Some days
/Some days you’re the pigeon, some days you’re the statue.
ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire
Napping Through Life
/For men and women who have accepted the reality of change, the need for endless learning and trying is a way of living, a way of thinking, a way of being awake and ready. Life isn’t a train ride where you choose your destination, pay your fare and settle back for a nap. It’s a cycle ride over uncertain terrain, which you in the driver’s seat, constantly correcting your balance and determining the direction of progress. It’s difficult, sometimes profoundly painful. But its better than napping through life.
John Gardner, Self-Renewal
Let the winter pass
/Sometimes it is best to lie low, to do nothing but let the winter pass. In such moments, you can collect your self and strengthen your identity.
Small opportunities
/Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises. –Demostenes
Articles of interest about higher ed - Dec 4
/***THE VIRUS
AstraZeneca and Oxford's stories clash on COVID-19 vaccine
The order of COVID-19 symptoms tends to differ from the flu
Here’s how long it takes to catch COVID if you’re in a room with someone who has it
***HIGHER ED & THE VIRUS
U.S. colleges mull new virus protocols for students' return
What role could colleges have in distributing coronavirus vaccines?
SDSU students in uproar after faculty cancels spring break
***HUMANITIES
UVM to eliminate 23 programs in the College of Arts and Sciences
Thousands petition against proposed cuts to humanities at UVM
***LAYOFFS & FURLOUGHS
More than 400 workers temporarily laid off at 3 Pa. colleges
***HIGHER ED
Universities Face Federal Crackdown on Academics With China Ties
National Academies unveils recommendations for colleges ahead of the spring semester
Pricey mini campus promises students maskless, safe spring term
Many Universities Lag on Social Mobility Indicators, Report Finds
University rankings need a rethink
How Minnesota colleges are keeping study abroad programs afloat
Penn professor predicts six trends that will influence higher education decisions in 2021
***CERTIFICATIONS
Embedding Certifications Into Bachelor's Degrees
***HIGHER ED IN COURT
Ohio professor pursues legal battle after rebuke for misgendering student
Lawsuit alleges years of anti-Black discrimination at San Diego area college
University sues former student accused of causing $400K in damage during prank
San Diego State University sued in the death of fraternity pledge
***COLLEGE COVID LAWSUITS
Two students sue Miami University over suspension for violating COVID-related code of conduct
NYU student sues over suspension for violating COVID orders
***LAWSUITS OVER TUITION
Lawsuit against precollege summer program at UW-Madison dismissed
New Lawsuit Takes Aim at Texas Universities’ Out-of-State Tuition
***ONLINE CLASSES
5 Things We've Learned About Virtual School In 2020
The Chicago Guide to College Science Teaching
The Problem With Giving Math Tests Online, and How Teachers Are Solving It
Colleges are not giving students pass-fail options this semester-- with some exceptions
The emotional toll of distance learning ($)
***ONLINE CHEATING
Online exam monitoring can invade privacy and erode trust at universities
College Students Are Learning Hard Lessons About Anti-Cheating Software
Students search for shortcuts as virtual schooling expands
An argument for giving kids open-book tests during the pandemic (and after) ($)
***ACADEMIC LIFE
Faculty leaders at Rutgers are challenging spending decisions
University of Chicago Grad Students Call on Faculty to Denounce Videos By Department Member
UC Berkeley instructors discuss struggles amid online learning
Ferris State University professor on leave following controversial COVID-19 comments
Professor finds his third-grade photo online — and realizes he’s been a meme for years
Ex-DeSales University priest’s child porn included torture of young children, feds say
***ADMINISTRATORS
College president faces criticism for how he communicated a professor's death from COVID
Is the Pandemic Pushing a Wave of Presidents Out? Not Yet ($)
Ohio State to launch national search for new provost
***CATHOLIC COLLEGES
Deep cuts at Catholic colleges draw backlash
New alliance of workers and students across Jesuit institutions joins together to protest cuts
***CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS
Bennett College finds a new accreditor after two years
Surf’s up in innovative class at Point Loma Nazarene
***RESEARCH
A scientific search engine that generates one-sentence summaries of research papers
How papers get published, how they get retracted, and what a better system might look like (podcast)
Correcting the scientific record- a broken system?
