College Faces More Turmoil in Response to Firing of Much-Loved Longtime Prof Inside Higher Ed

***STUDENT MEDIA

Student slams Tex-Mex food in college newspaper, Texans shut her down Click2Houston

***FREE SPEECH

Stop Telling Students Free Speech Is Traumatizing Them NY Mag

It started when a student corrected his ex’s grammar and tweeted about it. Now he is suspended, and lawyers say First Amendment issues are at stake Inside Higher Ed

Suspensions for College Students Who Thwarted Free Speech The Atlantic

Claremont college suspends students for demonstration against pro-police speaker LA Times

It's Disadvantaged Groups That Suffer Most When Free Speech Is Curtailed on Campus The Atlantic

How powerful people use criminal-defamation laws to silence their critics Economist

***STUDENT LIFE

Millennials have a Netflix account. Gen Z is playing video games Recode

Univ. of Central Florida reverses position on student suspended over viral tweet about ex-girlfriend USA Today

College Savings Advice (opinion) New York Times

Few student-athletes with mental illness seek help USA Today

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

Betsy DeVos Is Right: Sexual Assault Policy Is Broken (opinion) The New York Times

Catholic University found him responsible for a sexual assault. Now he’s suing the school Washington Pose

Media Circus Surrounding “Mattress Girl” Case Changes Conversation on Sexual Assault Inside Higher Ed

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Cal State Fullerton reinstates part-time professor after arbitrator finds no evidence that he attempted to hit a student at a pro-Trump event, as was alleged when he was fired by the university Inside Higher Ed

BYU adjunct: I was fired for Facebook post asserting that homosexuality and transgenderism are not sins Washington Post

July 23, 2017

you're an original

July 23, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

You were born an original. Don't die a copy. -John Mason

July 21, 2017

The Perfect Parent Trap

July 21, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

When perfectionists become parents, their mindsets don't change; they just shift their unreasonable expectations onto their children. Now their kids must be perfect too. In fact, a number of studies have found that perfectionists are so busy worrying about the drive for excellence that they aren't sensitive are responsive to the children's real needs.

Perfectionist parenting is anxious parenting. So that their children never make mistakes, these parents are overprotective, controlling, authoritarian, intrusive and dominating.

(Not that any of it helps: Research at Macquarie University in Australia showed that perfectionist parents’ tendencies to admonish kids and emphasize accuracy didn't decrease errors in children's work.)

Unsurprisingly kids of perfectionists are perfectionists too, adopting the same unreasonable expectations and exaggerated responses to failure. As a result, they're more likely to be anxious and obsessive. According to the University of Louisville researchers Nicholas Affrunti and Janet Woodriff-Borden, every time parents rush into fix something their kids learn their mistakes of threatening and they come to believe they can't be trusted to handle new experiences on the run.

And through their parents’ disengagement, kids learn that love is conditional. The only way to get it? Achieve.

Ashley Merryman, co-author of Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing, writing in ESPN the Magazine, May 11, 2015 issue

July 18, 2017

articles of interest - wk of July 17

July 18, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

***TECHNOLOGY

Capitalism the Apple Way vs. Capitalism the Google Way The Atlantic

When You Should (and Shouldn’t) Share Your Location Using a Smartphone NYTimes

Turning Your iPhone’s Camera into an Assistive Device: Seeing AI Chronicle of Higher Ed

The problem of bots as they are trained to become better at mimicking humans (opinion) New York Times

Why no one has 're-invented' email yet Mashable

***BIG DATA & STATISTICS

It’s not enough to weigh data decisions on the descriptor of big versus small alone. Other things must be considered Inside Big Data

Intel community learning to speak Trump's language when talking about major national security threats Chicago Tribune

Paradoxes of Probability and Other Statistical Strangeness Quillette

***SOCIAL MEDIA

India surpasses U.S. as Facebook’s #1 country The Stack

***PERSONAL GROWTH

The Duty of Encouragement Becoming (my blog)

