Invention requires a long-term willingness to be misunderstood. You do something that you genuinely believe in, that you have conviction about, but for a long period of time, well-meaning people may criticize that effort … if you really have conviction that they’re not right, you need to have that long-term willingness to be misunderstood. It’s a key part of invention.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder

March 04, 2021

Getting closer to the truth

March 04, 2021/ Stephen Goforth

We have a natural tendency to look for instances that confirm our story and our vision of the world. We can get closer to the truth by negative instances, not by verification. –Nissim Taleb

March 03, 2021

Method over Goals

March 03, 2021/ Stephen Goforth

Little by little, preoccupation with method, technique and procedure gains a subtle dominance over the whole process of goal seeking. How it is done becomes more important than whether it is done. Means triumph over ends. Form triumphs over spirit.

Method is enthroned. Men become prisoners of their procedures, and organizations that were designed to achieve some goal become obstacles in the path to that goal.

A concern for “how to do it” is healthy and necessary. The fact that it often leads to an empty worship of method is just one of the dangers with which we have to live. Every human activity, no matter how ennobling or constructive or healthy, involves hazards. The flower of competence carries the seeds of rigidity just as the flower of virtue carries the seeds of complacency. “There is a road to hell,” said John Bunyan, “even from the gates of heaven.”

John Gardner, Self-Renewal

March 02, 2021

Solving problems

March 02, 2021/ Stephen Goforth

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. -Albert Einstein

March 01, 2021

Data Science articles from Feb 2021

March 01, 2021/ Stephen Goforth

The military is pinning high hopes on a program using machine learning for real-time decision-making so that unmanned systems form better “mesh” networks

What will make a data science CV attractive—and separate yourself from the wannabes

At artificial-intelligence conferences, researchers are increasingly alarmed by what they see

Neural nets yield clues to how brains learn thanks to (yes) backpropagation

Double federal R&D spending for AI each year until it hits $32B: NSC rec on AI to Congress

DoD moves to limit AI-sprawl for better coordination among projects

New machine learning theory raises questions about the very nature of science

Scaling regression inputs by dividing by two standard deviations

Researchers claim algorithm can determine the basic emotional state of a person by wireless signals

Graph neural networks are set to become an important feature of artificial intelligence

A machine learning framework that exploits the variability of resistive memory devices

In order to implement a Markov chain--a class of Bayesian machine-learning algorithms

Health and Human Services issues a guide for its artificial intelligence strategy

Learning data analytics before stepping into data science

Microsoft Excel becomes a programming language

How Much Math Do You Actually Need For Data Science?

Synthetic data offers a way out of privacy risks and bias issues for artificial intelligence

Building neural networks from scratch with Python and math. Step-by-step implementation & coding samples

March 01, 2021

Paradigm Shifts

March 01, 2021/ Stephen Goforth

Steven Covey offers a moving example in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People as to how context can change our outlook. Covey was riding the subway when a man and his children boarded the car. The kids were loud and rowdy, throwing things and disturbing everyone in the car. The man seemed oblivious.

It was very disturbing and yet the man sitting next to me did nothing. It was difficult not to feel irritated. I could not believe that he could be so insensitive as to let children run wild like that do nothing about it, taking no responsibility at all. So finally, with what I felt was unusual patience and restraint, I turned to him and said, “Sir, your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn’t control them a little more?

The man lifted his gaze and said softly, “Oh, you’re right. I guess I should do something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mother died. I don't know what to think and I guess they don’t know how to handle it either."

Can you imagine what I felt at that moment? My paradigm shifted. Suddenly I saw things differently, and because I saw things differently, I thought differently, I felt differently. My irritation vanished. I didn’t have to worry about controlling my attitude or my behavior; my heart was filled with the man’s pain. Feelings of sympathy and compassion flowed freely.

While this change of perspective could be momentary, it doesn't have to be. We are continually faced with decisions about how we will approach life's circumstances.

Remember that piece of music you heard that suddenly lifted your spirit and changed your whole outlook in the middle of the day? Do you remember that pleasant smell that took you back in time to fond memories? Remember when you exited a movie theater seeing an exhilarating film, inspired to change the world? Imagine putting your feet to those sentiments.