AI created hypothesis: Machine-learning systems are beginning to generate ideas, not just test them
Journal policies and editors' opinions on peer review
***RETRACTIONS
Science Is Self-Correcting- but the Record Is Not (video)
Stem cell researcher’s retraction count may near two dozen
***STUDENT LOANS
Ed Dept. Analysis Projects $435B in Student Loan Losses
***STUDENT LIFE
Enrollment By International Students In U.S. Colleges Plummets
More than a third of prospective college students are reconsidering higher education
Discrimination from some California college professors? Fresno State student speaks out
‘I’ve never seen the campus’: What it’s like to attend Harvard from your childhood bedroom
Harvard gets its first Black, elected student body president
Students lobby for pass-fail grading
Research integrity awareness among biology students
***FREE SPEECH
Ohio lawmakers require free speech protection at colleges, universities
***STUDENT MEDIA
***CYBERATTACKS
Universities Attacked by Phishing Campaign
A ransomware attack has shut down Baltimore County public schools
***SEXUAL HARASSMENT & ASSAULT
This type of sexual harassment on campus often goes overlooked
University of Michigan hires firm to reform culture around sexual misconduct
Our parents warned us the internet would break our brains. It broke theirs instead.
/So many boomers that warned millennials to be careful on the internet seem to have forgotten all their own warnings. Their brains are broken, and that destruction is threatening to break our relationships, too.
There is so much content on the internet, and so much of it is bad. It is blasting in your face relentlessly. To navigate it well — to discern truth and lies, to parse one's own emotional and reflexive responses, to summon the mental energy to pay attention to credibility and incentives and the small, almost indescribable cues that might indicate whether a piece of content is to be trusted — is very difficult. It is especially difficult for those who have low digital literacy because they did not grow up using the internet.
Our parents' generation, no less than ours, was totally unprepared for the advent of digital technology and mass media … They've been sucked into their screens like the rest of us. They weren't physically abducted, as they feared we could be by a chatroom catfisher in 1999. But it can still feel like the people we know and love are gone.
Bonnie Kristan writing in The Week
Top teacher wins $1m and gives half away
/#GOODNEWS
your friends
/Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future.
The seven social sins
/The seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice. -Mahatma Gandhi
Articles of interest about religion - Dec 1
/***THE VIRUS
A COVID-19 Vaccine For Children May Still Be Many Months Away
These are the places you're most likely to catch COVID-19 this winter
Is shopping in stores safe during the pandemic?
***RELIGION & THE VIRUS
"I'm listening to God, not the WHO": Pastor Robert Jeffress rejects holiday restrictions
Fresno bishop warns Catholics against stem cell-based COVID vaccines, including Pfizer’s
Church patriarch dies from Covid-19 after leading open-casket funeral of bishop killed by the virus
Tennessee mayor won’t require COVID masks until Holy Spirit says so
Christian Songwriter Is Fed Up With Believers Who Refuse To Wear Masks
Tequila bar applies to become church amid COVID-19 lockdown rules
Catholics Are Fighting Among Themselves About a COVID Vaccine
***RELIGION AND POLITICS
Georgia Senate runoff dividing state’s Christians
N.C. pastor who led march to polls is charged ($$)
***RELIGION & THE LAW
Supreme Court blocks strict COVID-19 restrictions on New York houses of worship
Supreme Court won't get involved in Louisiana pastor's case
Appellate ruling scraps conversion therapy bans in Miami Beach, cities across Florida
***DENOMINATIONS
Progressive United Methodists announce new denomination: Liberation Methodist Connexion
***MEGACHURCHES
California megachurch associate pastor dies of COVID-19
County deals setback for Willow Creek Wheaton to build megachurch near Cantigny Park
Andy Stanley responds to critics over closed church: We’re doing pretty good
Senior Pastors resign from Charismatic megachurch
Thankful: Megachurch minister’s wife awaits a transplant
***RELIGION IN CHINA
China Targets Muslim Scholars And Writers With Increasingly Harsh Restrictions
***RELIGION & RACIAL ISSUES
Pastors Launch Church-Planting Network for ‘Black and Brown Neighborhoods’
We are fugitives from ourselves
/Human beings have always employed an enormous variety of clever devices for running away from themselves, and the modern world is particularly rich in such stratagems. We can keep ourselves so busy, fill our lives with so many diversions, stuff our heads with so much knowledge, involve ourselves with so many people and cover so much ground that we never have time to probe the fearful and wonderful world within. More often than not we don't want to know ourselves, don't want to depend on ourselves, don't want to live with ourselves. By middle life most of us are accomplished fugitives from ourselves.
John Gardner, Self-Renewal
Persuasion
/You cannot reason someone out of something he or she was not reasoned into. -Jonathan Swift (Born Nov. 30, 1667)
Love is God?
