articles of interest - Oct 9

***BIG DATA & STATISTICS

Algorithms have already gone rogue  Wired

Does the new theory “information bottleneck” crack open the black box of deep neural networks?  Wired

 ***SOCIAL MEDIA

Local Media Consortium to partner with Facebook-owned  CrowdTangle

How to use Tweetdeck and advanced search to make Twitter useful again Poynter

Survey: Facebook (FB) is the big tech company that people trust least  Quartz

Key trends in social and digital news media  Pew Research Center

9 ways to make your dog famous on Instagram  Hapers Bazaar

Meet the millennials who are making a living from livestreaming  The Guardian

Snapchat to launch augmented reality art platform  TechCrunch

***PRODUCING MEDIA

The Three Fundamental Moments of Podcasts' Crazy Rise  Wired

How to Make Short-Form Videos as Tutorials, and Why You Might Want To  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Rethinking audio editing on mobile  Medium

The state of podcasting in five charts  Digiday

Podcasts, Smart Speakers Lead the Way at Next Radio  Radio World

Try This: Podcasting made audio great again. It could be even better. Two tools to help  Poynter

The Boom In Political Podcasting  NPR

***JOURNALISM

The rise of virtual reality journalism  Columbia Journalism Review

Day One takeaways from ONA-17  Medium

Day Two: Following the Future of Journalism with #ONA17  MediaShift

ProPublica’s New Project to Work With Local Newsrooms  ProPublica

Our addiction to links is making good journalism harder to read  The Coffeelicious

Beyond 800 words: new digital story formats for news  BBC

How J-Schools Are Adding Social Media, Curation, Analytics to Editing Classes  Media Shift

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Los Angeles Times Newsroom, Challenging Tronc, Goes Public With Union Push  New York Times

A course in freelancing? Yes, and not only that, it's a master's degree  Poynter

***FAKE NEWS

The science behind why fake news is so hard to wipe out  Vox

Facebook tries fighting fake news with publisher info button on links  TechCrunch

***TECHNOLOGY

Google's New Live-Translating Earbuds Look Absolutely Incredible  Digg

A “right to repair” movement tools up From tractors to smartphones, mending things is getting ever harder  Economist

Inside Apple’s Quest To Transform Photography  BuzzFeed News

Video Games for people with disabilities  Economist

Who’s afraid of disruption?  Economist

***PERSONAL GROWTH

To take a step without feet  Becoming (my blog)

How We Make Up Our Minds  The New York Times

***GRAMMAR

The Rise of the Restrictive Comma  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***WRITING & READING

The weekly routine of writer Ann Friedman Extraordinary Routines  Extraordinary Routines 

***LANGUAGE

Two new slang words that show the effects of electronically mediated communication on our speech  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LITERATURE

Kazuo Ishiguro Is Awarded Nobel Prize In Literature  NPR

Jill Bialosky Says Plagiarism Claims ‘Should Not Distract’ From Her Poetry Memoir  New York Times

Austenistan: Jane Austen’s books are remarkably relevant to women in Pakistan today  1843 Magazine

Students, teachers ponder literature in an age of technology  Meridian Star

***GENDER 

Jeff Sessions Just Reversed A Policy That Protects Transgender Workers From Discrimination  BuzzFeed News

To Keep a Campaign Pledge Pleased his Conservative Christian Supporters, Trump Eviscerates Requirements that Employers cover Women’s birth Control  Reuters

Financial Firm Behind ‘Fearless Girl’ Will Pay $5 Million for Allegedly Underpaying Women and Minorities  Adweek

***FREE SPEECH

Free Speech Advocate Silenced: An ACLU official was the latest to be blocked from speaking on campus  Inside Higher Ed

College students and the First Amendment: What the right doesn’t want you to know  Salon

Blocking a President From Talking: University of Oregon is third institution in two weeks where speakers have had talks disrupted  Inside Higher Ed

***LEGAL ISSUES

The defamation lawsuit against BuzzFeed for publishing an unverified intelligence dossier on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election National Law Journal

NYPD officer: Former tennis star James Blake defamed me as ‘a racist and a goon’  Washington Post

Publishers seek removal of millions of papers from ResearchGate  Times Higher Ed

In Comic-Con Dispute, Appeals Court Wants to Hear More About Judge's Gag Order  Hollywood Reporter

Authenticity more than any other quality was flagged as a key to success by 22 litigators  National Law Journal

U.S. Government, Hollywood Studios Weigh in on Dispute Exploring Reach of U.S. Copyright Law  Hollywood Reporter

Hyperlinking to Sources Can Help Defeat Defamation Claims–Adelson v. Harris  Eric Goldman

***PRIVACY

How digital devices challenge the nature of ownership and threaten property rights in the digital age  Economist

Despite massive hack, Equifax wins IRS contract for fraud-detection  The Verge

***RELIGION

An AI god will emerge by 2042 and write its own bible. Will you worship it?  Venture Beat

Key facts about government-favored religion around the world Pew Research Center

Sessions outlines broad exemptions for religious freedom  Politico

Princeton Student Group Excises 'Evangelical From Name Due to Negative Perceptions  Washington Free Beacon

The Satanic Temple Wins Appeal in Missouri Abortion Case  Patheos

Christian radio host Delilah trusting God as she loses her second child to a suicide  Christianity Today

Religion on the College Campus  First Things

***MUSIC

This music production tool is the reason why all new music sounds the same  Quartz

Language of Hip Hop  The Pudding

***FILM

Honest Trailers creator suspended over accusations of sexual harassment and assault  AV Club

Men, women and films: How pronounced is the gender divide on the silver screen?  1843 Magazine

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

USC medical school dean out amid revelations of sexual harassment claim, $135,000 settlement with researcher  LA Times

Some colleges opt to outsource Title IX investigations, hearings  Inside Higher Ed

***HEALTH

With The Swab Of A Cheek, This Company Knows When You're Likely To Die  Forbes

Is there a doctor in my pocket? we are on the verge of a transformation in health care that will render visiting the doctor a thing of the past  1843 Magazine

Human Brain Has A Direct Link To The Immune System After All  NPR

***PSYCHOLOGY

Children have got much better at a famous psychological test  Economist

My Depression Is Like Having A Bad Dog  BuzzFeed News

***NEUROSCIENCE

How Stress Can Change Your Brain: An Animated Introduction  Open Culture

Understanding the Influential MindScientific American  Scientific American

***ETHICS

Is It Ethical to Visit a Country With Human Rights Violations?  CN Traveler

Ethics of Internet research trigger scrutiny: Concern over the use of public data spurs guideline update  Nature

***PHILOSOPHY

How philosophy can solve your midlife crisis  Phys.org

***PRODUCTIVITY

Productive on six hours of sleep? You’re deluding yourself, expert says  Chicago Tribune

***HISTORY

Stalin’s famine, a war on Ukraine  Economist

***POLITICS

The Partisan Divide on Political Values Grows Even Wider  People

America's Political Divide Intensified During Trump's First Year As President  The Atlantic

***RESEARCH

The Big Bang Theory recap: 'The Retraction Reaction  Entertainment Weekly

What separates a predatory publisher from a legitimate science publisher?  PLOS

Research papers are becoming less readable  Chemistry World

The scientist who spots fake videos: “I’ve seen the technology get good enough that I’m now very concerned”   Nature

Publishers seek removal of millions of papers from ResearchGate  Times Higher Ed

The benefits and drawbacks of letting reviewers identify themselves to the authors of the paper under review  PLOS

***HIGHER ED

How Technology Is Transforming the Way We Teach and Learn  Singularity Hub

Hate fliers have appeared on hundreds of campuses, largely due to the efforts of groups looking to make recruiting inroads  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Tennessee congressmen support end of DACA after Christian colleges ask President Trump to keep it   The Stampede (Milligan College student newspaper)

Nondenominational Christian University Closing  Inside Higher Ed

How to prepare students for the rigors of higher education: The 2017-2018 Bilingual Christian College Guide  Christianity Today

Puerto Rico's plight has Olivet Nazarene University student worried  Daily Journal

***TEACHING

Instructors, Did You Ever Cheat When You Were a Student?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Professors are the new therapists  Slate

***STUDENT LIFE

5 Tips for Feeling Organized in College  Study Breaks

Students Are Demanding More Help With Mental Health And Say Universities Aren’t Keeping Up  BuzzFeed News

Ex-student sues Montana State University alleging Disabilities Act violations  Bozeman Daily Chronicle

What everyone gets wrong about 'millennial snowflakes'  BBC

Video shows white California Baptist student throwing beer on black men for kneeling during national anthem  The Tab

***STUDENT MEDIA

Student government and college paper in Pennsylvania clash over publishing budget  SPLC

Young Sheldon sends student newspaper editor into an existential death spiral AV Club

To Take a Step Without Feet

This is Love: to fly toward a secret sky,
To cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First, to let go of life.
In the end, to take a step without feet;
to regard this world as invisible,
and to disregard what appears to the self.

