Study: after 75 years the most fulfilling lives had one thing in common

For over 75 years, Harvard’s Grant and Glueck study has tracked the physical and emotional well-being of two populations: 456 poor men growing up in Boston from 1939 to 2014 (the Grant Study), and 268 male graduates from Harvard’s classes of 1939-1944 (the Glueck study).

Due to the length of the research period, this has required multiple generations of researchers. Since before WWII, they’ve diligently analyzed blood samples, conducted brain scans (once they became available), and pored over self-reported surveys, as well as actual interactions with these men, to compile the findings.

The conclusion? According to Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one thing surpasses all the rest in terms of importance: “The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period. ”Not how much is in your 401(k). Not how many conferences you spoke at–or keynoted. Not how many blog posts you wrote or how many followers you had or how many tech companies you worked for or how much power you wielded there or how much you vested at each.

No, the biggest predictor of your happiness and fulfillment overall in life is, basically, love.

“It’s not just the number of friends you have, and it’s not whether or not you’re in a committed relationship,” says Waldinger. “It’s the quality of your close relationships that matters.”

Melanie Curtin writing in Fast Company 

fighting the good fight

To be nobody but yourself in a world that's doing its best to make you somebody else, is to fight the hardest battle you are ever going to fight. Never stop fighting. – ee cummings

Articles of Interest - Dec. 3

 ***JOURNALISM

Americans Still Prefer Watching to Reading the News – and Mostly Still Through Television  Pew Research 

The red couch experiments: Early lessons in pop-up fact-checking  Nieman Journalism Lab 

In Yemen, Lavish Meals for Few, Starvation for Many and a Dilemma for Reporters  New York Times  

Journalism and journalism students are experiencing a ‘Trump Bump’ (opinion)  Tampa Bay Times 

Canada’s Supreme Court Ruling likely to have a Chilling Effect on Journalism  Vice 

Pro tips from scholars for journalists (and vice versa)  Journalists Resources 

In defense of documentaries as journalism  Columbia Journalism Review  

Kentucky newspaper wins public records lawsuit, but what will actually be released is uncertain  Muck Rock 

More than two dozen journalists worldwide have been killed by members of organized crime since the start of 2017  New York Times 

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

How recasting the “online producer” job helped the Miami Herald focus on audience and mission  Better News  

Freelancer Rate Database  Contently 

Where the death of local news hits hardest  Axios

Why ‘news for millennials’ media plays never panned out  Digiday 

***FAKE NEWS

Misinformation bots, smarter than we thought  Axios 

The godfather of fake news  BBC News

An Anti-Vaxxer’s New Crusade  Propublica

Facebook Should Enlist Its Users to Clean Up Fake News (opinion)  Bloomberg

***SOCIAL MEDIA  

Instagram 'Close Friends': What It Is and How to Use It  Wired

Twitter has banned misgendering or "deadnaming" transgender people  the Verge 

“What Are Those?” Meme Creator Young Busco Has Died, According To Reports  BuzzFeed News 

The Infinite Lifespan of Memes  Wired

Tumblr Moves To Ban All 'Adult Content' — Here's Why That Matters  Digg 

Critics Say YouTube Hasn't Done Enough To Crack Down On Extremist Content  NPR

Inside TikTok, the premier app for firefighters who enjoy lip-syncing to ‘Baby Shark’  Washington Post

***PRODUCING MEDIA

A guide to recording spatial audio for 360-degree video  NPR 

***THE INTERNET 

The Friendship That Made Google Huge Coding together at the same computer, Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat changed the course of the company—and the Internet  The New Yorker 

New report suggests Latin America will lag in internet growth  Axios

***TECHNOLOGY

Rogue Scientist Says Another Crispr Pregnancy Is Underway  Wired

Google to shut down Hangouts in 2020  Axios

The CRISPR Baby Scandal Gets Worse by the Day The alleged creation of the world's first gene-edited infants was full of technical errors and ethical blunders  The Atlantic 

***BIG DATA & AI  

Amazon Says the same machine learning courses that it uses to teach its own engineers will be offered for free  Tech Crunch 

A Bayesian linear regression in R for time series forecasting  Towards Data Science

The Surprising Power of Small Data: More information isn’t necessarily better in health care or business  Stanford

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA   

Nexstar To Buy Tribune Media For $4.1 Billion, Creates Giant TV Station Group  Media Post

Sunset magazine, a California icon, struggles amid declining ad sales and management missteps LA Times

***PERSONAL GROWTH 

The rise of the professional “influencer”  Becoming (my blog)

How vividly imagining your own death can help your next career move  Fast Company

***WRITING & READING

Ben Yagoda Crunches the Contractions  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LANGUAGE 

‘That Walk Was a Bear!’ Is ‘Bear’ Slang in That Sentence?  Chronicle of Higher Education  

The World’s Most Efficient Languages  The Atlantic  

***LITERATURE 

The 10 Best Books of 2018 The editors of The Times Book Review choose the best fiction and nonfiction titles this year  New York Times  

NPR’s Guide to 2018 Great Books  NPR 

***GENDER   

Global report on gender violence says women most likely to be killed by intimate partners or family members  Axios 

Smart dress shows how often women are groped at clubs  Quartzy

Inside the All-Female Trek to the North Pole  Wired 

America’s sexist obsession with what women politicians wear, explained  Vox

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

Teaching while black: white professor calls security on black adjunct  The Commonwealth Times

Swastikas spray-painted on walls of Jewish professor at Columbia  Washington Post  

Analysis on the diversity of magazine covers from 2012-2018  Ceros

***LEGAL ISSUES  

Everything You Wanted to Know About Emojis and the Law  Technology & Marketing Law Blog

 ***CRIME

The police departments who destroy rape kits before testing them  CNN 

NJ.com's ground-breaking look at police force  Poynter 

***RELIGION

Killing Of American Missionary Ignites Debate Over How To Evangelize  NPR 

Do missionaries help or harm?  BBC 

This Pastor Is Melting Purity Rings Into A Golden Vagina Sculpture  Huffington Post

Kenny Marks, CCM star of the '80s and '90s Dies  Cross Rythms 

Brawl forces Church to Briefly shutdown Christmas Display  KJRH  

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

Members of both parties find meaning in family but differ when it comes to faith  Pew Research

***GOOD NEWS 

Twitter users help reunite friends who met on vacation 12 years ago  Teen Vogue 

97-year-old New Jersey woman has served on every Election Day since 1939  NBC News  

Vietnam War veteran meets stranger whose Christmas card lifted his spirits  CBS News

San Diego man donates $1 million to California school devastated by fire  NBC Los Angeles

A Texas cotton farmer is battling cancer and couldn't harvest his crop. So his neighbors did it for him  CNN

Hundreds pack funeral for Vietnam veteran they did not know after viral obituary post  MSNBC

He opened his motel to families hit by flooding: Now he's a full-service good Samaritan  CBS  

Anonymous 'Santa Claus' Surprises Customers by Paying Off All Layaway Items at Vermont Walmart  People 

Sinatra the blue-eyed Brooklyn husky's mysterious journey and miraculous reunion  ABC News

***REALLY?!

Couple Forced to Prove that New Mexico is a state while applying for a marriage license  Las Cruces Sun News

Grandfather banned from US holiday after accidentally ticking 'terrorist' box on visa form  The Independent

Accused maple syrup bandits fly through Canadian Town during police chase  Calgary Sun 

A homeless man found rare artwork from Disney's 'Bambi' in a trash bin. When it sold for $3,700, the seller tracked him down to split the proceeds  CNN

Women Sue After Breaking Into Theme Park And Hurting Themselves  WBTW 

The 40 Most Insane Things That Happened In Florida In 2018  BuzzFeed News 

Grandma mistakenly booked into all-male jail, staff thought she was transgender  WWLP 

American Airlines passenger left in wheelchair overnight at airport after flight was canceled   Fox-17