/(CS Lewis was born Nov. 29, 1898)
Love ceases to be a demon only when he ceases to be a god; which of course can be re-stated in the form ‘begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god.’ This balance seems to me an indispensable safeguard. If we ignore it, the truth that God is love may slyly come to mean for us the converse, that love is God.
Every human love, at its height, has a tendency to claim for itself a divine authority. Its voice tends to sound as if it were the will of God himself. It tells us not to count the cost, it demands of us a total commitment, it attempts to over-ride all other claims and insinuates that any action which is sincerely done “for love’s sake” is thereby lawful and even meritorious.
CS Lewis, The Four Loves
The point of modern propaganda
/The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth. -Former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov
Articles of interest about journalism, fakes, social media & more - Nov 27
/***THE VIRUS
Their Teeth Fell Out. Was It Another Covid-19 Consequence? ($)
Evidence Builds That an Early Mutation Made the Pandemic Harder to Stop ($)
Oxford Covid vaccine hit 90% success rate thanks to dosing error
***JOURNALISM
Will journalists be considered front-line workers for COVID-19 vaccines?
Five Things I Learned Writing for a Newspaper
COVID-19 cases are increasing while interest in COVID-19 news drops
Journalists are facing threats, even in metro Phoenix (opinion)
The moral argument for diversity in newsrooms is also a business argument — and you need both
***OAN
YouTube temporarily suspends, demonetizes OANN
OAN Is So Dangerous Because It Looks Like a Real News Channel
An OAN Host Has Been Helping Rudy With Trump’s Legal Efforts
***THE BUSINESS OF JOURNALISM
It’s time to hold editors accountable for harassed news workers
Apple is reducing the cut it takes from most news publishers’ subscriptions
Journalists face volatile media landscape
NYT and WaPo digital subscriptions tripled since 2016
BuzzFeed set to acquire HuffPost
***WRITING & READING
Oxford English Dictionary couldn't pick just one 'word of the year' for 2020
Malcolm X Biography Wins National Book Award
ViacomCBS sells Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House for $2 billion
2020 National Book Awards winners announced
***FAKES & FRAUDS
Our parents warned us the internet would break our brains. It broke theirs instead
Designed to Deceive: Do These People Look Real to You? ($)
How Taiwan is Beating Political Disinformation
Jupyter trojan: Newly discovered malware stealthily steals usernames and passwords
What Happened to the Deepfake Threat to the Election?
Debunking claims of election rigging (video)
China’s ‘paper mills’ are grinding out fake scientific research at an alarming rate
***SOCIAL MEDIA
Parler, the “free speech” Twitter wannabe, explained
Snapchat launches a TikTok-like feed called Spotlight, kick-started by paying creators
Social media companies all starting to look the same
Instagram cautiously considers paying publishers
How social media made us isolated, scared, and tribal
***PRIVACY & SECURITY
Citizens are turning face recognition on unidentified police
‘The cameras are always on’: Student surveillance and privacy protection in the age of e-learning
Citizens are turning face recognition on unidentified police
***LITERATURE
Unseen JRR Tolkien essays on Middle-earth coming in 2021
***POETRY
China Disappeared my professor. It can’t silence his poetry
Happy 100th anniversary to the poem that every writer needs to know
Kwame Alexander Offers New Poems On Race And Hope As 'Psalms And Balms' For The Soul
We are going to have a president who quotes poetry
Abolishing God
/Sometimes a nation abolishes God, but fortunately, God is more tolerant.
The Power of Labels
/Most patients take too much responsibility for the wrong things, and not enough responsibility for those things about which they can do something. Furthermore, on the positive side, the naming (of their condition) helps the patient feel allied with a vast movement which is "science"; and, also, he is not isolated any more since all kinds of other people have the same problem that he has. The naming assures him that he therapist has an interest in him and is willing to act as his guide through purgatory. Naming the problem is tantamount to the therapist's saying, "Your problem can be known, it has causes; you can stand outside and look at it."
But the greatest danger in the therapeutic process lies right here: that the naming for the patient will be used not as a aid for change, but as a substitute for it. He may stand off and get a temporary security by diagnosis, labels, talking about symptoms, and then be relieved of the necessity of using will in action and in loving. This plays into the hands of modern man's central defense, namely intellectualizing- using words as substitutes for feelings and experience. The word skates always on the edge of the danger of covering up the daimonic as well as disclosing it.
Rollo May, Love & Will