Heart, I said, what a gift it has been
to enter this circle of lovers,
to see beyond seeing itself,
to reach and feel within the breast.

My soul, where does this breathing arise?
How does this beating heart exist?
Bird of the soul, speak in your own words,
and I will understand.

The heart replied: I was in the workplace
the day this house of water and clay was fired.
I was already fleeing that created house,
even as it was being created.
When I could no longer resist, I was dragged down,
and my features were molded from a handful of earth.

Rumi

Policing people’s grammar online is never really about grammar

One of the many unexpected side effects of the internet is that it’s shown us just how many people appear to lose the capacity for emotional self-regulation when confronted with a misused semicolon. Scroll through the comments section of any publication or simply sign on to Twitter, and you’ll find plenty of examples of people who treat typos and grammatical errors not just as ordinary mistakes, but as a kind of moral offense.

When a grammar stickler obsesses over the proper placement of an apostrophe in a Facebook status or a blog post, they’re not engaging with the actual content. How many times have we seen an online commenter whose only remark on a post about the author’s struggles with body image is “It’s their not there,” or a Twitter acquaintance who proudly screenshots a typo in a New York Times article on science education? The instinct to publicly criticize and police linguistic errors is also a way to avoid wading into the muck of other people’s thoughts and feelings, and redirect the conversation back toward oneself.

Because young or poor or immigrant populations are often among those who may not conform to traditional English grammar and spelling and punctuation usage, focusing on linguistic deviations can reinforce the barriers of privilege.

Sarah Todd writing in Quartz

articles of interest - Oct 2

***BIG DATA & STATISTICS

The Coming Software Apocalypse  (check the comments section)  The Atlantic

Cloud platforms are offering machine learning users alternatives to open source tools: the advantages and cautions   Search Business Analytics

Microsoft launches new Machine Learning tools for developers all related to the Azure Machine  Tech Crunch

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Ready Or Not, Twitter Is Doubling A Tweet's Character Limit To 280  NPR

Twitter Wipes Hundreds of Russian Operative Accounts  Geek

Russian-Linked Election Ads Highlight Scope Of Facebook's Power  NPR

Does Even Mark Zuckerberg Know What Facebook Is?  New York Mag

Russia Continues To Use Social Media To Influence Public Opinion In The U.S. NPR

Facebook is hiring another 1,000 people to review and remove ads  Recode

***INTERNET

Google turns 19: Here are 19 random facts about the search engine giant  Recode

The ‘Google Trick’ to Get Around Paywalls Is Getting Shut Down  New York Mag

***TECHNOLOGY

Apple says iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 do not contain FM radio chips or antennas, in response to FCC request  9 to 5 Mac

The Coming Software Apocalypse  The Atlantic

The internet isn’t forever. Is there an effective way to preserve great online interactives and news apps?  Harvard's Nieman Lab

***SECURITY

The US remains an easy mark for drug dealers, terrorists and others who prize anonymity when registering aircraft or getting licensed to fly  Boston Globe

The Equifax Hack Has the Hallmarks of State-Sponsored Pros  Bloomberg

Most Americans think the government could be monitoring their phone calls and emails  Pew Research

***JOURNALISM

As crisis unfolds in Puerto Rico, journalists help connect familiesColumbia Journalism Review

Where we are on getting people to pay for online news  Harvard's Nieman Lab

Tension between Trump and the media? That’s nothing compared to journalism’s worst crisis (opinion)  Washington Post

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Text-only news sites are slowly making a comeback. Here's why.  Poynter

The secret cost of pivoting to video  Columbia Journalism Review

The Design of Newspapers: Why The News Industry is Changing  Medium

***FAKE NEWS

Paul Horner, Fake News Purveyor Who Claimed Credit For Trump's Win, Found Dead At 38  NPR

Facebook and Google’s algorithms prioritized fake news in the wake of Las Vegas shooting  Mic

***GRAMMAR

The power of the comma: The punctuation mark most likely to start fights between grammar gurus  The Economist

***WRITING & READING

The World According to Dan Brown  New York Times

Writing Well about Terrible People  Incisive.nu

***LANGUAGE

Johns Hopkins University eliminates Russian Major  Inside Higher Ed

***GENDER  

The state of women in computer science: An investigative report  Tech Republic

Saudi Arabia To End Ban On Women Driving  NPR

Cute Outfits and the Academic Career  Chronicle of Higher Ed

This Is the Job Where Women Make the Most Compared to Men  Fortune

Trump’s White House Froze an Equal pay Rule Women are fighting to Save  Washington Post

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

White American men are a bigger domestic terrorist threat than Muslim foreigners  Vox

Air Force Academy Leader Responds To Racial Slurs On Campus  NPR

Hispanic dropout rate hits new low, college enrollment at new high  Pew Research

***FREE SPEECH

Sessions’ Justice Dept. Will Weigh In on Free-Speech Cases. What Should Campuses Expect?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Berkeley’s Leader Saw Hints That ‘Free Speech Week’ Was a Stunt. Here’s Why She Planned for It Anyway.  Chronicle of Higher ED

***LEGAL ISSUES

Seven legal questions about Trump deleting his tweets  Columbia Journalism Review

Appeals court sides with Texas cheerleaders who sued to display Bible verses at football gamesDallas News

Professor used historical imagery of a strike being put down violently in criticizing Colorado State’s move to lay off employees. University then blocked him from using his university email account.  Inside Higher Ed

Mississippi restaurant sued after Christian waitress is allegedly fired for wearing a skirt to work  Washington Post

***RELIGION

Tenn. church suspect's car had note referencing retaliation for Dylann Roof's Charleston attack  ABC News

500 Years After Martin Luther, Does The Protestant Reformation Still Matter? (opinion)  The Daily Beast

The Justice Department is intervening in a case at Georgia Gwinnett College involving a student’s claim that he was prevented from religious proselytizing on campus.  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Fired by ESPN for a racist headline, he’s finding his second chance as a Catholic priest  Washington Post

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

Evangelicals urge more action from Trump against 'alt-right'  CNN

Roy Moore, Christian theocrat  Vox

A short history of Roy Moore’s controversial interpretations of the Bible  Washington Post

***ART & DESIGN

An SNL skit for designers  YouTube

Ethics For Design

Online Design: Nested Symbols & Auto-Updating Styleguides

Naked Mona Lisa By Da Vinci, Discovered In France, Is Rocking The Art World Forbes

A Five Minutes Guide to Better Typography  Pierrick Calvez

***MUSIC   

3 myths about streaming... and 3 truths about the music industry today Music Business Worldwide

Streaming has pushed Latin music into the mainstream  The Economist

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

The Meteoric rise of a new Way of Watching Media in America Changes how we Monetize its Consumption   Broadcasting & Cable

5 Branded Videos That Reached Over 100,000 Likes  Video Strategist

***HEALTH

The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life: the new sleep science  The Guardian  

Cancer Warnings on Coffee May Be Coming to California  Food & Wine

Pain Cream Invented, But Untested  NPR

Nobel Prize In Medicine Is Awarded To 3 Americans  NPR

***SCIENCE

Hip-hop star creates GoFundMe page to prove to him that the world is, in fact, curved  Gizmodo

Why We Find And Expose Bad Science  Medium

Wikipedia shapes language in science papers  Nature

***PSYCHOLOGY

The Cause Of Your Worst Mistakes? A Psychological Gremlin You've Never Heard Of  Forbes

The Sorrow and the Shame of the Accidental Killer: How do you live after unintentionally causing a death?  The New Yorker

Psychology beats business training when it comes to entrepreneurship  The Economist

***PHILOSOPHY

Yes, your kid will do something with that philosophy degree after all  Washington Post

***BUSINESS

Huge volumes of data make real-time insurance a possibility  The Economist

***POLITICS

How Every NFL Team’s Fans Lean Politically  FiveThirtyEight

***HISTORY

Tom Cruise's 'American Made' just latest case of film recasting history  Union-Tribune

***ETHICS

Scientists gave kids real guns for an experiment. Now ethicists are weighing in Mic

Ethical investment is booming. But what is it?  The Economist

***RESEARCH

An Ivy League Prof Tries To Do Damage Control For His Bogus Food Science  BuzzFeed News

As research and editorial processes become increasingly open, scientists and editors need to be proactive but also alert to risks  Nature

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Social proof is a much more effective persuasion technique than purely evidence-based proof    Becoming (my blog)

This gene explains why some people crave adventure more than others  Mashable

***HIGHER ED

154 incidents of hate speech and violence at more than 120 campuses nationwide  BuzzFeed News