***ART & DESIGN

I spent 15 years sanding and grinding mussel shells to create my sculptures. Then I was diagnosed with heavy-metal poisoning  Toronto Life 

Google is Building Digital Art Gallaries you can Step Into  Tech Crunch

***IMAGES

National Geographic's 100 best images of the year  National Geographic 

Reuters' best pictures from 2018  Reuters 

***MUSIC 

Neuroscience says listening to this song reduces anxiety by up to 65%  Fast Company

Can you teach AI to dance?  YR.media 

***FILM

Watch 99 Movies Free Online Courtesy of YouTube & MGM: Rocky, The Terminator, Four Weddings and a Funeral & More  Open Culture 

This is the most influential film of all time  MarketWatch 

***STUDENT MEDIA   

A High School Newspaper Was Suspended For Publishing An Investigation Into Football Players’ Transfers  BuzzFeed News 

Liberty University students create independent news outlet  News Advance  

***STUDENT LIFE 

More millennials now live in suburbs than in cities  CNBC 

Graduate School Is Terrible for People's Mental Health  The Atlantic  

Millennials are killing countless industries — but the Fed says it's mostly just because they're poor  San Francisco Gate 

Teens Say Social Media Isn’t As Bad For Them As You Might Think  BuzzFeed News

Pot is edging out alcohol and cigarettes as the teenage drug of choice  Pacific Standard   

Is a smartphone a necessity for college students today?  Inside Higher Ed  

***ACADEMIC LIFE  

Student made social media threat to kill FAU professor, cops say  Sun-Sentinel 

Judge: UM deprived professor of due process in disciplinary case  Michigan Live 

***SOCIAL ISSUES 

Why US life expectancy is falling, in three charts  Quartz  

40 years ago, this journalist survived the Jonestown massacre: He warns it could happen again Washington Post

What the dip in US life expectancy is really about—inequality: While poor Americans are dying earlier, the rich are enjoying unprecedented longevity  Vox  

My mom’s suicide changed everything: Here’s how I found hope again  USA Today  

The American abortion rate is at an all-time low  Vox

More than one-in-ten U.S. parents are also caring for an adult  Pew Research

***BORDER ISSUES   

What we know about illegal immigration from Mexico  Pew Research 

Families Are Still Being Separated at the Border, Months After “Zero Tolerance” Was Reversed  Propublica 

BuzzFeed gave six kids traveling in the migrant caravan cameras to document what life looks like for them  BuzzFeed News

***BUSINESS & FINANCE

Pension Plans For Millions Of Americans Are On The Brink Of Collapse  NPR

Competition Is Dying, and Taking Capitalism With It (opinion)  Bloomberg 

Americans Value Equality at Work More Than Equality at Home  New York Times 

***ENVIRONMENT

The new  arctic frontier: As the ice melts, U.S. prepares for possible threats from Russia and China  Washington Post 

Climate change strike: thousands of school students protest across Australia  The Guardian 

The World's Largest Ocean Cleanup Has Officially Begun  Forbes 

Only vehicles producing zero emissions will be allowed to drive freely in downtown Madrid  The Guardian

In California’s Fertile Valley, Industry and Agriculture Hang Heavy in the Air  Undark 

***HEALTH

Interactive map shows how many years breathing dirty air takes off your life  Air Quality Life Index  

The science is clear: dirty farm water is making us sick  Wired

What’s in 5-hour energy shots? 17 ingredients: 16 of them are basically useless  Mel Magazine

FDA’s ‘flawed’ device pathway persists with industry backing  Associated Press  

Investigation: Lives Lost Amid ER Violations  Web-MD 

Intermittent fasting is no better than conventional dieting for weight loss, new study finds  The Conversation

***HEALTH & SLEEP 

Why We Sleep, and Why We Often Can’t  New Yorker

Why screen time can disrupt sleep  Salk 

Why Hospitals Should Let You Sleep  New York Times 

***HEALTH & KIDS 

Docs Say Kids With Concussions Don't Have To Stay In The Dark For Days  NPR

Number Of U.S. Kids Who Don't Have Health Insurance Is On The Rise  NPR

***TRAVEL

Want to Escape Modern Life? Try a Weekend in a Prison Cell  The Atlantic

Mic’s best places to travel interactive  Mic 

The Best Things to Do in 25 of America’s Most Fun Cities  Thrillist   

***FOOD & DRINK 

The Hidden Struggle to Save the Coffee Industry From Disaster  Medium 

The Best Craft Brewery in Every State  Thrillist    

Sainsbury's to stock edible insects on shelves in a UK first  The Guardian 

52 of the World’s Most Out-There Myths About Food  Atlas Obscura 

***CHILDREN 

These Are the Most Popular Baby Names of 2018  Fatherly 

ADHD Diagnosis Is More Common For Youngest Students In Class  NPR 

The "homework gap": 12 million schoolchildren lack internet  Axios

New Harvard Study Shows the Dangers of Early School Enrollment  Foundation for Economic Education  Fee.org 

The best new perks for working parents  Quartz 

***CHILDREN & SCREEN TIME

New inequality trend: how parents approach screen time  Axios 

Should You Make Your Kids Wait Until High School for a Cell Phone?  Life Hacker  

***ANIMALS 

The Insect Apocalypse Is Here  New York Times

***SCIENCE

New Quantum Paradox Clarifies Where Our Views of Reality Go Wrong  Quanta Magazine

Archaeologists Are Looking for Dead Sea Scrolls Inside 2 Newfound Qumran Caves  Live Science  

***PSYCHOLOGY 

Lack of sleep intensifies anger, impairs adaptation to frustrating circumstances  Iowa State University  

Using imagination to unlearn fear  The Naked Scientist 

***NEUROSCIENCE   

This Is Your Brain on Hate Researchers are studying how white supremacism may rewire people  Vice

The Pathology of Prejudice What neuroscience tells us about the persistence of hatred  New Republic 

Experimental Brain Stimulation Relieved Depression Symptoms In Study  NPR 

***PHILOSOPHY

An exhaustive, interactive mapping of the history of philosophy  Deniz C Önduygu blog 

6 essential books on existentialist philosophy  Big Think 

***ETHICS

My Mother Taught Me to Kill  Narratively 

Harvard Medical School Dean Weighs In On Ethics Of Gene Editing  NPR

The Ethical Pitfalls of the Viral “Best Burger in America” Essay  The New Yorker

***RESEARCH  

Controversial visiting researcher — heavily criticized as having racist work — sparks pushback Daily Northwestern

New COPE guidelines on publication process manipulation: why they matter  Research Integrity and Peer Review   

Canadian scholar says he's been 'persecuted' for his research on colleagues who published in predatory journals  Inside Higher Ed 

The double standard of retractions  The Varsity 

A look at retractions from Science from 1983 until 2017  Springer

Where are the ethics in academic publishing?  Times Higher Education 

A suite of automated tools is now available to assist with academic peer review—but humans are still in the driver's seat  Nature 

***HIGHER ED

What the Rise of the Mega-University Might Mean for the Rest of Us  Chronicle of Higher Ed

This "coding bootcamp" is now accredited as a bachelor's program  Axios

Why Your HR Officer Is Leaving  Chronicle of Higher Ed

UW-Stevens Point Faculty Want Regents To Oust Administrators  Wisconsin Public Radio

Why One University Is Handing Out Hockey Pucks to Prepare for an Active Shooter  Chronicle of Higher Ed  

***HUMANITIES

Why Are Students Ditching the History Major?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

In a High-Tech World, Humanities and Other Liberal Arts Are More Essential Than Ever  The Daily Beast

***TEACHING 

Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers. It Hurts Students  Chronicle of Higher Ed  

What Is the Purpose of Final Exams, Anyway?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Seniors Think What They’ve Learned Will Help Them Do Their Jobs. Do Employers Agree?   Chronicle of Higher Ed 

“Transformative” teaching is exhausting. Here are some suggestions on how to lighten the load Chronicle of Higher Ed 

The Influencers

The internet now means influence can come from anyone, anywhere; it can be visible or invisible, paid for by any power, approaching you any of myriad ways. Influence used to be understood as a top-down phenomenon, with governments, advertisers, donors or other powerful figures holding sway over the masses. These days we understand that the most powerful influences aren’t the distant ones but the most immediate and social — so the powerful tend to exert their influence by pretending to be ordinary people.