Why most people will never be successful CNBC

Don’t Judge My Estrangement From Family — It Saved My Life The Establishment

***JOURNALISM

Data journalism matters. Here’s what you need to know The Next Web

An Inside Look at One America News Washington Post

Report: Republicans think national news media is bad for the country, by an 8 to 1 margin Poynter

Meet the Journalism 360 Challenge winners and the VR frontiers they want to conquer Nieman Lab

Google funds automated news project BBC

What happens to Local News When There is no Local Media to Cover it? Washington Post

LA Times investigation highlights local news that gets results Columbia Journalism Review

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Investor group to acquire Chicago Sun-Times Talking New Media

Sun-Times gets a new owner, but no one is making money in the newspaper business in Chicago Talking New Media

Print newspapers are dying faster than you think Vox

Local TV News Fact SheetPew Research Center Journalism.org

'San Diego Union-Tribune,' Go Fund Me Team To Fund-Raise Around Stories Media Post

Google says it wants to fund the news, not fake it The Drum

Newspapers’ Stand Against Tech Giants Won’t Save Them Slate

The Washington Post takes big data approach to reader comment moderation Talking New Media

Q&A: Jerry Springer on interviewing regular people Columbia Journalism Review

***FAKE NEW

Fake news fuels nationalism and Islamophobia — sound familiar? In this case, it's in India LA Times

Computer Scientists Demonstrate The Potential For Faking Video NPR

There’s a whole new layer of drama in the Mideast crisis: UAE planted fake news to spark fight with Qatar, according to a bombshell report Vox

Fighting Falsehoods Around the World: A Dispatch on the Growing Global Fact-Checking Movement Washington Post

Researchers Examine When People Are More Susceptible To Fake News NPR

***STUDENT MEDIA

Student Journalists Are Our Future—We Should Start Treating Them Like It The Nation

***GRAMMAR

The Correct Punctuation of Donald Trump, Jr.,’s Name The New Yorker

The Much-Needed Gap Chronicle of Higher Ed

‘The Americans Have No Adverbs’ Chronicle of Higher Ed

***WRITING & READING

Blessed Are teh Copy Editors Chronicle of Higher Ed

The ‘So What?’ Question in your Academic Paper Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LITERATURE

Donald Trump Jr. Reviews Famous Works of Literature McSweenys

Emily Dickinson’s unquiet passion: A literature professor’s take on Terence Davies’ film Amherst Bulletin

The Word Choices That Explain Why Jane Austen Endures New York Times

Stream a 24 Hour Playlist of Charles Dickens Stories, Featuring Classic Recordings by Laurence Olivier, Orson Welles & More Open Culture

Charting Literary Greatness With Jane Austen New York Times

Jane Austen Bicentennial: Must-See Sights from Her Life & Literature Biography

***GENDER

Women more likely to see online harassment as major problem Pew Research Center

The "Crazy/Bitch" Narrative About Senior Academic Women (opinion) Jennifer Berdahl's Blog

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

Arizona's Ethnic Studies Ban In Public Schools Goes To Trial NPR

Diverse clinical trials are “an issue of an essential ethical principle of justice” OnNursing

***FREE SPEECH

Spain Struggles To Balance National Security With Free Speech NPR

Lawsuit Claims School Violated Rights Of Students Trying To Form Pro-Life Club CBS News

You Can Get Fired For Saying That? Reporter finds a chill wind blowing through free speech on campus these days Elle

***LEGAL ISSUES

The 'Monkey Selfie' Monkey Just Filed an Appeal Mother Board

A Supreme Court mystery: Has Roberts embraced same-sex marriage ruling? Washington Post

An analysis of the Supreme Court's latest First Amendment ruling, Matal v. Tam Student Press Law Center

***RELIGION

Best-selling author Eugene Peterson changes his mind on gay marriage Religious News Service

Actually, Eugene Peterson Does Not Support Same-Sex Marriage Christianity Today

Samford pulls plug on student gay-straight alliance Baptist News

A dubious web site falsely reported the death of the Christian Contemporary music artist Don Moen Snopes

Conservative Christian reality TV star Toby Willis gets 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to child rape Raw Story

More Christian than Muslim refugees arrive in U.S. under Trump Pew Research Center