How Artificial Intelligence Is Disrupting the Education Industry  Huffington Post

White nationalist fliers removed from University of Tennessee campus  Knox News

The Rural Higher-Education Crisis: When it comes to college enrollment, students in Middle America—many of them white—face an uphill battle against economic and cultural deterrents.  The Atlantic

For-profit University of Phoenix Phasing Out 20 Campuses  Phoenix NewTimes

Assessment Competitors LiveText and Taskstream Merge  Inside Higher Ed

DeVos assailed by protesters at college campuses in Boston, Washington  Washington Post

How Schools Got into the Job-Prep Business  Jstor

Colorado Christian University orders student athletes to stand for national anthem  Denver Post

At Christian Colleges, Theology Can Complicate Sexual-Assault Prevention  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Christian college Won’t Play Opponents Who Kneel During National Anthem  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***HUMANITIES /STEM

Amid Professors’ ‘Doom-and-Gloom Talk,’ Humanities Ph.D. Applications Drop   Chronicle of Higher Ed

***TEACHING

Using Digital Archives to Teach Data Set Creation and Visualization Design Chronicle of Higher Ed

AAU reports on efforts to improve science teaching at research universities  Inside Higher Ed

***STUDENT LIFE

Colleges Recruit a New Kind of Athlete: Video Gamers  Fortune

Study found that 17 percent of high school kids surveyed knew somebody living in an unstable housing situation, usually couch surfing  Mercury News

Assortative mating: People tend to marry spouses with similar levels of education  The Economist

The Keg in the Frat House  New York Times

Where Students Get Valued Advice on What to Study in College  Gallup

80 Evergreen State College Students Are Penalized for Protests  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

DeVos Should Want to Educate Men About Rape  New York Times

An Overview of Congress’ Pending Legislation on Sex Trafficking  Technology & Marketing Law Blog

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Why Ph.D.s in the natural sciences and engineering leave academe  Inside Higher Ed

Sociology professor arrested for assaulting student  The Tab

Research suggests students are biased against female lecturers  The Economist

One-third of Ph.D.s lose interest in academic careers, but not for lack of jobs  Cornell

CUNY Lecturer Charged With Running Fake Health Certificate Program  New York Times

Former Montana State professor sues for wrongful termination  Bozeman Daily Chronicle

***CRIME ON CAMPUS

USC faculty member detained by police after reporting an active shooter on campus. There wasn’t one  Washington Post

Social Proof

We constantly compare our actions and beliefs to those of our peers, and then alter them to fit in. This means that if our social group believes something, we are more likely to follow the herd.

This effect of social influence on behaviour was nicely demonstrated back in 1961 by the street corner experiment. The experiment was simple (and fun) enough for you to replicate. Just pick a busy street corner and stare at the sky for 60 seconds.

Most likely very few folks will stop and check what you are looking at – in this situation Milgram found that about 4% of the passersby joined in. Now get some friends to join you with your lofty observations. As the group grows, more and more strangers will stop and stare aloft. By the time the group has grown to 15 sky gazers, about 40% of the by-passers will have stopped and craned their necks along with you. You have almost certainly seen the same effect in action at markets where you find yourself drawn to the stand with the crowd around it.

The principle applies just as powerfully to ideas. If more people believe a piece of information, then we are more likely to accept it as true. And so if, via our social group, we are overly exposed to a particular idea then it becomes embedded in our world view. In short social proof is a much more effective persuasion technique than purely evidence-based proof, which is of course why this sort of proof is so popular in advertising (“80% of mums agree”).

Mark Lorch writing in Business Insider

articles of interest - Sept. 25

 ***SOCIAL MEDIA

 How Baby Boomers Use Social Media  Daily Infographic

Facebook adds human reviewers after 'Jew haters' ad scandal  BBC News

What We Do and Don’t Know About Facebook’s New Political Ad Transparency Initiative  ProPublica

WhatsApp gets blocked behind China's 'Great Firewall,' joining Facebook and Instagram  Mashable

***PRODUCING MEDIA

Digital Tools Available Now to Add Power and Simplify Every Journalist’s Job  Editor and Publisher

10 Photoshop editing skills every photographer should know  Tech Radar

A Deep Data Dive into the Power of Branded Video  Video Strategist

***INTERNET

Google's Inbox and Gmail finally turn addresses and phone numbers into interactive links  Tech Republic

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

Core local TV broadcast advertising dollars could be in for a tough stretch in the next few years, as digital media dollars continue to climb  Media Post

***JOURNALISM

The future of news is humans talking to machines  Nieman Lab

Post-Dispatch demands charges be dropped against reporter covering protest  St. Louis Today

Twitter dustups are a reminder: Journalists, you are what you tweet  Poynter

Turkey’s purge of 'dissent' is destroying press freedom  Huck Mag

The Media Has A Probability Problem  FiveThirtyEight

Journalism Resource Guide on Behavioral Health  The Carter Center   

Out of ‘Spotlight,’ the movie, comes the Spotlight Fellowship  Boston Globe

“Humiliating”: A deeply inaccurate book review has set off much consternation, and soul-searching at the New York Times  Vanity Fair

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Broadcaster opts to hire local reporters over parachute coverage  Columbia Journalism Review

Fort Wayne’s News-Sentinel Is Ending Its Print Edition and Moving to Digital  Ad Week

***FAKE NEWS

That Hilarious Tweet About an Instructor’s Big Mistake? Almost Certainly Fake  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Snopes.com and the Search for Facts in a Post-Fact World  Wired

Knight's new initiative to counter misinformation includes more than $1.3 million for fact-checking projects  Poynter

***BIG DATA & STATISTICS

Microsoft launches new Machine Learning tools for developers all related to the Azure Machine  TechCrunch

It’s important to be able to separate fact from fiction-Here are eight myths about Big Data & Predictive Analytics  Information Week

Flash technology accelerates predictive analytics software  Search Storage

linguistics is not being applied in the single most important arena that needs it: artificial intelligence  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Machine learning Is making video game characters smarter using procedural rendering  Fast Company

Google’s advice on how publishers can take advantage of machine learning  Google

Apple’s ‘Neural Engine’ infuses the iPhone with AI smarts  Wired

The Amazing Ways Coca Cola Uses Artificial Intelligence And Big Data To Drive Success  Forbes

***GRAMMAR

Ben Yagoda applauds the new Chicago Manual of Style's (limited) acceptance of singular they  Chronicle of Higher Ed

A Word, Please: Context is key to some editing rules  LA Times

***WRITING & READING

The Psychological Benefits of Writing Regularly  Medium

Poetry For Kids Who Are 'Just No Good At Rhyming'  NPR

***FREE SPEECH

A chilling study shows how hostile college students are toward free speech (opinion)  Washington Post

Views among college students regarding the First Amendment: Results from a new survey  Brookings

Jury to Decide Whether or Not "Comic-Con" Has Become Generic  Hollywood Reporter

Experts Criticize Survey on student Attitudes on First Amendment and violence as “junk science”  Inside Higher Ed

When to pull the FIRE Alarm: Common types of censorship on campus  The FIRE

Shia LaBeouf Says Calling Bartender "Racist" Was Protected Speech  Hollywood Reporter

‘Substantial cost’: University of California foots major security bill for free speech  Washington Post

A Cop With A Tattoo He Swears Isn’t A “Nazi Tattoo” Says A Lot About Police Free Speech  BuzzFeed

The Limits Of Free Speech In Germany  NPR

Germany’s New Social Media Law Puts a Price on Hate Speech  PBS Media Shift

***LEGAL ISSUES

Defamation Lawsuit Against Donald Trump Gains Support From Law Professors Hollywood Reporter

Federal Judge Rejects Couple’s Argument for Refusing Gay Customers  NBC News

Iowa's Supreme Court Hears Dispute Over $75 Speeding Ticket  NPR

All-Star Concert to End Global Poverty Brings Lawsuit Over Video Footage  Hollywood Reporter

Carter Page, former Trump adviser, suing over Huffington Post, Yahoo News articles  iMediaEthics

Starz Beats 'Power' Copyright Lawsuit  Hollywood Reporter

***RELIGION

America’s Shifting Religious Makeup Could Spell Trouble For Both Parties  FiveThirtyEight

Colin Kaepernick vs. Tim Tebow: Christianity on its knees  The Washington Post

Filipino Megachurch Buys Entire Ghost Town in Connecticut for $1.8 Million  Next Shark

Lawsuit claims a North Texas medical group tried to force staff to be ‘more godly’  Dallas News

More Than Big Hair and Money: Jim, Tammy Faye and the Media “Holy Wars” of the 80s  Religious Dispatches