Marketers, for instance, work harder and harder to obscure the distinction between ads and real life. The last decade featured the rise of the professional “influencer” — someone paid to use their personal magnetism to promote specific agendas online. Instead of the top-down influence of a commercial or a billboard, these ads are embedded, shared by someone who seems, on some aspirational level, like a peer. The companies paying teenagers to hawk diet tea on Instagram are using the same tactics the Chinese government did when it recruited commenters to post hundreds of millions of pro-Communist Party messages online.

We like to think of our characters as fixed: We have our beliefs and our morals, religions and parties, states and countries, friends and enemies. We are inevitably ourselves — inescapably ourselves. We should be able to resist this kind of manipulation. But a steady stream of social-science studies suggests otherwise, demonstrating again and again how easily social pressures can affect the things we say, believe, do, think, eat. Our anxiety over influence goes back to the same fear Thomas Aquinas had, the same doubt families of alcoholics or cult members have. In the face of powerful influences, how can you locate and hold onto that original, irrefutable spark of self, your free will, your character, even your soul? That’s the fear that the idea of influence lays bare: that you can’t. Or that it might never have existed in the first place.

Annalisa Quinn writing in the New York Times

Self-Control can be Contagious

Not only do you tend to hang out with people like yourself, your friends will influence you toward or away from self-control. Even the people you are forced by circumstances to hang out with (like co-workers) have an influence on your behavior. 

That's the finding of researchers who asked participants to watch people either select carrot sticks or cookies to eat before taking tests related to self-control (not involving cookies and carrots). Participants who watched someone eat cookies before the tests did not do as well as those who had watched someone decide to eat carrots. 

In another test, participants were told to think of a friend with good self-control. This group performed better on a handgrip test (used to measure self-control) than did the participants assigned to think about a friend with weak self-control. Other tests showed similar results.  

The conclusion: If you surround yourself with people who make wise choices, you are more likely to do the same. You can boost your self-control simply by networking with other people who reinforce positive behavior (or vise versa). And when you show a lack of self-control, you are probably influencing someone else to do the same. 

Details of the study were published by the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 

(more info)

Stephen Goforth

you can't go back

You can't go back and change the beginning but you can start where you are and change the ending. –CS Lewis, born November 29, 1898

The First CRISPR baby

Eventually, a CRISPR baby will be born.* The (new gene-editing) technology is too easy. There is no world government to stop its use; many argue no one should do so anyway. At the point that baby emerges, perhaps modified to evade a particular disease or perhaps even to look a particular way, theoretical debates will become real. 

 Jennifer Doudna knows the influence she and her fellow scientists have is diminishing every day. “I would hope this would be used to create cures, to help people,” she says. Even if the technology is not quite there yet, CRISPR could eventually do plenty else besides. Every week a new paper is published finding more genes that influence looks, intelligence, stamina, even sexuality. 

“The dystopic view would be IVF clinics that offer parents a menu of options for kids,” she says. “Nobody has kids by sex anymore. You go to a clinic, pick from a menu, say, ‘I want my kid to be this tall, have this colour of eye, this level of IQ,’ and all those sorts of things. I think that would be terrible.” 

Tom Whipple writing in 1843 magazine 

*Chinese scientists are creating CRISPR babies  MIT Technology Review 

Articles of Interest - Nov 26

***TECHNOLOGY

The promise and peril of gene drives  Economist

A dystopian human scoring system in China is blocking people from booking flights  BGR

These Precision Parts 3D-Printed From Fake Moon Dust Bring Us One Step Closer to Living on Mars  Gizmodo

***MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY

How to edit a human  1843 magazine  

Chinese scientists are creating CRISPR babies  MIT Technology Review 

***BIG DATA & AI 

Using AI to screen proteins in a patient’s body to detect disease—before there are outward symptoms  New York Times 

How AI is being used to vet babysitters, screen applicants and watch employees  Axios 

How bots, algorithms, and artificial intelligence are reshaping the future of corporate support functions— real-life examples and key factors for success factors  McKinsey 

The features to look for when picking big-data visualization tools  Search Business Analytics

 ***SOCIAL MEDIA  

The rise and rise of photo-editing  1843

Instagram’s new profile designs emphasize users instead of their follower count  The Verge 

Facebook and The Innovator’s Dilemma  Columbia Journalism Review

Social Media, Online Accountability, and the Meaning of an Apology  The Walrus  

Russia's elite hackers may have new phishing tricks  Wired 

Amazon says technical error disclosed customer information  Axios 

Face Scans are Speeding up Airport Security  Wired

***JOURNALISM 

J-School Leaders Say It's Time to Speak Out  Inside Higher Ed

When journalism meets Hollywood Global Editors Network  Medium  

How to do “man-on-the-street” interviews in a foreign country  The Ground Truth Project

Why Trump wants to control follow-up questions  Washington Post 

The greatest threat to American journalism: the loss of neutral reporting  The Hill

People Singing "Amazing Grace" Were Arrested For Blocking An ICE Van From Driving Away With An Undocumented Immigrant  BuzzFeed News  

How Implicit Bias Works in Journalism  Harvard’s Nieman Reports  

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Digging Deep Into Local News, A Small Newspaper In Rural Oregon Is Thriving  NPR

Canada introduces a $595 million package in support of journalism  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

***FAKE NEWS

The Seven Commandments of Fake News  The New York Times

‘Misinformation’ picked as word of the year by Dictionary.com  The Hill

Just Six percent of Twitter Bots Account for 31 percent of Misinformation  Ars Technica 

Protecting the Value of Medical Science in the Age of Social Media and “Fake News”  JAMA

One of the first two Muslim women in US Congress is already battling a fake news campaign Quartz

Study shows 60% of Britons believe in conspiracy theories  The Guardian

Why QAnon believers think ‘the Storm’ has tripled in size  Daily Dot

The BBC Is Fighting Against Russian Disinformation With A News Service In Serbia  BuzzFeed News

***PERSONAL GROWTH 

The Power of Mind-Wandering  Becoming (my blog)

Everyone Wants to ‘Influence’ You  New York Times

More Americans find meaning in money than in religion or friends  Quartz

A Stanford psychologist on the art of avoiding assholes  Vox

***WRITING & READING

Seattle high-school teacher shares ‘the wonder of books’ with students on a different kind of field trip  Seattle Times 

Using “very”  Chronicle of Higher Ed

100 Notable Books of 2018  New York Times

***LANGUAGE

It’s hard to have an unusual name in China  1843 magazine  

Brain responses to language in toddlers with Autism linked to altered gene expression  Science Daily 

***LITERATURE

A new exhibition at the British Library explores how cats have inspired—and frightened—writers across the centuries  Smithsonian Mag 

Tales of the unexpected: 10 literary classics you may not have read  The Guardian

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

Pro-Publica, PBS Frontline Project: 'Documenting Hate: New American Nazis'   NPR

Why are we only talking about Mom Books by white women?  The Cut

No charges for FedEx driver who fatally punched man calling him racial slurs  Oregon Live 

Neo-Nazis Are Organizing Secretive Paramilitary Training Across America Vice

***POLITICS

How populist are you?  The Guardian 

***LEGAL ISSUES 

Political Scientist Weighs In On Trump's Criticism Of 9th Circuit Court Of Appeals  NPR

Free speech violation or a simple arrest? Supreme Court faces a familiar problem Washington Post