John Calvin: The Religious Reformer Who Influenced Capitalism Jstor

Why I’m Leaving the Southern Baptist Convention (opinion) New York Times

When the Evangelical Establishment Comes After You (opinion) Religious News Service

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

Confidant of Pope Francis condemns US religious right Associated Press

Trump seen bowing in prayer during Oval Office session CNN

Trump coped with the Russia scandal by courting evangelicals. Here's why that's worrisome (opinion) Vox

Trump threatens to change the course of American Christianity Washington Post

Ethical Questions over Organizational Structure of Trump lawyer’s Christian nonprofits NPR

***MUSIC

A brief mention in an interview by a British artist breathes life and sales into a niche music theory book Inside Higher Ed

Why musicians are so angry at the world’s most popular music streaming service Washington Post

R. Kelly Is Holding Women Against Their Will In A “Cult,” Parents Told Police BuzzFeed

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

The Trump Administration’s Fraught Attempt to Address Campus Sexual Assault The New Yorker

Title IX summit Controversy Inside Higher Ed

Ed. Dept. Official Apologizes for ‘90%’ Remark on Campus Rape. What’s the Research? Chronicle of Higher Ed

Education Department Official Apologizes For 'Flippant' Campus Sexual Assault Comments NPR

Columbia University settles Title IX lawsuit with former student involving ‘mattress girl’ case Washington Post

After Meeting With DeVos, Title IX Activists Say They Still Have Many Questions Chronicle of Higher Ed

New study of harassment of graduate students by faculty members suggests that the problem is worse than many believe Inside Higher Ed

At some Texas universities, students accused of rape can transfer without a record Texas Tribune

***SOCIOLOGY

How bosses are (literally) like dictators: Americans think they live in a democracy. But their workplaces are small tyrannies (opinion) Vox

***HEALTH

'Dirt Is Good': New Book Explores Why Kids Should Be Exposed To Germs NPR

A survey of retracted articles in dentistry BMC Research Notes

The importance of whistleblowing when it comes to patient safety in healthcare Journal of Patient Safety

The rise of medical crowdfunding scams Daily Dot

Lost Mothers: An estimated 700 to 900 women in the U.S. died from pregnancy-related causes in 2016. We have identified 120 of them so far Propublica

Most Drugs Are Still Safe To Use Years After Their Expiration Date : Shots - Health News NPR

Is This Photo Real or Fake? A New Study finds most people won’t spot the con Motherboard

***SCIENCE

Science has a negativity problem Science Line

***PSYCHOLOGY

Can Psychedelics Be Therapy? Allow Research to Find Out New York Times

***NEUROSCIENCE

The neuroscience of inequality: does poverty show up in children's brains? The Guardian

***CRITICAL THINKING

Why Facts Don't Convince People (and what you can do about it) (video) Social Good Now

***HISTORY

The prime minister and the professor Revisionist History (Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast)

***ETHICS

Outgoing Ethics Chief: U.S. Is ‘Close to a Laughingstock’ New York Times

***RESEARCH

Google Is Shelling Out Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars to Academics Writing Papers About Google New York Mag

Elsevier discusses how it intends to introduce more transparency into the review process Elsevier

Strategies to avoid getting Your Research Scooped HELDA

Tracking the Evolution of Reference Resources Scholarly Kitchen

***HIGHER ED

New book argues against “zombie leadership” in higher education Inside Higher Ed

The New Culture War Targeting American Universities Appear to be Working Washington Post

Members of the college-educated class have become amazingly good at making sure their children retain their privileged status New York Times

One of America’s most prestigious colleges may try to force its undergraduates to be more egalitarian towards one another––but not to anyone else (opinion) The Atlantic

Why we need to know more, not less, about what students get from college Hechinger Report

New Florida law requires colleges to spell out student debt in a yearly report to each student Sun-Sentinal

Bret Weinstein to Evergreen College Board: Do You Know The Campus Descended Into Literal Anarchy? RealClearPolitics

The Problem With Helicopter Colleges: Harvard professor Steven Pinker objects to a proposal to ban various undergraduate social clubs (opinion) The Atlantic