20% of Americans Are on the Threshold of Religion  Christianity Today

James Faulkner, Jim Caviezel, Olivier Martinez to Star in ‘Paul, Apostle of Christ’  Variety

***RELIGION: PREACHERS IN THE NEWS

Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress says kneeling NFL players should thank God they're not being shot in the head  Dallas News

Benny Hinn Is My Uncle, but Prosperity Preaching Isn’t for Me  Christianity Today

Erica Lea to Become First Openly LGBTQ Lead Pastor of Mennonite Church USA  Sojourners

Reverend David Mainse 1936-2017  Context

LA pastor detained by ICE since July released from custody  Daily News

*** RELIGION: MUSIC

Remembering the Influential Life of Rich Mullins  ChristianHeadlines

American Idol winner performs the national anthem with a Bible verse written on her hand  New York Daily News

Christian singer Natalie Grant undergoing thyroid surgery  Daily Herald

***TENNESSEE CHURCH SHOOTER

Masked gunman rampages through Nashville church; usher uses personal weapon to subdue shooter  Washington Post 

Suicide threat and domestic disputes: Antioch church shooting suspect had history with police  The Tennessean

***ART & DESIGN

When AI Design Websites  Wired

***MUSIC

Bob Dylan's New Bootleg Series Will Spotlight Gospel Period  Rolling Stone

Hear the Pieces Mozart Composed When He Was Only Five Years Old  Open Culture

Taylor Swift Sued Over "Shake It Off" Lyrics  Hollywood Reporter

***FILM

Martin Scorsese to Teach His First Online Course on Filmmaking  Open Culture

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

Is There A 'Better Way' To Handle Campus Sexual Assault?  NPR

Ruling in high-profile sexual harassment case suggests that foreign students in online courses have no recourse under Title IX  Inside Higher Ed

Colleges Must not Turn back the Clock on Efforts to Combat Sexual Assault (opinion)  Washington Post

What You Need to Know About the New Guidance on Title IX  Chronicle of Higher Ed

What Does the End of Obama’s Title IX Guidance Mean for Colleges?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***CAMPUS SAFETY

After fatal shooting of a student, experts question why Georgia Tech doesn’t arm its officers with stun guns  Inside Higher Ed

The Campus Police Officer Who Shot And Killed A Student Was "Still Learning" According To His Supervisor   BuzzFeed

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Do We Still Value the Dissertation?  The Chronicle of Higher Education  Chronicle of Higher Ed

White, male faculty earn higher salaries than women, minorities at public universities  Journalists Resources

Article on the supposed benefits of Western colonialism has prompted calls for retraction  Inside Higher Ed

***BUSINESS

The Most Important Rule for Startup Success  Jstor

***HEALTH

Brain stimulation partly awakens patient after 15 years in vegetative state  Stat News

Boston scientists test ‘chatbot’ that offers spiritual, emotional guidance to terminally ill  Washington Times

***SCIENCE

Majority of Americans rely on general outlets for science news but more say specialty sources get the facts right about science  Journalism.org

Key takeaways on Americans’ science news habits  Pew Research Center

All people with blue eyes have a common ancestor  Business Insider

Academic Myth Busters Part Two: Four scientific myths that your teachers passed off as true  Study Breaks

California Finally Has an Official State Dinosaur  Atlas Obscura

***PHILOSOPHY

On Retraction in Philosophy  Digressions & Impressions  

Descartes Is Not Our Father: History tells us he invented modern philosophy. That history is wrong.  New York Times

Intuition: Epistemology   Wireless Philosophy

***SOCIAL ISSUES

Liberals fault the economy for the drop in marriage among the less educated, while conservatives blame changing values. Both may be onto something.  New York Times

This Stanford Professor Has a Theory on Why 2017 Is Filled With Jerks  New York Magazine

***RESEARCH

British Press Watchdog Says Climate Change Article Was Faulty  New York Times

Finding typos in a paper post-publication  Academia Obscura

Do We Need A Self-Citation Index?  The Scholarly Kitchen

Is predatory scientific publishing “becoming an organized industry”?  Physics Today

A Call for Honesty in Christian Scholarship  Patheos

***HIGHER ED

The Education Department Will Allow Two Large For-Profit Colleges To Become Nonprofits  BuzzFeed

Michelle Jones’s story reveals entrenched racism, sexism, and classism among Harvard elites (opinion)  Vox

Student Protestors And Their Faculty Allies At The Evergreen State College Win A Battle But Lose The War  Huffington Post

5 Wheaton College football players face felony charges in hazing incident  Chicago Tribune

Lawyers -- Email of former Baylor president David Garland raises red flags  ESPN  

***TEACHING

Survey: Blended Learning on the Rise  Campus Technology

Teaching Online Takes More Time Than in Person  Inside Higher Ed

Do Laptops Help Learning? A Look At The Only Statewide School Laptop Program  NPR

***STUDENT MEDIA

University of Louisville pulls funding from student newspaper  Courier-Journal

University of Mississippi Cartoonist harassed by White Supremacists  Cartoonist Rights

***STUDENT LIFE

Study: teens increasingly put off traditional markers of adulthood  Washington Post

Resources to Take Advantage of Your Senior Year  Study Breaks

Students Have new Ways of Measuring Degrees of Success  Washington Post

UW student creates controversial clothing line  NBC-15

***JOBS & INTERNSHIPS

BuzzFeed Emerging Writers Fellowship 2018  BuzzFeed

Dow Jones News Fund arranges summer internships

 

articles of interest - Sept 18

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

61% of young adults in U.S. watch mainly streaming TV  Pew Research Center

The magazine industry finds itself fighting on unfamiliar terrain, best suited to their rivals  Talking New Media

***JOURNALISM

How to cover DACA as a student journalist: advice from professionals  Student Press Law Center

Journalist from Mexico denied entry to U.S. for D.C. press event  CBS News

Report for America aims to get 1,000 journalists in local newsrooms in next 5 years  Poynter

How the Birmingham Mail Separated Print from Digital to Save the Newspaper  PBS Media Shift

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

No Apology, No Explanation: Fox News And The Seth Rich Story  NPR

BuzzFeed News embraces video, skips the ‘pivot’  Columbia Journalism Review

***FAKE NEWS

WSJ, Getty unpublish fake photographs from phony conflict reporter  imediaethics

***TECHNOLOGY

Apple’s FaceID Could Be a Powerful Tool for Mass Spying (opinion)  Wired

Apple's Facial Recognition Software Has Privacy Advocates Worried  NPR

iPhone X price, features widen gap between haves and have-nots  CNET

What It Might Take To Stop The Data Breaches  NPR

A long-range, frugal new chip could be just what a smart city needs  Economist

***TECHNOLOGY: FACIAL RECOGNITION

Ever better and cheaper, face-recognition technology is spreading  Economist

Advances in AI are used to spot signs of sexuality  Economist 

Researchers produce images of people’s faces from their genomes  Economist

***BIG DATA & STATISTICS

The Amazing Ways Coca Cola Uses Artificial Intelligence And Big Data To Drive Success  Forbes

How technology is changing the culture of the intelligence community  Federal News Radio

 ***SOCIAL MEDIA

Dude is pumped to discover Snapchat's ridiculous new feature  Mashable

Confessions of an Instagram influencer: Brands just want big numbers  Digiday

***PRODUCING MEDIA

Phones Are Changing How People Shoot and Watch Video  Wired

Tell a Story with your Data with StorylineJS  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***INTERNET

Equifax hired a music major as chief security officer  Mediaite

***PERSONAL GROWTH

The “No one to blame but themselves” rule  Becoming (my blog)

6 Reasons Good People Turn Into Monsters  Cracked

***HUMANITIES /STEM

Science tries to make sense of humanities: This is your brain on art  Washington Post

***GRAMMAR

The meaning of Entitlement  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***WRITING & READING

How Reading Rewires Your Brain for More Intelligence and Empathy  Big Think  

***LANGUAGE

Research Shows Spanish Speakers Take Longer To Learn English. Why?  NPR

Merriam-Webster adds 'alt-right' and 'sriracha' and 250 more words to its dictionary  LA Times

***GENDER  

Women dominate journalism schools, but newsrooms are still a different story Poynter

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

What ESPN Employees Are Saying About The Jemele Hill Situation On Their Private Message Board  DeadSpin

How the U.S. Hispanic population is changing  Pew Research

4 Books That Will Help You Understand Race in Modern America  Study Breaks

***FREE SPEECH

Arguments over free speech on campus are not left v right  Economist

What Lies Ahead in the Campus-Speech Wars? Experts discuss the challenges they see on the horizon — and what colleges can do about them  Chronicle of Higher Ed