***RELIGION

What Should America Do With Its Empty Church Buildings?  The Atlantic

Clerical sexual-abuse scandals strengthen the pope’s conservative critics  Economist

When atheists lack the courage of their convictions: A review of Seven Types of Atheism  Economist    

Most Americans say religion will live on  Axios  

What Einstein meant by ‘God does not play dice’  Aeon 

The U.S. class divide extends to searching for a religious congregation  Pew Research 

Where Americans Find Meaning in Life  Pew Research

***RELIGION OUTSIDE THE U.S.

All Nations, ORU Grieve Reported Death of Missionary  Charisma News 

Charismatic Christianity in Ethiopia  Economist 

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

Franklin Graham: Trump "defends the faith"  Axios

***GOOD NEWS 

Baby saved from choking to death at NC restaurant on Thanksgiving Fox Carolina

Woman's 3850 mile rollerblade journey relying on the kindness of strangers  AOL News

***ART & DESIGN

Download 569 Free Art Books from The Metropolitan Museum of Art  Open Culture

The Mystery Font That Took Over New York  New York Times 

Winners of the 2018 ESPON Awards for panoramic photography  My Modern Met

***MUSIC 

Malcolm Gladwell and Rick Rubin Launch a New Music Podcast

The woman with a musical dress  1843 magazine 

 ***FILM

How does the process of colourisation affect our understanding of history?  History Today

The evolution of pace in popular movies  Statistical Modeling, Causal Interence, and Social Science

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT 

Proposed Title IX changes would make campus hearings into "mini courtrooms," higher education lawyers say  Inside Higher Ed

Advances in forensic science and robotics may help law enforcement analyze some of the country’s 225,000 unprocessed rape kits  Undark 

***BUSINESS & FINANCE 

The Wired Guide to Online Shopping  Wired

Selfish people earn less money than generous people  Quartz 

***HEALTH

Critically Ill Children Who Received Wishes Cut Their Health Care Costs  NPR

What an unprecedented study found about 3D printing’s dangers  Fast Company

Standing Desks are Overrated  New York Times

100 million Americans have chronic pain. Very few use one of the best tools to treat it  Vox 

Bed Rest Is Still Often Prescribed During Pregnancy, Despite Proven Risks  NPR 

***TRAVEL

Leaning Tower of Pisa continues long path towards vertical Associated Press

***FOOD

Not Oatmeal  Constellate Magazine  

Iceland's president admits he went 'too far' with threat to ban pineapple pizza  CBC

Romaine lettuce from California linked to E. coli outbreak  The Verge

Americans are divided over whether eating organic foods makes for better health  Pew Research

***ANIMALS  

Nature film crew breaks "no interference" rule to rescue penguins  CBS News 

***SCIENCE 

The ‘myth’ of scientific facts infected decades of criminal cases where bitemark dentists were presented as scientific experts”  Science Direct   

A new book explores the partnership of science and the military—and its long and often fraught history  Undark  

Can Science Create Superhumans?  The Naked Scientists 

***PSYCHOLOGY  

What Amazon Reviews Reveal About Humanity BuzzFeed News

Why suicide is falling around the world, and how to bring it down more  Economist

***NEUROSCIENCE  

Study: To predict the future, the brain has two clocks  Berkeley 

What Happens to the Brain in Zero Gravity?  Singularity Hub

***PHILOSOPHY

First women of philosophy  Aeon

Obligation to Obey the Law  Wireless Philosophy 

***PRODUCTIVITY

Information overload is nothing new  1843 Magazine 

Why you’re not prioritizing sleep even when it’s hurting your productivity  Fast Company

***HISTORY 

Hear the Sounds of World War I: A Gas Attack Recorded on the Front Line, and the Moment the Armistice Ended the War  Open Culture

The worst year to be a human has been revealed by researchers  CNN

The History Of Signatures And Their Present Relevance  NPR 

'Married man' Justin Bieber says wants to be more like Jesus  Reuters 

 ***RESEARCH 

The Experiments Are Fascinating. But Nobody Can Repeat Them  New York Times

To catch misconduct, journals are hiring research integrity czars  STAT

Duke University to settle case alleging researchers used fraudulent data to win millions in grants  Science Magazine 

The Ethical Quandary of Human Infection Studies  Undark 

Journal retracts 29 articles but doesn’t explain which ones  Inside Higher Ed 

Legal threats, opacity, and deceptive research practices: A look at more than 100 retractions in business and management  Retraction Watch

***HIGHER ED

A Film About Higher Ed That Should Bother You a Little  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Enough With All the Innovation (opinion)  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***TEACHING

Why Grades Still Matter  Chronicle of Higher Ed

The Solar System Quilt  Open Culture

“Best” Student excuses  Dynamics of Writing

***STUDENT LIFE

Sleep Pod Companies Want to Disrupt Naps on Campus  Ed Surge 

UMKC professor used students as servants for decades  The Kansas City Star 

Students fear dorm mold problem led to adenovirus death  New York Post  

Millennials are no longer living with their parents  Axios  

College athlete disowned by her parents almost loses her eligibility  Business Insider

***STUDENT MEDIA  

For the First Time, a Black Woman Will Lead The Harvard Crimson  New York Times  

Hundreds of issues of the Maroon-News stolen, members of swim team found responsible  Student Press Law Center

College Media Association censures Univ of N. Ala after newspaper adviser targeted AL.com 

The Power of Mind-Wandering

The seemingly trivial activity of mind-wandering is now believed to play a central role in the brain’s “deep learning,” the mind’s sifting through past experiences, imagining future prospects and assessing them with emotional judgments: that flash of shame or pride or anxiety that each scenario elicits.

A growing number of scholars, drawn from a wide swath of disciplines — neuroscience, philosophy, computer science — now argue that this aptitude for cognitive time travel, revealed by the discovery of the default network, may be the defining property of human intelligence. “What best distinguishes our species,” Martin Seligman wrote in a Times Op-Ed with John Tierney, “is an ability that scientists are just beginning to appreciate: We contemplate the future.” He went on: “A more apt name for our species would be Homo prospectus, because we thrive by considering our prospects. The power of prospection is what makes us wise.”

 Today, it seems, mind-wandering is under attack from all sides. It’s a common complaint that our compulsive use of smartphones is destroying our ability to focus. But seen through the lens of Homo prospectus, ubiquitous computing poses a different kind of threat: Having a network-connected supercomputer in your pocket at all times gives you too much to focus on. It cuts into your mind-wandering time. The downtime between cognitively active tasks that once led to REST states can now be filled with Instagram, or Nasdaq updates, or podcasts. We have Twitter timelines instead of time travel.

At the same time, a society-wide vogue for “mindfulness” encourages us to be in the moment, to think of nothing at all instead of letting our thoughts wander. Search YouTube, and there are hundreds of meditation videos teaching you how to stop your mind from doing what it does naturally. The Homo prospectus theory suggests that, if anything, we need to carve out time in our schedule — and perhaps even in our schools — to let minds drift.

Steven Johnson writing in the New York Times

Suicide's lack of Closure

There’s an inherent lack of closure to suicide. Even when people write notes, they can reveal so little. Suicides often leave loved ones, acquaintances and co-workers to question themselves for the rest of their lives. And in their own grief, they, too, can entertain dangerous thoughts. 

“With suicide you have that added trauma to it,” said Julie Cerel, the president of the American Association of Suicidology. “The ‘why’ question of trying to search for meaning when there’s no meaning available—If I only had a note. If I only talked to the last person that they talked to. The ‘onlys’ can be torturous.’” Last year, Cerel published a study examining the consequences of suicide and found that each one could affect as many as 135 other people.

The fundamental mystery of suicide has long made it an object of fear and contempt within the medical establishment. Since the 1950s, public health officials have tried hotlines, individual therapy, group therapy, shock therapy and forced hospitalizations. Doctors have taken away people’s shoelaces and belts and checked in on attempt survivors every 15 minutes to make sure they are still safe. They have coerced patients into signing contracts swearing that they would not kill themselves. They have piled on psychiatric medications with ever-more invasive side effects, only to watch the number of suicides continue to climb.