Why This Tech CEO Keeps Hiring Humanities Majors Fast Company

***TEACHING

The Education Writer Gospel of 'Academically Adrift' Inside Higher Ed

How Much Time Should You Spend on Teaching? Chronicle of Higher Ed

***STUDENT LIFE

Students Decide their own Political orientation-It isn't handed to you in college (opinion) New York Times

How Colleges Give Students a Flawed Sense of Living Costs Chronicle of Higher Ed

Trump Administration Considers Measure to Make Staying in U.S. Harder for Foreign Students Washington Post

The truth about today’s college students Washington Post

Students at religious universities are worried about access to birth control. Here's why USA Today

Private student loan debts are being erased because of incomplete and missing paperwork New York Times

Grad School Is Hard on Mental Health. Here’s an Antidote Chronicle of Higher Ed

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Under Fire, These Professors Were Criticized by Their Colleges Chronicle of Higher Ed

Trinity Professor Cleared Of Wrongdoing Following Controversial Facebook Posts Courant

New Study Charts Recent Proliferation of Faculty Unions (At the center of many of the disputes are clashing interpretations of new guidance on private-college unionization) Chronicle of Higher Ed

July 18, 2017

Primed for Action

July 18, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

Does your frame of mind before an event make a difference in the outcome? Read this quote from Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink:

Two Dutch researchers did a study in which they had groups of students answer forty-two fairly demanding questions from the board game Trivial Pursuit. Half were asked to take five minutes beforehand to think about what it would mean to be a professor and write down everything that came to mind. Those students got 55.6 percent of the questions right. The other half of the students were asked to first sit and think about soccer hooligans. They ended up getting 42.6 percent of the Trivial Pursuit questions right. The 'professor' group didn't know more than the 'soccer' group. They weren't smarter or more focused or more serious. They were simply in a 'smart' frame of mind and, clearly, associating themselves with the idea of something smart, like a professor, made it a lot easier - in that stressful instant after a trivia question was asked - to blurt out the right answer. The difference between 55.6 and 42.6 percent, it should be pointed out, is enormous. That can be the different between passing and failing.

Call it positive thinking or priming or whatever you like, but don't neglect the mental prep before each "big game." Actors must "get in character" by focusing on the task at hand before the curtain rises. In the same way, give your best effort by first dipping your mind in some positive energy.

Stephen Goforth

July 10, 2017

articles of interest - July 10

July 10, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

***TECHNOLOGY

Cameras are about to get a lot smaller: The future of photography is flat Economist

Why You Will One Day Have a Chip in Your Brain Wired

Nest Founder: “I Wake Up In Cold Sweats Thinking, What Did We Bring To The World?” Fast Company

A reality check for virtual headsets: VR has been more about hype than substance. Will that change? Economist

There Are Plenty Of RFID-Blocking Products, But Do You Need Them? NPR

Two-Factor Authentication is a Mess The Verge

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook is getting ready to test paid subscriptions with publications Digiday

Facebook won’t let people change the headlines in links — and social media managers aren’t pleased Digiday

***PRODUCING MEDIA

How to record and publish podcasts using Anchor Journalism.co

When radio ratings got more precise, it changed how programmers saw their audience. Are podcasters heading for something similar? Harvard’s Nieman Lab

***BIG DATA & STATISTICS

A brief guide for getting started in Python Medium

Should scientists who use AI include their computers as co-authors on their papers? Science Magazine

Can we get AI to explain why it’s making the decision it’s making? Will that get us to trust it? MIT Technology Review

Is artificial intelligence a job killer? Well, deep neural networks will automate many jobs, but.. The Conversation

How machine learning is already a big part of our lives Android Authority

Will patients trust their lives to machine learning? The medical algorithm revolution is coming MIT Technology Review

***JOURNALISM

Q&A: NPR’s Audie Cornish on the intimacy of interviewing Columbia Journalism Review

Alcohol industry isn’t just funding studies; it’s also funding journalism to sway public opinion Health News Review

Why journalism is shifting away from 'objectivity' Christian Science Monitor

Friend of Murdered Mexican Journalist Sees Lessons in His Death Voice of San Diego

