May 19, 2023

My Life with One Arm

May 19, 2023/ Stephen Goforth

Two months to the day after my accident, I went to see a therapist for the first time in my life. I didn’t know where to begin. We discussed loss and resilience and the will to live and adapt. But when I started talking about the outpouring of love and support that I had received since my accident, I began weeping uncontrollably. I realized that for the first time in my life, I was truly letting love into my heart. Losing an arm has connected me to others in a way I have never felt. Yes, I have suffered a tremendous loss, but in a way, I feel as if I have gained much more.

Miles O’Brian, Writing in New York Magazine

May 18, 2023

The Vacuum Cleaner Method

May 18, 2023/ Stephen Goforth

I know a man who is a tremendous asset to his organization, not because of any extraordinary ability, but because he invariably demonstrates a triumphant thought pattern. Perhaps his associates view a proposition pessimistically, so he employs what he calls the “vacuum cleaner method.” That is, by a series of questions he “sucks the dust” out of his associates’ minds; he draws out their negative attitudes. Then quietly he suggests positive ideas concerning the proposition until a new set of attitudes gives them a new concept of the facts.

They often comment upon how different facts appear when this man “goes to work on them.” It’s the confidence attitude that makes the difference. This doesn’t rule out objectively appraising of facts. The inferiority complex victim sees all facts through discolored attitudes. The secret of correction is simply to gain a normal view, and that is always slanted on the positive side.

Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking

May 17, 2023

The Power of Lonely

May 17, 2023/ Stephen Goforth

The nice thing about medicine is it comes with instructions. Not so with solitude, which may be tremendously good for one’s health when taken in the right doses, but is about as user-friendly as an unmarked white pill. Too much solitude is unequivocally harmful and broadly debilitating, decades of research show. But one person’s “too much” might be someone else’s “just enough,” and eyeballing the difference with any precision is next to impossible.

People should be mindfully setting aside chunks of every day when they are not engaged in so-called social snacking activities like texting, g-chatting, and talking on the phone. For teenagers, it may help to understand that feeling a little lonely at times may simply be the price of forging a clearer identity.

“People make this error, thinking that being alone means being lonely, and not being alone means being with other people,” John Cacioppo of the University of Chicago, said. “You need to be able to recharge on your own sometimes. Part of being able to connect is being available to other people, and no one can do that without a break.”

Leon Neyfakh, writing in the Boston Globe

May 16, 2023

When to Ignore The Customers

May 16, 2023/ Stephen Goforth

In 2009, Walmart lost a tremendous amount of money after having launched “an uncluttering project” and asking their customers whether they’d like “Walmart aisles to be less cluttered?”. An obvious “yes” costed the corporation a billion dollars: sure, customers were happy to see clean isles, but the sales quickly went down.

There are good examples when listening to what the customer wants leads to wrong conclusions: take a New Coke or a 1992 Shevy Caprice for example. Sometimes, running focus groups, testing in the usability lab, facilitating interviews may yield misleading results. Sometimes, ignoring what your customers say is the best course of action.

Kristian Mikhel writing in the UX Collective

May 16, 2023

Fake scientific papers are alarmingly common

May 16, 2023/ Stephen Goforth

When neuropsychologist Bernhard Sabel put his new fake-paper detector to work, he was “shocked” by what it found. After screening some 5000 papers, he estimates up to 34% of neuroscience papers published in 2020 were likely made up or plagiarized; in medicine, the figure was 24%.

Jeffrey Barinard writing in Science Magazine

May 15, 2023

What the Surgeon General Misses about Loneliness

May 15, 2023/ Stephen Goforth

US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy wrote a New York Times opinion piece two weeks ago about loneliness. He called it a “public health” problem and suggested the cause is isolation.

The Washington Post published a follow-up article based on the significant response it got to the advisory, noting:

Some (readers) pushed back on the notion that isolation was bad for them, describing themselves as introverts who prefer solitude or distrust others in their community.

So, on the one hand, you have people being told they are lonely, and they must be fixed, who do not see a problem themselves and aren't asking to be fixed. On the other hand, as noted by a sociologist in a Psychology Today article, the surgeon general's advisory reduces loneliness to "something people often bring on themselves." The fix for this lack of social interaction is, therefore, more social interaction. But there are "many outgoing people with active social lives (who) are lonely."

Symptoms interpreted as caused by a lack of interaction may actually be caused by estrangement. This alienation would not be solved by additional interaction but by more meaningful connections. That is, quality instead of quantity.

Stephen Goforth

May 15, 2023

Six Free Webinars this Week about Media

May 15, 2023/ Stephen Goforth

Mon, May 15 - The Adaptation of International Graduates in the Journalism Industry in the U.S.A.: Natural and Legal Challenges

What: Panelists in this webinar will discuss the challenges international students face after graduation in journalism for getting jobs in the media industry in the United States.

Who: Bey-Ling Sha, Ph.D., APR, Fellow PRSA, Dean of College of Communications, California State University, Fullerton; Steve Urbanski, Associate Professor of Director, Graduate Studies, Reed College of Media at West Virginia University; Katerina Spasovska, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Communication, Western Carolina University; Fisayo Okare, Journalist and Newsletter Writer, Documented, New York; Ershad Komal Khan (Moderator), Ph.D. student, University of Colorado-Boulder

When: 7 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Society of Professional Journalists

Becoming

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