Jason Cherkis writing in the Huffington Post 

Articles of Interest - Nov 19

***TECHNOLOGY

Scientists Create Fabric Alternative to Batteries for Wearable Devices  University of Massachusetts

20 Americans Die Each Day Waiting for Organs. Can Pigs Save Them?  New York Times

The Fax Is Not Yet Obsolete: Law and medicine still rely on the device, Maybe they shouldn’t  The Atlantic 

Thin, Flexible new Solar Cells Could Soon Line Your Shirt  Wired 

A scientist’s work linking minds and machines helps a paralyzed woman escape her body  The New Yorker 

What is a Bot?  Wired 

***BIG DATA & AI 

The Data Scientist Tracking America’s White Supremacists  MotherBoard 

The definition of artificial intelligence is constantly evolving, and the term often gets mangled  MIT technology Review

How Facebook uses machine learning to fight ISIS and Al-Qaeda propaganda  MIT Technology Review  

The rare form of machine learning that can spot hackers who have already broken in  MIT Technology Review 

What’s the best way to learn the programming language R? (Preferably, for free)  Quartz

For all their supposed braininess “neural nets don’t appear to work the way human brains do” the limitations of deep learning AI calls for another approach  Wired 

Public Attitudes Toward Computer Algorithms  Pew Research Center 

***SOCIAL MEDIA 

YouTube uses algorithms that are tailored to advance already popular content and drive viral videos  The Atlantic  

How Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Bringing Her Instagram Followers into Congress  New York Times 

Instagram Influencers Selling Custom Photo Presets  The Atlantic

Inside the Pricey War to Influence your Instagram Feed  Wired 

Instagram Cracks down on apps that give fake follows and likes  Mashable 

***FACEBOOK 

Following the discovery of targeted disinformation campaigns Facebook tried to discredit protesters  New York Times 

6 Takesaways from the Times Investigation  New York Times 

Facebook Messenger rolling out new ‘Unsend’ feature, here’s how to use it  9 to 5 Mac 

Report: Even Facebook Employees Are Bummed About Facebook  Gizmodo 

***MOBILE 

The Ubiquity of Smartphones, as Captured by Photographers  The Atlantic 

People are Freaking out over the iPhone Curser Trick  Mashable 

***PRIVACY & SECURITY 

You know what? go ahead and use the hotel and airport Wi-Fi: A few years ago you were right not to trust it  Wired 

How Hackers Are Stealing High-Profile Instagram Accounts  The Atlantic 

Your Drone Can Give Cops a Surprising Amount of your Data  Wired 

How to Tell if Your Account Has Been Hacked  Motherboard

Surveillance Kills Freedom by Killing Experimentation Wired 

***PRODUCING MEDIA

How Podcasts became a seductive and sometimes slippery mode of storytelling  The New Yorker  

Pandora wants to map the “podcast genome” so it can recommend your next favorite show  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

***INTERNET

FCC seems to have ended the practice of releasing its ISP speed-tests, leaving Americans in the dark about what they're paying for  BongBong

Google goes down after major BGP mishap routes traffic through China ArsTechnica

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA  

How much have younger viewers bailed on traditional TV? New stats are alarming  USA Today

Justice Department Demands Major TV Broadcasters Stop Sharing Advertising Data Hollywood Reporter

***JOURNALISM

Consumers love smart speakers: They don’t love news on smart speakers (At least not yet)  Harvard’s Nieman Lab 

'Under The Wire' Tells The Story Of War Correspondent Marie Colvin's Last Moments  NPR

Newsrooms transform to cover the 21st century  Axios 

New York Times Publisher Touts Future of Digital Journalism  Caixin 

NPR host Terry Gross: 8 tips on How to Talk to People  New York Times

***LOCAL JOURNALISM 

Better Local Journalism, by Local Reporters, Is the Goal of a New Database  New York Times

A new database "aimed at connecting journalists outside the nation’s media hub with editors across the country "for the purpose of reporting on their home regions"  Shoeleather 

Facebook is Launching it’s first Journalism program to fund local journalism in the UK  Mashable 

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Media salaries lean higher for writing than video, photo (trend #8)  Axios

 ***JOURNALISM & DIVERSITY

The Racial Makeup of NPR’s newsroom  NPR 

Racial and ethnic minorities make up less than 17 percent of newsroom staff  Columbia Journalism Review 

Missing the Story : Diversity in Media  Columbia Journalism Review 

***FAKE NEWS

How Will We Outsmart A.I. Liars? For better and worse, humans are only improving their ability to deceive themselves with technology  New York Times 

Are Birds Actually Government-Issued Drones? So Says a New Conspiracy Theory Making Waves  Audubon

How The Wall Street Journal is preparing its journalists to detect deepfakes  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

California's Wildfires Have Spawned a Truly Weird New Conspiracy Theory  Gizmodo

If You Hate the Media, You’re More Likely to be Fooled by a Fake Headline  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

How the public, news sources, and journalists think about news in three communities  News Co. Lab 

***FAKE NEWS & WHAT’S APP

Burned to death because of a rumour on WhatsApp  BBC 

Notifications every 2 minutes: This in-depth look at how people really use WhatsApp shows why fighting fake news there is so hard   Harvard’s Nieman Lab

***PERSONAL GROWTH 

The Importance of Leisure  Becoming (my blog)

Vacation is a poor substitute for leisure  Quartz

The 6 Email Newsletters That Will Help You Build Leadership Skills  Forbes

How to Talk to People You Don’t Agree With, With Social Psychologist Jonathan Haidt  LifeHacker

10 paradoxes that will stretch your mind  Big Think 

***WRITING & READING

This bookstore just sold a book that had been on a shelf for nearly 28 years  Mashable 

How to make $6,000 a day writing Instagram quotes — sort of  Vox  

Paul Schrader Says Creating, Writing Is "A Form of Therapy"  Hollywood Reporter

***LANGUAGE

Oxford Dictionaries' word of the year  CNBC 

The Hidden Life of Modal Verbs  Jstor

Personification is Your Friend: the Language of Inanimate Objects  Jstor

27 Beautiful Words Writers Rarely Use But Totally Should BuzzFeed

***LITERATURE

What Book Changed Your Mind?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

The Hottest Trend in American Literature Isn’t From the U.S.  The Atlantic

The Bizarro World of Literary Studies  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***GENDER    

First woman passes special forces assessment on path to becoming Green Beret  CNN

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

Hate crimes rose 17 percent last year, according to new FBI data  MSNBC

Drunk man shouts 'Heil Hitler, Heil Trump,' does Nazi salute during Baltimore performance of 'Fiddler on the Roof”  Baltimore Sun 

Fallout continues for white male students at Wisconsin high school accused of giving Nazi salute USA Today 

Dunkin' Donuts owner calls police on woman using free Wi-Fi  Yahoo 

Sam's employee asked to retake photo with 'Black Panther' shirt after member complains  WJLA 

Duke mural honoring synagogue shooting victims defaced with Swastika NBC News

***FREE SPEECH

Should the First Amendment apply to Facebook? It’s complicated  Recode 

Free Speech Or Hate Speech: When Does Online Hate Speech Become A Real Threat?  NPR

***LEGAL ISSUES 

Reminder: Cutting-and-Pasting Photos from the Internet Is Hazardous to Your Legal Health  Technology & Marketing Law Blog  

Conan O'Brien's Joke Copyright Defense Hits Snag  Hollywood Reporter  

***RELIGION

Why Tenth Avenue North Isn't Afraid to Tackle Taboo Subjects In Christian Music  Billboard

State Baptist group boots Kentucky churches for supporting LGBTQ hires  Courier-Journal 