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

The media needs to ‘get the hell out of the picture,’ Columbia Journalism Review publisher says (opinion) Washington Post

What we miss when we obsess over Trump’s tweet Columbia Journalism Review

Google is putting another $24 million into 107 more European journalism projects, including WikiTribune Harvard’s Nieman Lab

News Outlets to Seek Bargaining Rights Against Google and Facebook New York Times

***TEACHING JOURNALISM

What Educators Should Understand About Code and Journalism PBS Media Shift

Grad school for journalism? Your mileage may vary Muck Rack

***FAKE NEWS

Is fact-checking ‘fake news’ a waste of time? Futurity

To Test Your Fake News Judgment, Play This Game NPR

Fake Memoirs: Man Admits He 'Made Up' Rare Brain Disease for Book Newsweek

Is a chart lying to you? This video has some tips to figure it out Vox

How fares trust in journalism amid a sea of fake news? The Guardian

Fake news bots are so economical, you can use them over and over Harvard’s Nieman Lab

iBooks Author vs Fake News: the fight we deserve Talking New Media

***PERSONAL GROWTH

The Secret of an Exceptional Life Becoming (my blog)

The three words that make brainstorming sessions at Google, Facebook, and IDEO more productive Quartz

***WRITING & READING

College Summer Reading New York Times

How Do Court Reporters Type So Quickly? WCCO TV

A magazine piece about a student offered a full ride to Harvard is retracted after the student admits she forged the acceptance letter Bridge

***LANGUAGE

When Did Colonial America Gain Linguistic Independence? Jstor

Twitter is useful for many things—including (unexpectedly) for studying dialects Economist

Nina in Siberia the enormous difficulty of the rules of grammar Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LITERATURE

The inaugural San Diego Festival of Books will take place next month at Point Loma's Liberty Station Union-Tribune

A Digital Archive of Soviet Children’s Books Goes Online: Browse the Artistic, Ideological Collection (1917-1953) Open Culture

***GENDER

The University of Florida is under federal Title IX investigation for its handling of a Sexual assault accusation against a Football Star Tampa By Times

***FREE SPEECH

The Trump administration is now openly threatening to use the Justice Department as a tool for punishing critical speech New York Magazine

It's Disadvantaged Groups That Suffer Most When Free Speech Is Curtailed on Campus The Atlantic

U.S. Court of Appeals sides with First Amendment right to video-record police Poynter

***LEGAL ISSUES

Failed whistleblower suit is a reminder that public universities are hard to sue Retraction Watch

$10M defamation lawsuit against Deadspin Las Vegas Review-Journal

***RELIGION

Oklahoma University halts plans to remove religious symbols from chapel Inside Higher Ed

The Presbyterian Church in America, Battles Over Gender The Atlantic

California Beach Party Brings Together Ex-Believers NPR

Christian-owned Hobby Lobby accused of hypocrisy after being fined for role in smuggling case Associated Press

Samford won't accept Baptist convention funds after LGBT flap ALcom

Christian Radio's 'Bible Answer Man' Finds New Faith Home, Deals With Fallout WFAE

Christian geologist wins battle to study Grand Canyon rocks New York Post

An atheist Muslim on what the left and right get wrong about Islam Vox

'Building A Bridge' Between The Catholic Church And LGBT Community NPR

Is God boosting Stephen Colbert's ratings? The Week

Vatican outlaws use of gluten free bread for Holy Communion The Telegraph

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

On abortion, persistent divides between – and within – the two parties Pew Research

***ART & DESIGN

Why Art Historians Still Ignore Comics Jstor

How games are impacting urban design Arstechnica

***MUSIC

The Star-Spangled Banner Verse You've Probably Never Heard NPR

How Losing SoundCloud Would Change Music The Ringer

Only Queen can rock an entire stadium without even being there YouTube

***FILM

The Mummy,' 'The House,' and 'Transformers 5': Hollywood's Problem Isn't Sequels, but Bad Movies The Atlantic

Hollywood studios dip their toes in virtual reality: Fox, MGM, Warner Brothers and Steven Spielberg are among those investing in the technology Economist