The Free Speech-Hate Speech Trade-Off (opinion)  New York Times

What Lies Ahead in the Campus-Speech Wars? Experts discuss the challenges they see on the horizon — and what colleges can do about them  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Some Americans don’t believe Muslims, atheists have First Amendment rights  Religion News Service

Incidents at Harvard and Catholic Universities run counter to narrative about campus speaker controversies  Inside Higher Ed

How First Amendment Battles Are Shaping Up in the Social Media Age  Hollywood Reporter

***LEGAL ISSUES

Website Inaccessible to Visually Impaired Violated the Americans with Disabilities Act  Lexology

Facebook Wins Appeal Over Allegedly Discriminatory Content Removal–Sikhs for Justice v. Facebook  Technology and Marketing Law Blog

How Spotify's Argument in Copyright Lawsuit Could Upend the Music Industry's Newfound Recovery  Billboard

If ESPN Wants to Discipline Jemele Hill, She Might Have Law on Her Side  New York Times

Conan O'Brien to Probe Whether Copyright Office Was Duped by Tom Brady Joke  Hollywood Reporter

Doubling (& Tripling) Down on Trademark Protection For Secret Menu Items–In-N-Out v. Smashburger  Technology & Marketing Law Blog

***RELIGION

A Booming New Jersey Evangelical Church whose fiery founder who embraced the K.K.K.  New York Times

Houston Church Blocks Jewish Lesbian From Volunteering to Help Hurricane Victims  Newsweek

Died: Nabeel Qureshi, Author of ‘Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus’  Christianity Today

'Jesus People' – a movement born from the 'Summer of Love'  LA Times

***ART & DESIGN

Banksy is back with artwork that expertly skewers how institutions treat street art  Mashable

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

Liberalism and the Campus Rape Tribunals  New York Times

The Trump administration’s approach to rape on campus is welcome: Barack Obama’s government put undue pressure on colleges to secure convictions in return for public money  Economist

***SOCIAL ISSUES

As U.S. marriage rate hovers at 50%, education gap in marital status widens Pew Research Center

***HEALTH

What Makes People Like (and Dislike) Their Doctors?  Priceonomics

***HEALTH: CANCER

Science will win the technical battle against cancer. But that is only half the fight  Economist

New types of therapy mean cancer is going to become ever more survivable  Economist

Understanding cancer’s unruly origins helps early diagnosis  Economist

Enrolling the immune system in the fight against cancer  Economist

Today’s anti-cancer tools are ever better wielded  Economist

The developing world needs better cancer strategies  Economist

***BUSINESS

Why American Workers Pay Twice as Much in Taxes as Wealthy Investors  Bloomberg

Millennials mostly watch TV after it’s aired: Older people still watch more live TV, but that’s changing  NPR

***PSYCHOLOGY

The Social Life of Opioids: New studies strengthen ties between loss, pain and drug use  Scientific American

***PHILOSOPHY

Feminism and the Future of Philosophy  New York Times

Philosophy, Descartes and the dance of life  The Guardian

***PRODUCTIVITY

The Silicon Valley avant-garde have turned to LSD in a bid to increase their productivity  1843 Magazine

***RESEARCH

This search engine makes finding public records less painful  Poynter

 “Do You Expect Me to Just Give Away My Data?”  Eos

Creating Incentives to Address the Replication Crisis in Science  Undark

COPE Ethical Guidelinesfor Peer Reviewers  Pub Ethics

Publishing in parallel: when two societies work together  Royal Society

***HIGHER ED

How U.S. News college rankings promote economic inequality on campus  Politico 

The subtle ways colleges discriminate against poor students, explained with a cartoon  Vox

Report Faults U. of Virginia on Response to White-Supremacist Rally  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Christian Universities: Moving Ahead by Standing Still (opinion)  Context

***TEACHING

Atmospheric scientist at Illinois is on leave after refusing to provide lecture slides to student with disabilities  Inside Higher Ed

***STUDENT MEDIA  

Five reasons you should join your college newspaper  Medium

UT Austin journalist assaulted while covering protest  Student Press Law Center

***STUDENT LIFE

Georgia Tech Student-Activist Shot Dead by Campus Police  Fox 5 Atlanta

Student reporters kicked out of “open” student government meeting  Student Press Law Center

Students lose roughly four in 10 of the credits they accumulate before transferring: The transfer route in California is a "complex and costly maze”  Inside Higher Ed

How Successful Valedictorians Are After High School  Money Magazine

As Millennials Get Older, Many Are Buying SUVs To Drive To Their Suburban Homes  NPR

Why Millennials should be really worried about the Equifax breach  Money Magazine

DACA student targeted by classmate says university has done nothing to help  CBS News

Yale University will discontinue the terms “freshman” and “upperclassman” in its official documents  Inside Higher Ed

How to choose a student credit card  USA Today

How to Decide If Moving Off Campus Is Right for You  Study Breaks

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Evergreen professor at center of protests resigns; college will pay $500,000  The Seattle Times

Republicans view professors more ‘coldly’ than Democrats do  Pew Research Center

How a Group of Instructors Is Standing Up to the Right-Wing Outrage Machine  Chronicle of Higher Ed

College puts adjunct on leave over tweet about teaching 'future dead cops'  Inside Higher Ed

 

Confirmation Bias

You probably like to believe that your beliefs are the result of years of experience and objective analysis of the information you have available. The reality is that all of us are susceptible to a tricky problem known as a confirmation bias. While we like to imagine that our beliefs are rational, logical, and objective, the fact is that our ideas are often based on paying attention to the information that upholds our ideas and ignoring the information that challenges our existing beliefs.

A confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias that involves favoring information that confirms previously existing beliefs or biases. For example, imagine that a person holds a belief that left-handed people are more creative than right-handed people. Whenever this person encounters a person that is both left-handed and creative, they place greater importance on this "evidence" supporting their already existing belief. This individual might even seek "proof" that further backs up this belief while discounting examples that do not support this idea.

Confirmation biases impact how people gather information, but they also influence how people interpret and recall information. For example, people who support or oppose a particular issue will not only seek information that supports their beliefs, they will also interpret news stories in a way that upholds their existing ideas and remember things in a way that also reinforces these attitudes.

A number of experiments conducted during the 1960s demonstrated that people have a tendency to seek information that confirms their existing beliefs. Unfortunately, this type of bias can prevent us from looking at situations objectively, can influence the decisions we make, and can lead to poor or faulty choices.

Kendra Cherry writing in VeryWell.com

Articles of Interest - Sept 11

***TECHNOLOGY

New AI can work out whether you're gay or straight from a photograph The Guardian

What machines can tell from your face  The Economist

Strong password strategy to protect against hackers  The Washington Post

The NFL is putting data-collecting chips in all its footballs  Fast Company

Identity Theft Feeds on Social Security Numbers Run Amok  Bloomberg

The Password Game   Survey Gizmo

Apple’s iOS 11 Will Make It Even Harder for Cops to Extract Your Data  Wired

***SOCIAL MEDIA

News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2017  Journalism.org

***PRODUCING MEDIA

How Podcasting Became Hollywood's Latest Obsession  VICE

***JOURNALISM

News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2017 Pew Research

What journalists can do better to cover the disability beat  Columbia Journalism Review

Americans’ online news use is closing in on TV news use  Pew Research

Washington Post’s Aggressive Video Journalism is Paying Off in Hurricane Coverage  Editor and Publisher

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

The New York Daily News bought by publisher Tronc for $1  CBS News

Turnaround at San Francisco Chronicle Shows Way for Legacy Newspapers  Editor and Publisher

***FAKE NEWS

5 studies about fact-checking you may have missed last month  Poynter

Trump backers’ alarming reliance on hoax and conspiracy theory websites, in 1 chart  Washington Post

Facebook undermines its own effort to fight fake news  Politico

How We Can Filter Fake News and Make Media More Trustworthy Singular Hub

How Russian & Alt-Right Twitter Accounts Worked Together to Skew the Narrative About Berkeley Arch Digital

A 25-Year-Old CEO Emailed Mark Cuban to Pitch His Anti-Fake News Startup for Investment — and It Worked  TIME

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Why a squeegee used on 9/11 is in the Smithsonian  Becoming (my blog)

***GRAMMAR

Is it elitist to call out Donald Trump’s typos and errors?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Why Can’t I Start a Sentence With a Numeral?  Mother Jones

A Philosopher-Grammarian Gets Something Right  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LANGUAGE

A campaign to stop calling car collisions accidental  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LITERATURE

Rough Translation: How 'Anna Karenina' Saved A Somali Inmate's Life  NPR

Publisher pulls book by Hillary Clinton's pastor, citing plagiarism  CNN

The Forgotten Value of a Literature Course  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***GENDER  

DeVos Pushes New Approach on Title IX Enforcement  Inside Higher Ed

The New Science of Sex and Gender  Scientific American

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

Younger men play video games, but so do a diverse group of other Americans  Pew Research