Christian composer Kurt Kaiser, writer of 'Pass It On,' dies at 83  Waco Tribune 

80 Years Since The Catholic University Of America Vocalized Opposition To The Nazis  NPR

Stephen Colbert reveals why he returned to Catholicism after losing his faith  Fox News

***CONVERSiON THERAPY

Conversion therapy: A debunked practice aimed at "converting" homosexuals  CBS

Keeping Focus on the Family Honest on Reparative Therapy  The Throckmorton Blog  

***RELIGION AND POLITICS

Rubio cites Bible verse amid recount criticisms: ‘You cannot count what is not there’  The Hill

Trump ‘make the bible great again’ billboards  World Religious News

***GOOD NEWS

Mother's hunch helped save a hiker's life on the Pacific Crest Trail  CBS News 

'Batkid' Miles Scott is cancer free 5 years after saving San Francisco  NBC News

9-year-old starts family knitting club to make hats and scarves for those in need  The Week

Blind runner finds love with woman who volunteered to train him for marathon  MSNBC

Mercy nurses give Mega Millions winnings to 2 of their own going through heartbreak  KMOV 

93-Year-Old Woman Is Saved from California Wildfires by Her Friend, the Garbage Collector People

***ART & DESIGN

Watch: Stan Lee on "To Tell The Truth" game show in 1970 (14m)  BongBong

7 Female Impressionists Every Art History Lover Should Know  Artsy 

***FILM

Watch the First Film Adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1910): It's Newly Restored by the Library of Congress  Open Culture

***STUDENT LIFE

Northern Michigan U. Compensates 4 Who Were Threatened With Punishment for Speaking of Suicide  Chronicle of Higher Ed

No 'Parks & Rec' jokes: Oregon's teen mayor is here to get stuff done  Oregon Live

A professor at UT San Antonio was recorded calling the police on an African American student who had propped her feet up on the seat in front of her  Inside Higher Ed

Generation Z Is The Most Racially And Ethnically Diverse Yet  NPR

Half of the post-millennial generation is non-white  Axios 

The Bridesmaids Are Multiplying: The role is almost entirely symbolic—but it’s only getting more popular  The Atlantic  

How College Caused Me To Read Less (opinion)  Study Breaks 

***INTERNSHIPS

4 Internships  LA Times 

Summer DC Scholarship Program  DC Internships  

Spring Internships The Student Press Law Center ($490 a week)

Investigative journalism internship  Center for Public Integrity, Washington, D.C.

***JOBS

Stop Complaining About Your Rent and Move to Tulsa:  $10,000, free rent, and other perks to remote workers who move to Tulsa for a year  CityLab 

***SEXUAL ASSAULT

Fewer office holiday parties this year, a sign of #MeToo liability fears  CBS News

Former Title IX Official Outlines Changes To How Colleges Handle Sexual Assault Cases  NPR 

Sharp Divide Over Trump Administration's Title IX Overhaul  Inside Higher Ed

Dartmouth women sue school over sexual assault, harassment  New York Post 

Ed Dept. Proposes Enhanced Protection For Students Accused Of Sexual Assault  NPR

***SOCIAL ISSUES 

Guns in America: our relationship with firearms in 5 charts  Wired 

Critics step up bid to stop US school using electric shocks on children  The Guardian

***BUSINESS & FINANCE

This researcher studied 400,000 knitters and discovered what turns a hobby into a business  Washington Post 

How Stan Lee transformed the comics business  Economist

***ENVIRONMENT

Why covering the environment is one of the most dangerous beats in journalism  Harvard’s Nieman Lab 

How to Stop Using So Much Disposable Plastic  Life Hacker

***HEALTH

As social media ‘influencers,’ patients are getting a voice. And pharma is ready to pay up  Stat News 

Medical Advice You Can Trust  The Week

Startup Offers To Sequence Your Genome Free Of Charge, Then Let You Profit From It  NPR

Alcohol is killing more people, and younger. The biggest increases are among women USA Today 

Exposure to air pollution during pregnancy linked to autism diagnosis  Stat News

***VACCINATIONS

Junk science promoted by bots and trolls results in North Carolina chickenpox outbreak BoingBoing

School with major chickenpox outbreak has high vaccination exemption rate  USA Today   

3 ethical reasons for vaccinating your children The Conversation

***DIET & EXERCISE 

Low-carb diet: does cutting carbs really help keep weight off?  Vox 

There's a Major Change in The Latest US Exercise Guidelines. Here's What You Need to Know  Science Alert 

***TRAVEL

50 Strange But True Facts About the U.S.  CN Traveler

2019 Fodor’s Travel NO List  San Jose Mercury News 

How Samantha Brown Got Her Start: Women Who Travel Podcast  CN Traveler

***FOOD

Public Perspectives on Food Risks  Pew Research Center 

6 airplane foods you should avoid, according to food safety experts  CNBC

***PARENTING 

Stop talking to your kids about politics (opinion) The Week

Online or offline? Parents are struggling with their children’s screen time use Evening Standard

***ANIMALS  

30 dogs under 30  The Week 

The 18 Best Dogs in Netflix’s Dogs, Ranked  Vulture 

***PSYCHOLOGY 

The Replication Crisis: Can academic psychology be trusted?  BBC

Super recognisers: the people who never forget a face  The Guardian 

The Best Way To Save People From Suicide  Highline 

Facebook Increasingly Reliant on A.I. To Predict Suicide Risk  NPR

Freud versus Jung: a bitter feud over the meaning of sex  Aeon 

***NEUROSCIENCE  

The Human Brain is a Time Traveler  New York Times

A new study says alcohol changes how the brain creates memories  BigThink

***HISTORY 

Why the Enlightenment was not the age of reason (opinion)  Aeon

How would you Draw History?  New York Times

***ETHICS

Can judging be automated?  Axios 

How to use science fiction to teach tech ethics  BoingBoing

***RESEARCH 

Handing Science Over to the Machines  The Spike 

Correction to climate change study highlights flaws in peer-review process  CBC

Widespread plagiarism detected in many medical journals based in Africa  Nature 

Scholar behind predatory journals exposé says study ‘backfired’  Times Higher Education  

Here Comes ‘The Journal of Controversial Ideas’ -Cue the Outcry  Chronicle of Higher Ed

The more authors, the more retractions  Appam 

Will Blockchain Revolutionize Scholarly Journal Publishing?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

***HIGHER ED

How One University Went From Proposing to Cut 13 Mostly Liberal-Arts Programs to Eliminating Only 6  Chronicle of Higher Ed 

Study finds female chairs improve departments' gender diversity and equity  Inside Higher Ed 

A Fifth of Private Colleges Report First-Year Discount Rate of 60 Percent, Moody’s Says  Chronicle of Higher Ed 

What You Need to Know About the Proposed Title IX Regulations  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Hate Crimes on Campuses Are Rising, New FBI Data Show  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Liberty University official accused of attempted murder, abduction  WSLS

Azusa Pacific students file grievances over reinstatement of LGBTQ relationship ban  San Gabriel Valley Tribune

Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond to close in 2019  Baptist News

Cal Lutheran to hold memorial service for alumnus killed in Thousand Oaks shooting  10New 

David Jang’s Christian University Charged in $35 Million Fraud Scheme  Christianity Today

***TEACHING

The Future Of Learning? Well, It's Personal  NPR

A Little Music Before We Begin  Chronicle of Higher Ed

How to Create a Welcoming Culture for Autistic Students  Chronicle of Higher Ed

10 alternatives to PowerPoint PR Daily

***STUDENT MEDIA  

Western Kentucky Student Newspaper shakes up camps with report: More than 500 mold reports on campus in past year  College Heights Herald 

Harvard's student newspaper just elected the first black woman president in its 145-year history  CNN 

Post-millennials will be more diverse, higher achieving, and better-educated: 4 takeaways from the latest pew report  Elearning 