If change is possible, that puts the responsibility on our shoulders to make it happen. It's a thought that's downright scary—and motivating.

Stephen Goforth

February 27, 2021

As we grew older

February 27, 2021/ Stephen Goforth

We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves. -Lynn Hall

February 26, 2021

Articles of interest about higher ed - Feb 26

February 26, 2021/ Stephen Goforth

*** COVID-19

Traumatized and tired, nurses are quitting due to the pandemic

Has a Univ of Texas Professor Found a Way to Stop COVID-19 Vaccines From Spoiling?

Organ transplant patient dies after receiving Covid-infected lungs

Why are at-home COVID-19 tests still not widely available?

***HIGHER ED & COVID

More than 530,000 cases of Covid-19 have been reported among students, college employees ($)

How 5 universities tried to handle COVID-19 on campus

As U-Va. & U-Md. try to curb coronavirus surge, neighboring communities brace themselves ($)

‘What’s the Point?’ Young People’s Despair Deepens as Covid-19 Crisis Drags On ($)

CDC Guidelines For In-Person Learning Prove To Be An Impossible Task For Many Schools

How colleges are using their disciplinary codes to punish noncompliance with COVID-related safety and testing protocols

***COVID AT SPECIFIC SCHOOLS

Rising coronavirus cases at U-Va., VMI and other Virginia colleges spark worry, lead to changes ($)

Univ of Washington bans students from in-person classes after attending large party

***LAYOFFS & FURLOUGHS

Ithaca College approves plan to eliminate 116 faculty positions, programs, majors

Point Park University cuts 17 faculty, citing pandemic

Ex-football coach says firing was violation of free speech

***COLLEGE FINANCES

Major expansion of Cal Grant financial aid proposed

Dorms at Iowa universities lose tens of million in pandemic

Why Jay Paterno spoke out against a $48M renovation of Penn State football’s Lasch Building

Regional Public Universities Don’t Need Rescuing ($)

College athletic programs scrambling to cut costs and innovate scheduling and income ($)

Faculty representatives say university budget cuts in Nevada extremely damaging

***HIGHER ED

Vermont State Colleges merger plan moves forward

University of Michigan says it shut down a campus library for two days after discovering venomous spiders

Interest Surges in Top Colleges, While Struggling Ones Scrape for Applicants ($)

***K-12

SF school board shelves plan to rename schools honoring Abraham Lincoln and others

New Education Research Showing Kids Give Up Easier If Parents Step in to Help

***HUMANITIES

Report: no evidence that the earnings of humanities majors ever “catch up” to peers in other disciplines

U of Kansas Will Cut Humanities Department

***HIGHER ED IN COURT

Group that sued Harvard asks Supreme Court to end use of race in college admissions ($)

ASU reaches settlement with student who sued after removal as manager of campus radio station

Student sues Jacksonville University for fees paid during coronavirus shut down

***ONLINE CLASSES

Stanford study into “Zoom Fatigue” explains why video chats are so tiring

Northwestern sued over biometrics privacy in test proctoring software

Anti-cheating in the age of COVID

***ACADEMIC LIFE

More Than Half Of College Faculty Have Considered A Career Change Or Early Retirement

Professor Says She Was Cut Loose in Retaliation for tweeting about the response of the school regarding COVID-19 ($)

Faculty Members Are Suffering Burnout. These Strategies Could Help ($)

Professor with heart condition files complaint against school for not letting him teach virtually

Group of VCU professors object to administration’s call to return in-person

Four of the 20-some professors Canisius College recently laid off are suing for violations of contract

Pacific University accused of threatening to find prof guilty of sexual misconduct if he didn’t quit

Ithaca College faculty wins arbitration against administration Ithaca Journal

Columbia professor: I do heroin regularly for ‘work-life balance’

***ADMINISTRATORS

Widow of President Who Died After Covid-19 Diagnosis Takes Over at Saint Augustine’s U

A Public-Information Act Request Revealed About My College President showed a disturbing pattern of mismanagement and deceit

***CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS

Concordia: How years of internal strife over gay rights helped turn it into a ‘$400 million crater’

Liberty University will host the Virginia GOP convention

Bible College graduate entered U.S. Capitol during Jan. 6 attack

Wheaton College Fiscal Plan projects $9 million annual savings and a balanced budget