Study finds that students who deliver microaggressions are also likely to harbor racist attitudes  Inside Higher Ed

Virtual Reality Project Captures Experience Of Crossing The Border  NPR

Key facts about Asian Americans, a diverse and growing population  Pew Research

***FREE SPEECH

Judge to Rule on White Nationalist's Speech at University  New York Times

Discipline against Creston students is 'significant free speech issue,' says Drake Law professor  Des Moines Register

Three Textbooks on Campus Free Speech  Inside Higher Ed

Public Library staffer arrested for defending mans free speech rights is acquitted  The Kansas City Star

Study Looks At How People Think About Free Speech  NPR

***LEGAL ISSUES

PETA, Photographer Reach Settlement In ‘Monkey Selfie’ Case  San Francisco

Amazon's 1-Click Patent Is About To Expire. What's The Big Deal?  NPR

'We Shall Overcome’ Verse Not Under Copyright, Judge Rules  New York Times

Hulk Hogan’s lawyer sets sights on new target: Jezebel  New York Post

Lawsuit Against Trump Starts The Battle To Define 'Emolument'  NPR

What if the majority of a book was copy and pasted from discussions on LinkedIn?  Is it legal?  Agile Scientific

No “Contract By Tweet” for Plaintiff Who Pitches Movie Idea via Social Media  Technology & Marketing Law Blog

***BUSINESS

Americans work harder than any other country’s citizens: study  New York Post

The Surprising Upsides To Getting Angry At Work  Fast Company

***RELIGION

White Christians no longer majority in United States, especially California  Sacramento Bee

White Christians decline in U.S., but still dominate Republican Party  USA Today

Robert E. Lee Relative Who Denounced White Supremacy Resigns As Pastor Of N.C. Church after Bethany United Church of Christ moved to vote on his tenure there  Chicago Tribune

God and the Gridiron Game  Christianity Today

Why religion is not going away and science will not destroy it (opinion)  Aeon

The Private Faith of Hillary Clinton  New Yorker

More Americans now say they’re spiritual but not religious  Pew Research

Christians And DACA  NPR

***FILM

When Hollywood Went To Washington: The History Of Politics In Movies  NPR 

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

An explanation of Title IX and its Sexual Assault Protections

California, New York and other states have embraced Obama’s approach on campus sexual assault -- what happens if Trump reverses course?  Inside Higher Ed

The Bad Science Behind Campus Response to Sexual Assault  The Atlantic

Protecting Due Process in Sexual-Assault Cases on Campus  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Education secretary’s speech on Title IX implied she could end many policies suggested by Obama administration but many policies on campus sexual assault investigations are enshrined in law  Inside Higher Ed

***HEALTH

How Science Is Unlocking the Secrets of Addiction  National Geographic

So Your Kitchen Sponge Is A Bacteria Hotbed. Here's What To Do  NPR

Oxford University scientists gave African babies trial TB vaccine 'that did not work on monkeys'  Telegraph

***SCIENCE

Could disruptive technologies also reform academia?  eef

***PSYCHOLOGY

To put it bluntly, academic psychology’s public reputation seems to be in free fall Psychological Science

***HISTORY

What to Do When Nazis Are Obsessed With Your Field  PS magazine

***RESEARCH

Peer Review in a World of “Alternative Facts”  Scholarly Kitchen

How does one detect scientific fraud – but avoid false accusations?  Journal of Clinical Epidemiology

To improve reproducibility, listen to graduate students and postdocs Naturejobs Blog

These Scientists Got To See Their Competitors’ Research Through Public Records Requests  BuzzFeed

***HIGHER ED

Revoked admissions offer at Rochester raises questions about homeschooling transcripts  Inside Higher Ed

Marchers protest 'Nashville Statement' at Moody Bible Institute  Windy City

***TEACHING

Virtual desktops to give students access to popular professional software tools for the entirety of their academic career  Chronicle of Higher Ed

**STUDENT MEDIA

Snapchat wants to get deeper into news, so it’s adding college newspapers to Discover  Recode

What Title IX reform could mean for student journalists  Student Press Law Center

***STUDENT LIFE

In a survey of more than 50 Universities the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education awarded 85 percent a D or an F for not ensuring students' due-process rights  The FIRE

Faculty turns away student reporters at post-Charlottesville “all are welcome” discussion at  university named after the man who wrote the First Amendment  The Breeze  

For Students Imperiled by Trump’s DACA Rollback, a Scramble for Answers  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Millennials mostly watch TV after it’s aired  Recode

The hardest test of freshman year? Survival  The Washington Post

Reed College course lectures canceled after student protesters interrupt class to protest Eurocentrism  Inside Higher Ed

***ACADEMIC LIFE

Professors Arrested at DACA Protest  The Crimson (Harvard Student newspaper)  The Crimson

articles of interest - Sept. 4, 2017

***JOURNALISM

The Guardian Sets Up a Nonprofit to Support Its Journalism  New York Times

The Newseum Deserves to Die  Politico

Quartz created a bot that can break news — and wants to help other news orgs develop their own  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

After a CNN interviewee erupts in anger, disaster reporting standards come into focus  Washington Post

Court rules that MSU can’t sue ESPN for requesting open records  Student Press Law Center

How a 171-year-old news agency is the hidden mainstay of news on Facebook  The Drum

***FAKE NEWS

Researchers teach AI neural network to write fake reviews, with implications for fake news  Business Insider

When it comes to the academic study of fake news, “bullshit receptivity” is a thing  Nieman Journalism Lab

Why fact-checking can’t stop Trump’s lies  Vox

Fact-Check That Viral Image in Two Clicks  Life Hacker

There’s a long list of old-fashioned parallels to today’s fake news. Here’s one that’s actually helpful  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

Fake news is nothing new: This photo hoax went viral a century ago  Salon

***TECHNOLOGY

 Google-Funded Think Tank Fires Scholar Who Criticized Tech Giant  NPR

'Smart' Campuses Invest in the Internet of Things  Campus Technology

Doubts raised on key points of Nature paper on CRISPR gene editing of human embryos  The Niche

Scientists Can Predict How You Look Using Only Your Anonymous DNA  KPBS

***BIG DATA & STATISTICS

Using recurrent neural networks to create fake yelp reviews-and how to fight it  Business Insider

The first quantum-cryptographic satellite network will be Chinese  Economist

Intel unveils tiny chip to run deep Neural Networks at high speed and low power while retaining accuracy  Alphr

How Walmart is using Machine Learning, AI, IoT and Big Data to boost retail performance  Forbes

Google researcher comes up with new technology to bring neural networks to mobile devices  Infoq

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook Prepares To Launch New Video Streaming Service  NPR

How media companies are creating episodic series for Instagram Stories  Marketing Land

***INTERNET

711 million email addresses ensnared in "largest" spambot  ZDNet

How to Diagnose Pages that Rank in One Geography But Not Another  Moz

***PERSONAL GROWTH

To Have Good Ideas, Remember to Get Bored  Life Hacker 

Proof that I was a worthless piece of Garbage (Jenni Berrett)  Becoming (my blog)

How Your Brain Tricks You Into Thinking Magic Is Real  Life Hacker

***CRITICAL THINKING

Believing widely doubted conspiracy theories satisfies some people’s need to feel special  Research Digest

Adam Ruins Everything goes after itself  College Humor

***LANGUAGE

This is How Canada Talks  The 10 and 3

How to Lose an Accent, According to a Dialect Coach  Life Hacker

***LITERATURE

Tolkien's Plant Passion Moves Botantist To Create Guide To Middle Earth  NPR

***GENDER  

Why Female Students Leave STEM   Inside Higher Ed

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

Teaching White Students Showed Me The Difference Between Power and Privilege  BuzzFeed News

Is Doxxing the Right Way to Fight the “Alt-Right?”  Jstor

***FREE SPEECH

First Amendment Protects Cinema's Right to Show Unicorn Masturbation Scene While Serving Alcohol, Says Judge  Reason  

The Most Shortsighted Attack on Free Speech in Modern U.S. History  The Atlantic

***LEGAL ISSUES

Dr. Phil Video Leads to Novel Copyright Decision Involving Woman Alleging False Imprisonment  Hollywood Reporter

H3H3 Wins Summary Judgment on Fair Use YouTube Lawsuit  Plagiarism Today

Charlotte School of Law bilked $285 million from taxpayers, former faculty member says  Charlotte Observer

Google Researchers Create Algorithm to Remove Image Watermarks  Plagiarism Today

Prediction: It's CNN Not the N.Y. Times Headed to Supreme Court in Defamation Battle  Hollywood Reporter