Articles of Interest - Nov 12

 ***SOCIAL MEDIA 

Study shows that social media limits made people feel less lonely  Engadget 

Advertisers see value in people with as few as 1,000 followers: the nanoinfluencers  New York Times

***MOBILE 

Why robocalls have taken over your phone  The Verge

The quiet revolution that's making your phone smarter than you at photography  Tech Radar

***PRIVACY & SECURITY 

How Secure Were The Midterm Elections?  NPR

The Best Security and Privacy Tech to keep your Friends Safe  Tech Crunch 

***PRODUCING MEDIA

Welcome to the age of the hour-long YouTube video  Wired 

This website lets you make your own emojis  BongBong 

***INTERNET

Pew Research Center Says Half Of Adults Use YouTube To Learn New Things  NPR

***JOURNALISM

The New York Times is digitizing more than 5 million photos dating back to the 1800s  Harvard’s Nieman Lab 

Apple News’s Radical Approach: Humans Over Machines  New York Times

Conflict Photographer Lynsey Addario on Art, Love, and War  Big Think 

A journalist’s dilemma: wanting to do more to help than tell the story  The Ground Truth Project 

In cities across America, this morning’s newspaper told you there was an election yesterday — but nothing about it  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

Following investigation, Houston Chronicle retracts eight stories  Houston Chronicle

Why are some women “news avoiders”? New research suggests one reason has to do with emotional labor  Harvard’s Nieman Lab

The Many Voices of Journalism  Columbia Journalism Review  

The commercial use of FOIA in the service of corporate interests  New York Times

So Many College Students Get News on Snapchat  Mashable 

***FAKE NEWS

These news anchors are professional and efficient: They’re also not human  Washington Post 

Free Speech and Journals’ Responsibility in Vaccine Debates  PLOS

The Acosta Video Debate Is the Future of Fake News  Medium 

Don’t want to fall for fake news? don’t be lazy  Wired 

Find Out If You Got Duped By The Internet With This Week's Fake News Quiz  BuzzFeed News 

WhatsApp awards $1 million for misinformation research  Poynter

***STUDENT MEDIA  

Dear Journalism Students, You Are NOT The Enemy  Dynamics of Writing

Pepperdine Journalism Student Reacts To Thousand Oaks Shooting  NPR

The student newspaper at the University at Buffalo revealed political donation patterns among university faculty, staff, and councilmembers  Spectrum

***STUDENT LIFE

Gen-Z employees don’t do email  Fast Company 

Somebody at Hasbro Apparently Thought Monopoly for Millennials was a great idea  Mashable 

***PERSONAL GROWTH 

The Tyranny of Clock Time Becoming (my blog) 

The Problem With Being Perfect: A trait that’s often seen as good can actually be destructive. Here’s how to combat it The Atlantic

Do We Grow Less Tolerant of Language Change as We Age?  Chronicle of Higher Ed 

***WRITING & READING

How To Become A Great Writer: George Orwell  Medium

Writing advice from author Katie Kitamura  PBS 

30 Words Of Wisdom From Writers, To Inspire You Through The Rest Of NaNoWriMo  Bustle

***LANGUAGE 

Arabic has a low profile: Part of the reason is that it is not really a single language at all Economist

Why Do Quarterbacks Say 'Hut Hut Hike?'  Digg

Blasphemy and the Strange World of Linguistic Crimes  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Where Do We Begin? Language Learning and Grammar Chronicle of Higher Ed

***LITERATURE 

The Real Names of 42 Fictional Characters  Mental Floss

Read up with our favorite end-of-year books  Wired   

The Women of Brooklyn’s Well-Read Black Girl Book Club  The Cut

***GENDER   

Midterms Were Billed 'The Year Of Women' And Indeed They Were  NPR

The female justices at the U.S. Supreme Court tend to get interrupted more often during oral argument  Bloomberg 

The 2018 Gender Gap Was Huge  FiveThirtyEight 

How the women in charge of programming at CNN are changing the news we see  Fast Company

***RACE & ETHNICITY ISSUES

White man angrily accuses a black teenager of stealing a wallet: The teen and his classmates were doing a project on racism  KDVR

‘We are armed now’: In Kentucky, shootings leave a black church and the white community around it shaken Washington Post

School district investigates boys' apparent Nazi salute taken during prom  NBC-15

Local racist angry at protestors in Orange, Texas  BoingBoing

Key takeaways about Latino voters in the 2018 midterm elections  Pew Research Center  

***LEGAL ISSUES  

Is Banning Reporters From The White House Legal? Jim Acosta's Press Pass Suspension Sparked Outrage Bustle

The idea of intellectual property is nonsensical and pernicious   Aeon  

***TECHNOLOGY 

Is The Pentagon Modifying Viruses To Save Crops — Or To Wage Biological Warfare?  NPR

The 7 Craziest Ways CRISPR Is Being Used Right Now  Medium  

Radars, Cameras, and Lidar: How Self-Driving Cars See the Road  Wired  

We Tried Facebook’s New Portal Device (So You Don’t Have To)  New York Times

***BIG DATA & AI  

Machine learning algorithms don’t yet understand things the way humans do — with sometimes disastrous consequences  New York Times

Radio emissions intelligence that has mostly been the domain of militaries/intelligence agencies—But private industry is giving it a shot Wired

Distinguishing between different types of data scientists..which to hire and what they need to succeed Harvard Business Review

The first proof that quantum computers can outstrip conventional technology  Axios 

MIT Survey: B2B marketers enthusiasm—not only for what ML is capable of doing, but also for the ways it will enable them to improve their own performance  MIT Tech Review 

***RELIGION  

A Christian Radio Network is edging ever closer to becoming the Trump radio network: Sebastian Gorka  Associated Press

Lead Singer for Christian Band Provided Freddy Mercury’s vocals in Bohemian Rhapsody Movie Relevant Magazine 

The Satanic Temple sues Netflix for $150 million for using a statue of a demon god in 'The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina'  CNBC 

Pepperdine Student, Cal Lutheran Grad Among California Shooting Victims  Christianity Today 

Randy Alcorn on Evangelical Sex Scandals: Bad Pastors Just Reappear at New Churches, Repeat Sins Christian Post  

Baptist attitudes about alcohol may be shifting, observers say  The Alabama Baptist

Unification Church Proclaims Christian Era is Over; Next Week Christian Entertainers Open for God’s Daughter  Throckmorton Blog 

Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren recovering after emergency surgery  OC Register 

***RELIGION AND POLITICS 

Faith leaders denounce Trump proclamation denying asylum outside border crossings  Religious News Service 

Texas Megachurch pastor calls Democrats 'some kind of religion that is basically godless'  KHOU

***GOOD NEWS 

Fisherman in New Zealand rescues toddler floating at sea  Associated Press

9 year old designs Virginia county's "I Voted" sticker  CBS News  

Heartwarming Photos of Acts of Kindness  MSNBC  

First-of-its-kind surgery allows child with polio-like illness AFM to walk again  CBS News

Boy Has Dished Out More Than 65,000 Doughnuts To Cops To Say Thank You  MSNBC

***ART & DESIGN

Why are tech companies making custom typefaces?  ARUN

Recycled Packing Materials Sculpted Into Elaborate Renaissance Costumes by Suzanne Jongmans  This is Colossal 

The top submissions to Nat Geo's 2018 photography contest  National Geographic  

Why Do Filmmakers Love van Gogh?  New Yorker 

David Hockney's Portrait of an Artist and the priciest works by living artists ever sold at auction  CBC  

The Size of Things: Now with Context: An artist models the universe at 1/190 millionth scale Scholarly Kitchen

A New Online Database, Will Feature Works by 600+ Overlooked Female Artists from the 15th-19th Centuries  Open Culture 

Mary Baldwin shut down an art exhibit after two days when some students said images were racist Inside Higher Ed

***MUSIC 

Inside the booming business of background music  The Guardian  

BMI tells Trump campaign Rihanna's work has been removed from their license agreement  LA Times 