Seattle Pacific University faculty, staff, students and alumni create a letter of Lament in response to the schools statement on human sexuality

What is the Difference Between Liberty University and Messiah College? (opinion)

CCCU launches new database of racial, ethnic diversity resources

Wesley Theological Seminary proposes massive dorm to house hundreds of students — mostly from American University

***RESEARCH

Women make up just 24 percent of research universities' top earners

Science needs a radical overhaul

Plagiarism and duplication in abstracts at conferences

Elite scientists picking up more citations than ever as the rest lose out

Increasing ‘junk science’ is wreaking havoc on the credibility of research coming out of China

Sloppy work or deliberate fraud can get you published in a prestigious journal and cited in many others

Re-evaluation of solutions to the problem of unprofessionalism in peer review

Sexual violence survivors say Moody Bible Institute still isn’t taking their claims seriously

***RETRACTIONS

Publisher retracting five papers because of “clear evidence” that they were “computer generated”

Research linking violent entertainment to aggression retracted after scrutiny

Citation of retracted publications: A challenging problem

***STUDENTS & MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORT

Students With ADHD Need More Academic, Mental Health Support

Depression, Anxiety, Loneliness Are Peaking in College Students

Dramatically fewer students are seeking treatment from their college counseling centers

How to stop procrastinating with your online work

***STUDENT LIFE

George Washington Univ Does Away With RAs ($)

Free speech advocacy groups issue letters defending athletes right to kneel

1963 Morgan State University dropout giving $20 million to fund scholarships for needy students

University of Oregon's student gov ends contributions to athletics department in favor of struggling students

Students at Xavier University and the University of Cincinnati engage in ‘tip war' for restaurant workers

***RACIAL ISSUES ON CAMPUS

2020 college racial and gender report card shows 'insignificant progress'

Black undergraduates trust college leaders significantly less than their white peers

Meredith College students allege professor used N-word in class

Racism in Textbook Publishing

Authorities Investigate Racist Attacks During City University of New York virtual events

Investigation into racism at VMI moves forward after dispute over lawyers at interviews ($)

UCLA athlete dismissed from team after racist comments, outcry among students

Investigation does not support accusations by a Smith College student that she was ejected from a dorm because she was Black

Baylor regents accept commission report on school’s history linked to slavery and racial injustice

Black students, faculty discuss diversity, activism on Pitt campus

How an accusation of racism, and resulting lack of evidence, is riling Smith College

***SEXUAL ASSAULT & MISCONDUCT

Massachusetts Enacts Sweeping New Campus Sexual Assault Law

University of Illinois Sued Over Handling Of Sexual Misconduct Claims

February 26, 2021

We can choose

February 26, 2021/ Stephen Goforth

We cannot choose to have a life free of hurt. But we can choose to be free. -Auschwitz survivor Edith Eva Eger

February 25, 2021

Neighbor gives up COVID-19 vaccine appointment to stranger in need

February 25, 2021/ Stephen Goforth

#GOODNEWS

Grandmother Emily Johnson of Austin, Texas, was in need of open-heart surgery, but her doctor said she had to have one vaccination before the operation. ABC News has a video report below or you can read the story here.

February 25, 2021

Articles of interest about journalism, scams, writing & more - Feb 25

February 25, 2021/ Stephen Goforth

***COIVD-19

Studies Examine Variant Surging in California, and the News Isn’t Good

CDC says there’s one thing you shouldn’t do within 2 weeks of your coronavirus vaccine

Clergy On The Pandemic Front Lines: 'How Do We Really Grieve?'

What Could Happen If You Miss Your Second Covid-19 Vaccine Dose?

***JOURNALISM

A rule for good journalism: What is missing from this story?

Texas journalists are providing critical information about a disaster they’re living through

With the Loss of Physical Newsrooms, How are Young Journalists Faring?