***ART & DESIGN

DeviantArt and Copyright issues  Plagiarism Today

A Short Documentary on Artist Jeff Koons  Open Culture

***MUSIC

The secret rhythm in Radiohead’s “Videotape”  Vox

***BUSINESS

Market power and competition explain every problem in the US economy, new research argues  Quartz

Silicon Valley employees celebrate their own exploitation  New York Times

***RADIO

Traditional Radio Faces a Grim Future, New Study Says  Variety

Brown University radio station sold to K-LOVE for $5.63 million  Providence Journal

National Association of Broadcasters, Nielsen Respond to Study Predicting Terrestrial Radio’s Downfall  Variety

***JOBS & INTERNSHIPS

What to Say When an Interviewer Wants You to Talk About Yourself  Life Hacker

***HEALTH

Why Giving Birth Is Safer In Britain Than In The US  Digg

Utah hospital nurse roughed up and arrested for doing her job  Washington Post

Microscopic lasers may stop tumours spreading around the body: How to blow cancer cells up from the inside  Economist

***SCIENCE

Physicists Want to Rebuild Quantum Theory From Scratch  Wired

***PSYCHOLOGY

Psychology offers a simple rule to consider before you tell someone your woes  Quartz

Could a Videogame Strengthen Your Aging Brain?  Wired

***PHILOSOPHY

Wittgenstein on Whether Speech Is Violence  Jstor

***HIGHER ED

The Myth of American Universities as Inequality-Fighters  The Atlantic

Most Colleges Will Change Overtime Policies Despite Judge’s Blocking of New Rule  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Almost 40 percent of Texas's flagship state university's undergraduates are from counties declared disaster areas  Washington Post  

***HUMANITIES /STEM

Diverging Trends in Completions of Advanced Humanities Degrees  American Academy of Arts and Sciences

***TEACHING

Are Students Doing Their Own Work in Online Classes?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

As Coding Boot Camps Close, the Field Faces a Reality Check  New York Times

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT

A College Seminar Tells Students to Masturbate to Prevent Sexual Assault  Cosmopolitan

***ACADEMIC LIFE

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

Professor Fired for Blaming Harvey on Texas Voting GOP  NBC News

Fill Out This Bingo Card During Your First Faculty Meeting of the Year  Chronicle of Higher Ed

If professors can be fired for comments that show hostility toward certain groups, then colleges and universities should stop claiming that they respect academic freedom (opinion)  Washington Post

Why I’m Leaving the Political Science Association (opinion)  Minding the Campus

Faculty Members Organize to Fight ‘Fascist’ Interlopers on Campuses  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***STUDENT MEDIA

Let’s Talk about cocks (opinion)   Journo Terrorist

***STUDENT LIFE

The Biggest Misconception About Today’s College Students  New York Times

Professors at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton say their advice to incoming freshmen can be 'distilled to 3 words'  Business Insider

Why You Should Read That Whole Text Book Right Now  Wired

College Students evacuated after being stranded by Hurricane Harvey  Washington Post

A new Stanford study suggests first-year students can judge who will help them have fun and who can be a shoulder to cry on  Inside Higher Ed 

A Few Telling Freshman Trends  New York Times

***RELIGION

Spicer gets his audience with the pope  Politico

The Joel Osteen Fiasco Says A Lot About American Christianity (opinion)  BuzzFeed News

The Cheap Prosperity Gospel of Trump and Osteen (opinion) associate professor of religious studies)  New York Times

Evangelicals to Trump: Don’t Deport Our Next Generation of Church Leaders   Christianity Today

***RELIGION: THE NASHVILLE STATEMENT

More than 150 evangelical religious leaders sign 'Christian manifesto' on human sexuality  USA Today

Nashville's mayor is denouncing a statement against same-sex marriage that evangelical leaders named after the city  Huron Daily Tribune

I signed the Nashville Statement. It’s an expression of love for same-sex attracted people (opinion)  Washington Post

The ugly ingratitude of the 'Nashville Statement' (opinion)  Patheos

Why even conservative evangelicals are unhappy with the anti-LGBT Nashville Statement  Washington Post

Jenni Berrett: Proof that I was a worthless piece of Garbage

I spend days at a time in bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking of all the things I could be doing but can’t because I know I would do them imperfectly. I lose countless hours to inner monologues filled with self-hatred and all-or-nothing thinking. I don’t read anything, instead preferring to slowly crush myself with the existential weight of knowing that I will never be able to Read All The Things.

For a very long time, I thought that I did this because I was lazy. I figured that if I just worked a little harder, tried a little more, then I would be able to accomplish the things I set out to do. Failing to do them was a failure of my character. It was because I was a bad person, or at least bad at being a person.

I told myself that I had to get my act together; I had to do all of these things so that I could prove I wasn’t the worthless piece of garbage I thought I was. When I inevitably cracked under that pressure, I took it as proof that I was a worthless piece of garbage.

If all of this sounds repetitive, that’s because it is. It’s a vicious, repetitive, monotonous cycle. It moves at breakneck speed, but also not at all. Experiencing it is the most damning case against perfectionism I have ever come across. Expecting perfection only leaves you with two options: do everything right on the very first try, or don’t even bother. Which is actually only one option, since 9 times out of 10, human beings don't do things right on the first try.

Jenni Berrett writing in Ravishly

Addicted to Love

Breaking up is hard to do. Literally. A brain study out of Rutgers shows getting over romantic rejection is similar to kicking an addiction. One of the study authors says, "When you've been rejected in love, you have lost life's greatest prize, which is a mating partner." Researchers examined the brains of more than dozen volunteers who had each recently been dumped but still loved the person who had rejected them. It turned out reminders of the beloved activated brain regions in the lover associated with addiction to cocaine and cigarettes. These same areas affect emotional control, rewards, addiction cravings, a sense of attachment, pain and distress. This brain system becomes activated in an attempt to win the person's affections again, according to the researchers. Details are in the July 2010 issue of the Journal of Neurophysiology.

Perhaps the lesson here is that it's important to become addicted to someone who is good for you.

Stephen Goforth

Death bed request

Old Joe was dying. Realizing that time was running out, he wanted to make everything right. But something bothered him. He was at odds with Bill, formally one of his best friends. Joe had often argued with him over the most trivial matters, and in recent years they hadn’t spoken at all. Wanting to resolve the problem, he sent for Bill, who graciously consented to visit him. When Bill arrived, Joe told him that he was afraid to go into eternity with bad feelings between them, and he wanted to make things right. When he reached out for Bill’s hand and said, “I forgive you; will you forgive me?” Everything seemed fine. Just as Bill was leaving, however, Joe shouted after him, “But remember, if I get better, this doesn’t count!”

articles of interest - August 28

***SOCIAL MEDIA

Are Facebook friends legally your friends? Here’s what a Florida judge had to say  Fast Company

Here's How To Find Out Who Left Your Facebook Requests Hanging  BuzzFeed News

This app makes it physically impossible for you to ignore texts  Mashable

Facebook, Twitter and Apple get into the television business  Economist

The New FOMO  Wired

Snapchat is still bigger than Instagram for younger U.S. millennials  Recode

Make Your Facebook Feed More Attractive (If Not Less Irritating)  Life Hacker

Snapchat's Snap Maps becomes major resource after Houston flooding  Mashable

The Next Generation of Emoji Will Be Based on Your Facial Expressions  MIT Tech Review

***PRODUCING MEDIA

How live video is evolving, in 4 charts  Digiday

Immersive Media And The Art of Storytelling  Forbes

LIFE VR’s Mia Tramz on the Eclipse, Henry Luce, and When to Make Your Own VR App  Medium

Facebook, Apple, and Google Will Hasten the Next Era of TV  Miami Herald

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA

Bloomberg expands into consulting in search for new media model  Financial Times

How Mic.com exploited social justice for clicks, and then abandoned a staff that believed in it  the Outline

***JOURNALISM

A Mexican reporter was in a program to protect journalists. He was still killed: The ninth journalist killed in Mexico so far this year  LA Times

Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli buys domain names associated with journalists  Business Insider

Boston authorities should not have blocked media from covering protest  Columbia Journalism Review

As this Houston TV station grapples with flooding, everyone’s a reporter  Poynter

TV station faces backlash after chat with Charlottesville rally attendee ‘White Mike’  Columbia Journalism Review

***FAKE NEWS

The Fake-News Fallacy  The New Yorker

How I Became Fake News  Politico

Fake Polls Are A Real Problem  FiveThirtyEight

Into the Uncanny Valley of Fake News  Medium

Who Falls for Fake News? The Roles of Analytic Thinking, Motivated Reasoning, Political Ideology, and Bullshit Receptivity  SSRN