The Album is in Trouble, and the Music Business Probably Can’t Save it  Rolling Stone

Andrea Bocelli Becomes First Classical Artist to Hit No. 1 on Billboard Artist 100 Chart Billboard

***THE BUSINESS OF MEDIA  

Vice Media to cut workforce by up to 15%, consolidate websites  Market Watch

***FILM

The 50 Greatest Movie Dance Scenes of All Time  Vulture 

Memoir of growing up as the gay son of a conservative Baptist preacher & Attending Christian College has been made into a movie  NPR 

***JOURNALISM MOVIES 

Review of A Private War: A Journalist Puts Her Life on the Line  Chicago Sun-Times 

What Makes a Great Movie About Journalism?  New Republic 

***JOBS 

10 Impressive Questions to Ask in a Job Interview  The Cut   

***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT 

A Professor Accused of Sexual Harassment Faces Novel Penalty: Prospective Students May Read All About It  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Dear Dads: Your Daughters Told Me About Their Assaults. This Is Why They Never Told You (opinion) Washington Post

He Spent Four Days In Jail For Sex Crimes Against A Minor: Prosecutors Want Him In Prison BuzzFeed News

Uber has defined 21 categories of sexual misconduct, from leering to rape Quartz  

How Schools Can Reduce Sexual Violence  NPR

***SOCIAL ISSUES 

Mass incarceration is a political choice. It can be undone  Economist 

Firearms And Dementia: How Do You Convince A Loved One To Give Up Their Guns? NPR

***BUSINESS & FINANCE

Visualizing the World's Tech Giants 2018 by Market Cap  How Much  

To Give a Great Presentation, Distill Your Message to Just 15 Words  INNOVATION 3 Business Models That Could Bring Million-Dollar Cures to Everyone  Harvard Business Review 

***ENVIRONMENT

The ozone layer appears to be successfully repairing itself BBC

Big Oil claims it's doing its part to combat climate change: A new study finds it's not even close Business Insider

 ***HEALTH

The key to a long life has little to do with ‘good genes’  Wired  

Why Doctors Hate Their Computers  The New Yorker  

Autism Linked to Zinc Deficiency in Childhood  Newsweek

The Mystery of the Havana Syndrome: Unexplained brain injuries afflicted dozens of American diplomats and spies  The New Yorker 

US cigarette smoking rate reaches new low  CNN

Fewer than One in Three Americans Meet New Physical Fitness Guidelines Real Talk 910

Do gut bacteria make a second home in our brains?  Science Mag  

Something Happened to U.S. Drug Costs in the 1990s New York Times

***FOOD

These Men Ate Poison So You Could Have the FDA  Gizmodo  

Do you love or loathe coffee? Your genes may be to blame National Geographic

The Curse of the Honeycrisp Apple  Bloomberg

Every State's Most Important Food Innovation  Thrillist

***CHILDREN 

Digital Media Is 'Like Cocaine' for Babies’ Developing Brains  US News & World Report

Designer Babies Aren’t Futuristic. They’re Already Here  MIT Tech Review 

Many Turn to YouTube for Children's Content, News, How-To Lessons  Pew Research Center

Parents worry more about bullying than anything else  Economist \

A preoccupation with safety has stripped childhood of independence, risk taking, and discovery—without making it safer The Atlantic

The school bully has moved online and is following children home  Economist  

***SCIENCE

Frequent inbreeding may have caused skeletal abnormalities in early humans  Science Mag

Stem Cells Remember Tissues’ Past Injuries  Quanta Magazine 

***PSYCHOLOGY 

What if the Placebo Effect Isn’t a Trick? New research is zeroing in on a biochemical basis for the placebo effect — possibly opening a Pandora’s box for Western medicine  New York Times

Super Empaths Are Real, Says Study  Vice 

Study: young men obsessed with building muscles have higher mental health risks  Big Think 

Americans Can't Escape Long-Disproven Body Stereotypes: People continue to fall back on harmful assumptions about the link between body shape and personality  The Atlantic 

Researchers discover a link between nonverbal synchronization and relationship success  Big Think 

Veteran Suicide (podcast)  Axios

New theory of human thinking says the brain's navigation system is central to organizing and recalling memories and experiences  CBS News

***NEUROSCIENCE  

Sadness Circuit Found In Human Brain  NPR 

How to train your brain to accept change, according to neuroscience NBC News

***HISTORY 

Is Donald Trump the Andrew Jackson of Our Time?  Chronicle of Higher Ed

We once trusted too much in inevitable progress: We got World War  The Washington Post

***RESEARCH 

The largest database of scientific retractions just went live and makes the process a whole lot easier  HowStuffWorks 

Many Chinese doctorate students can’t graduate until they publish articles in academic journals — a demand that pushes many into corruption Sixth Tone

Scientists struggle with confusing journal guidelines  Nature 

Rash Of Retractions Highlight Flaws In Science, But Also Self-Correction  WGBH 

Why Fake Data When You Can Fake a Scientist?  Medium

***HIGHER ED

How Americans voted on 6 key higher ed ballot measures  Education Dive

The future of work won't be about degrees, it will be about skills  CNBC 

Feds Prod Universities to Address Website Accessibility Complaints  Inside Higher Ed

What the results of the Midterm Elections Mean for Higher Ed  Chronicle of Higher Ed

Florida’s College of the Arts will increase its faculty by over 10 percent  Inside Higher Ed

Universities under investigation for poor website accessibility  Education Dive

The Hottest New Place for University Satellite Campuses: Los Angeles  Chronicle of Higher Ed

The Trump Administration Just Reissued Rules Allowing Employers “Religious Or Moral” Exemptions To Covering Birth Control  Buzzfeed News 

After California massacre, sister universities show support for Pepperdine  Chronicle of Higher Ed  

***HUMANITIES

We Need Cutting-Edge Humanities More Than Ever  Pacific Standard

As Humanities Majors Decline, Colleges Try to Hype Up Their Programs  The Atlantic

Employers Want Liberal Arts Grads Inside Higher Ed

***TEACHING 

5 Teaching Tips From ‘How Humans Learn’  Chronicle of Higher Ed

The ‘Holy Grail’ of Class Discussion  Chronicle of Higher Ed

How Can Schools Better Persuade Students To Show Up For Class? NPR

***ACADEMIC LIFE 

Invisible police in senior academia  Neurochambers 

Connecticut community college professor put on paid administrative leave for giving Nazi salute Hartford Courant

An academic reported sexual harassment: Her university allegedly retaliated  The Verge

The Tyranny of Clock Time

Clock time is that linear time by which our life is measured in abstract units appearing on clocks, watches, computers, and calendars. These measuring units tell us the month, the day, the hour, and the second in which we find ourselves, and decide for us how much longer we have to speak, listen, eat, sing, study, pray, sleep, play, or stay. Our lives are dominated by our clocks and watches. In particular, the tyranny of the one-hour slot is enormous. There are visiting hours, therapeutic hours, and even happy hours. Without being fully aware of it, our most intimate emotions are often influenced by the clock. The big wall clocks in hospitals and airports have caused much inner turmoil and many tears. 

Clock time is outer time, time that has a hard merciless objectivity to it. Clock time leads us to wonder how much longer we have to live and whether “real life” has not already passed us by. Clock time makes us disappointed with today and seems to suggest that maybe tomorrow, next week, and next year it will really happen. Clock time keeps saying, Hurry, hurry, time goes fast, maybe you wil miss the real thing! But there is still a chance.. Hurry to get married, find a job, visit a country, read a book, get a degree…Try to take it all in before you run out of time.”

Clock time always makes us depart. It breeds impatience and prevents any compassionate being together. 

Henri Nouwen, Donald McNeill, Douglas Morrison from the book Compassion

There will come a point

There will come a point in the race, when you alone will need to decide. You will need to make a choice. Do you really want it? You will need to decide. -Rolf Arands, a runner