***HEALTH

'Architecture Of An Asylum' Tracks History Of U.S. Treatment Of Mental Illness NPR

This Map Shows How Some US Counties Are Prescribing Way More Opioids Than Others BuzzFeed News

Scientists Aren't Good At Predicting Which Research Will Pan Out NPR

The Machines Are Getting Ready to Play Doctor: An algorithm that spots heart arrhythmia shows how AI will revolutionize medicine—but patients must trust machines with their lives MIT Technology Review

A former pediatric intensive care unit nurse: I shared my toddler's hospital bill on Twitter.. First came supporters—then death threats Vox

The latest technology is even more beneficial for the old than for the young Economist

U.S. Hospitals Struggle To Protect Mothers When Childbirth Turns Deadly NPR

***SCIENCE

Many Women Of Color Feel Unsafe Working In Science, New Study Finds BuzzFeed News

***PSYCHOLOGY

Research Shows Birth Order Really Does Matter NPR

Why We Lie: The Science Behind Our Deceptive Ways National Geographic

Extreme internet use linked to mental illness in teens The Next Web

The weird power of the placebo effect, explained Vox

Dads Respond Differently To Daughters Than To Sons, Study Finds NPR

Police departments in the US are practicing mindfulness to reduce officers' stress—and violence Quartz

Stephen Fry Identifies the Cognitive Biases That Make Trump Tick Open Culture

***NEUROSCIENCE

Pain Before Pleasure Makes The Pleasure Even Better, Study Finds NPR

***RESEARCH

Should scientists who use artificial intelligence include their computers as co-authors on their papers? Science Mag

When a Cat Co-Authored a Paper in a Leading Physics Journal (1975) Open Culture

***HIGHER ED

Universities and colleges struggle to stem big drops in enrollment The Hechinger Report

UC admission rate for Californian students drops slightly Mercury News

In dramatic shift, more than half of Republicans now say colleges have a negative impact on the U.S. Inside Higher Ed

In emails, then-Baylor regent calls students suspected of drinking “perverted little tarts” “very bad apples,” “insidious and inbred” and “the vilest and most despicable of girls” Waco Tribune-Herald

How Cal Baptist in Riverside inspired Alaskan actor and musician to settle in Southern California Press Enterprise

Speakers at BYU religious freedom conference concerned about religious liberty in educational institutions Herald Extra

Christian universities are growing across Africa Quartz

***TEACHING

AI Is Making It Extremely Easy for Students to Cheat Wired

Anthropologist offers explanation for why faculty members hesitate to adopt innovative teaching methods Inside Higher Ed

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Judge tosses out campus carry gun lawsuit filed by UT professors My Statesman

A test question about hot wax has landed a professor in hot water The Fire

July 09, 2017

the Adventure Risk

July 09, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

Andre Gide once said, "One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." Explorers of new worlds will always have times of ambiguity where they wonder if they are getting anywhere and whether the voyage was really worth it.

Stephen Goforth

July 07, 2017

why Facebook survived

July 07, 2017/ Stephen Goforth

While Facebook was just getting on its feet in 2004, a similar social network called Campus Network (or CU Community) was ahead and more advanced. Slate explains why only one survived.

Why did Facebook succeed where Campus Network failed? The simplest explanation is, well, its simplicity. Yes, Campus Network had advanced features that Facebook was missing. While Campus Network blitzed first-time users right away, Facebook updated its features incrementally. Facebook respected the Web's learning curve.
Campus Network did too much too soon. Neither site, of course, can claim to be the first social network—Friendster and MySpace already had large followings in 2003. But both Facebook and Campus Network had the crucial insight that overlaying a virtual community on top of an existing community—a college campus—would cement users' trust and loyalty. Campus Network figured it out first. Facebook just executed it better.

While people want to make their own choices, research shows too many options creates problems. We become overwhelmed. There is no substitute for simplicity and clarity. Whether on purpose or by accident, Facebook was built from the perspective of looking at what users would do with the site rather than building to show off what its creators could do. One approach shows respect for the audience.

Stephen Goforth