One America News clashes again with White House correspondents over Trump-approved camera tent ($)

Trying a Des Moines Register reporter arrested while covering a protest violates free press rights (opinion)

***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM

Pandemic drives nonprofit media boom

Al Jazeera to launch rightwing media platform targeting US conservatives

Judge rejects Rep. Nunes' defamation lawsuit against CNN

Sale Of Tribune Publishing To Alden Global Capital Raises Concerns In Newsrooms

The news media bargaining code could backfire if small media outlets aren’t protected: an economist explains

***FREE SPEECH

DOJ Settles First Amendment Suit Over White House Press Access

***WRITING: MICROSOFT WORD

Microsoft Word getting killer upgrade to battle Google Docs

This new Microsoft Word feature is bound to be a hit, especially with slow typists

***WRITING & READING

AI can write a passing college paper in 20 minutes

Slow Down and Write Better Emails

What does a manuscript rejection really mean? (probably not what you think)

Library staffer fired after being accused of burning Trump, Coulter books

The rise of Black science fiction and fantasy

***FAKES & FRAUDS

Science Is Truth Until It Isn’t

People with extremist views less able to do complex mental tasks, research suggests

Nearly 30,000 Macs reportedly infected with mysterious malware

The viral Mars Perseverance rover video going around is fake

The Disinformation Vaccine: Is There a Cure for Conspiracy Theories?

Scientists said claims about China creating the coronavirus were misleading

***SCAMS

Scam alert: Caller tells viewer she must pay to watch TV newscast

Online scammers are rushing to exploit people desperate to get the Covid-19 vaccine

7 Podcasts About the Art of the Scam ($)

***FAKE NEWS

Dominion's MyPillow and Smartmatic's Fox News election suits put 'disinformation' on trial

Fake News? How to spot a deep fake

How memes became a major vehicle for misinformation

***QANON

The future of QAnon

Pizzagate’s violent legacy ($)

Life amid the ruins of QAnon: ‘I wanted my family back’ ($)

***SOCIAL MEDIA

From Clubhouse to Discord to Twitter, The Future of Social Media Is All Talk

***FACEBOOK

Facebook says it will pay news industry $1 billion over 3 years

Facebook Hashtag Purge Fails To Stop Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories Spreading

Facebook knew for years ad reach estimates were based on 'wrong data' per court filing

Facebook’s underground obituary pages

***SECURITY

France to boost cyberdefense after hospital malware attacks

Owner of app that hijacked millions of Android devices with one update exposes buy-to-infect scam

Microsoft: SolarWinds attack took more than 1,000 engineers to create

Ransomware gangs are running riot – paying them off doesn't help

How to stop robocalls: Every way we know to prevent the annoying ringing

***PRIVACY

You’ve been invited to Clubhouse. Your privacy hasn’t.

Tracker pixels in emails are now an ‘endemic’ privacy concern

***PRODUCING MEDIA

Audio takes off during the pandemic

***LANGUAGE

The Made-Up Language That Accidentally Became Real: The Story of Klingon

***POETRY

Beat poet, publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti dies at 101

Poems by 10 Contemporary Black Poets

An experimental program enrolled students from high-poverty high schools in a Harvard poetry course, and the students excelled

Thanks to Undocupoets, poets don’t need papers to be heard

February 25, 2021

The way to love

February 25, 2021/ Stephen Goforth

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost. -G. K. Chesterton

February 24, 2021

Stay hungry. Stay foolish. -Steve Jobs (Born: Feb. 24, 1955)

February 24, 2021/ Stephen Goforth

February 23, 2021

Getting ahead

February 23, 2021/ Stephen Goforth

The way to get ahead is to overdeliver. -Jack Welch

February 22, 2021

Getting the Big Picture

February 22, 2021/ Stephen Goforth

Without some grasp of the meaning of their relationship to the whole, it is not easy for individuals to retain a vivid sense of their own capacity to act as individuals, a sure sense of their own dignity and an awareness of their roles and responsibilities. They tend to accept the spectator role and to sink into passivity.

John Gardner, Self-Renewal

February 20, 2021

the widest possible difference

February 20, 2021/ Stephen Goforth

Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference. -Frederick Douglass (died Feb 20, 1895)

February 19, 2021

Inconvenient Conclusions

February 19, 2021/ Stephen Goforth

Conspiracy theories may be deployed as a rhetorical tool to escape inconvenient conclusions. People selectively appeal to a conspiracy among scientists to explain away a scientific consensus when their political ideology compels them to do so—but not when the scientific consensus is of no relevance to their politics.

Stephan Lewandowsky & John Cook, The Conspiracy Theory Handbook