Facebook will block publishers from advertising if they share fake news  Recode

How to Recognize Russian Propaganda on Social Media Life Hacker

Fake News And Scams Are Going Around About The Deadly Storm In Texas   BuzzFeed News

No, the shark picture isn’t real: A running list of Harvey’s viral hoaxes  Washington Post

***PERSONAL GROWTH

Dealing with the red marks on your paper  Becoming (my blog)

***GRAMMAR

The New Yorker’s Comma Madness  The Baffler

Trump has deployed more than 13,000 exclamation points since joining Twitter  The Week

***WRITING & READING

Bogus Advice for Op-Ed Authors  Chronicle of Higher Ed

5 Writing Opportunities You Can Find on Any College Campus  Study Breaks

 
The US and China publish almost half the world’s books  Quartz

***LANGUAGE

FBI Profiler Says Linguistic Work Was Pivotal In Capture Of Unabomber  NPR

***LITERATURE

A Newly Discovered Mark Twain Story Is Coming And It's So Beautiful BuzzFeed

To E or Not to E - USC Didn't in Spelling Shakespeare's Name  Associated Press

3 Fascinating Books for Word Nerds  Study Breaks

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

Study of top public universities finds limited faculty diversity, yet signs of progress -- except for African-Americans in STEM  Inside Higher Ed

1 in 10 say it's acceptable to hold neo-Nazi views  ABC News

Civil Rights Activist Argues To Keep Confederate Monuments  NPR

I am not your brown reporter (opinion)  Philly.com

Federal Judge Finds Racism Behind Arizona Law Banning Ethnic Studies  NPR

Essay by law professors Rails against modern Culture, Sparks Outrage  Inside Higher Ed

Clergy March on Washington Calling for Racial Justice  Sojourners

***FREE SPEECH

Justice Department Pulls Back on Search Warrant for Visitors to Trump-Protest Site  NBC News

ACLU Leader On Defending Hate Group  NPR

***LEGAL ISSUES

Could You Register The Swastika As A Trademark?  Forbes

John Oliver's legal hell is the stuff of Hulk Hogan-fueled nightmares  Mashable

TV Station Falls For Pranksters; Sues Them For Fraud  Techdirt

‘Reaction’ Video Protected By Fair Use  Technology and Marketing Law

Can an AI Own a Copyright?  The Illusion of More

Homeowners Can’t Sue Over Low Zestimates  Technology and Marketing Law Blog

***TECHNOLOGY

Space dust kills satellites like tiny atom bombs  Economist

Augmented Reality: Where are we now, and what does it mean for marketers? Search Engine Land

You don’t own your own face: Profiting from Face Recognition Software  NY Daily News

***BIG DATA & STATISTICS

As AI creates new kinds of work, you might expect humans to be taken out of the loop as algorithms improve-but..  Economist

NGA Mulls Swap Of Satellite Imagery For Big Data Algorithms  Aviation Week

Will AI lead to superhuman performance in perception, creativity & cognitive function? SIRI co-creator video  TED Video

***BUSINESS

The “free” economy comes at a cost  Economist

Watch Out for These Scams in the Wake of Hurricane Harvey  Life Hacker

***RELIGION

More Than 350 Christian Ethicists Release Statement Condemning White Supremacy  Sojourners

Evangelicals Are Bitterly Split Over Advising Trump  The Atlantic

Justice Dept. fights suit over Trump religious liberty order  Politico

President's spiritual adviser: When you oppose Trump, you are 'fighting against the hand of God'  AOL news

Faith Council Members Take A Step Back From Advising Trump  NPR

Christian ministry labeled as a hate group is suing SPLC to ‘right a terrible wrong’  KansasCity.com

Joel Osteen's megachurch claims it's too flooded for Harvey relief. Internet sleuths call BS.  Mashable

U.S. Muslims are religiously observant, but open to multiple interpretations of Islam   Pew Research

A New Book Explains How the Christian Right Has Gotten Selective Denial Down to a Science  Religious Dispatches

***ART & DESIGN

Even the Dumbest Us Weekly Headlines Look Great In New Yorker Font  Jezebel

Google releases millions of bad drawings for you (and your AI) to paw through  TechCrunch

Discover the Paintings, Drawings & Collages of Sylvia Plath: Now on Display at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery  Open Culture

***MUSIC

In China, singing Handel’s “Messiah” is forbidden in public  Economist

Blockchain Technology Is Set to Disrupt Every Industry--and Music Is Next  Inc

***FILM

Lynyrd Skynyrd Movie Is Banned by Judge  Hollywood Reporter

***JOBS & INTERNSHIPS

What to Say When You Don't Have a Good Answer in an Interview  Life Hacker

5 Annoying Things That Happen During the Job Interview Process  Pay Scale

No, millennials aren’t killing stable employment  Washington Post

How to Survive Panel Job Interviews  Life Hacker

***HEALTH

Trump Rule Could Make it Harder for Nursing Home Residents to Sue for Abuse  NPR

F.D.A. Cracks Down on 'Unscrupulous' Stem Cell Clinics  New York Times

***SCIENCE

Science is not self-correcting. Science is broken  Slate

***PSYCHOLOGY

Four Bad Habits of Modern Psychologists  MDPI

Estimating the evidential value of significant results in psychological science PLOS

***NEUROSCIENCE

Brain Mapping Guides Surgeons In Removal Of Musician's Tumor  NPR

***RESEARCH

Scammers impersonate the National Institutes of Health offering Grants  FTC

Former Ohio State doctoral candidate has degree revoked inconsistencies in the variables data she published in a scientific journalthe Lantern (student newspaper at OSU)  The Lantern

***HUMANITIES /STEM

As more humanities Ph.D.s are awarded, job openings are disappearing  Inside Higher Ed

***HIGHER ED

Liability Worries May Impact Study Abroad after $41.5 million verdict  Inside Higher Ed

The Blockchain Revolution and Higher Education  Educause

Why Universities Are Unlikely to Heed Calls for Punishing Students at Rally  Chronicle of Higher Ed

University Convocation Kickoff Address  McSweeney’s

The Quirks of Christian Colleges  StudyBreaks

Christian university suspends theology professor for saying some black activists ‘should be hung’  AZ Central

Baylor University hit with another Title IX lawsuit  Fox7

***LIBERTY UNIVERSITY

Liberty University presents itself as a temple of virtue. But its founding family’s secret Miami hostel is a cesspool of vice  Politico

Anthony Scaramucci to speak at Liberty University convocation in November  Washington Examiner

My Liberty University Diploma and Me (opinion by faculty member at the Univ. of South Florida)  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Liberty University snarks back at students angry over Jerry Falwell Jr.'s Donald Trump support  Washington Examiner

Liberty University pushes back against allegations of not reporting home sale to Trey Falwell  Inside Higher Ed

***TEACHING

They are the last class to be born in the 1900s, the last of the Millennials are here: Time for the Beloit Mind-Set List  Inside Higher Ed

What First Years Might Not Know & What To Do About It  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Learning to Learn: You, Too, Can Rewire Your Brain  New York Times

Reeling Them in Early: Focus above all else on generating student engagement  Chronicle of Higher Ed

What’s a Scientifically-Proven Way to Improve Your Ability to Learn? Get Out and Exercise  Open Culture

***ACADEMIC LIFE

The Tenure Track Is Too Rigid to Help Diversity (opinion)  Bloomberg

***STUDENT LIFE

Millennials more likely to prefer being fired over text  CNBC

Computer-game tournaments go mainstream  Economist

Renewed debate over whether graduate students should publish  Inside Higher Ed

One Trick For Keeping Kids In College: Forgive Tiny Debts That Force Them To Leave  Fast Company

The Road Ahead for Collegiate Esports (podcast)  BlogTalkRadio

Why do so many millennials struggle to take their pills consistently? (sub. req’d.)  Stat News

***STUDENT MEDIA  

5 Reasons Why You Should Write for Your College Newspaper  Study Breaks  

University newspaper in New York crowdfunds to keep its independence  Student Press Law Center

the red marks

A news story I wrote in a graduate class is covered with the professor’s red marks. I show it to first-year students in writing classes and tell them that I could have had one of two reactions: I could have said to myself, "Well, I can't do this." I could have thrown up my hands, given up, and moved on to something else. The assumption being that either I could write well or I couldn't write well.  But those aren't the only options.

There is another way to react: I could have decided to adjust, change my strategy, and learn from the professor's feedback. This second attitude assumes learning is a matter of persistence. This pathway requires students to humble themselves.. revealing weaknesses Asking questions. Struggling is an essential component of learning.

This process is especially difficult to accept if your ego is riding on whether you can perform new tasks effortlessly. Ultimately, we have to see ourselves as someone of value and worth, regardless of our performance. Of course, if God declares you of value, simply because of who you are, who are you to argue?

Stephen Goforth