A readable Wired article about why proofreading is difficult. My father, a technical editor for the U.S. Government, says he was so attuned to seeing typos that his brain would show them to him in a larger type size. Typos suck. They are saboteurs, undermining your intent, causing your resume to land in the “pass”…
The play that coined the word “robot,” Karel Capek’s R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), included violent robots, compassionate robots, and herd robots (who are content to be workers until incited by the violent robot leaders). This article explores a wide range of human responses to robots. Our expectations of robots and our response to their designs…
Psychology Today summary of research that debunks the myth of multitasking, with a nifty little practical test. Much recent neuroscience research tells us that the brain doesn’t really do tasks simultaneously, as we thought (hoped) it might. In fact, we just switch tasks quickly. Each time we move from hearing music to writing a text…
New Kindle Helps Readers Show Off By Shouting Title Of Book Loudly And Repeatedly Similar:What Critics of Student Writing Get Wrong [T]o improve as writers, student…AcademiaCrash site and Tower of Voices. Well worth the side trip on the way back from a weekend gi…Flight 93 crash site and Tower of Voices…CultureMajor benefits for students who…
King says many simple and effective techniques exist for managing stress. He suggests a few immediate and long-term methods for soothing frayed nerves. IMMEDIATE ACTIONS Stop, pause, and breathe. See the bigger picture. Contact a friend. LONG-TERM ACTIONS Diet and exercise. Daily “me time”. Remember to H.A.L.T.: “Make sure you’re not Hungry, you’re not Angry,…
In a nutshell, introversion is not about a preference to be alone. It not about being anxious around other people. It is not about being overwhelmed by cortical activity in the absence of stimulation. At its core, introversion is about deriving less reward from being the center of social attention. Getting the spotlight is not…
What the researchers found was that the typical diversion caused by an e-mail was nine minutes and 30 seconds in length. Now that was just the time spent on the e-mail itself. After that, it still took the participants of the study another 16 minutes to resume their primary task. That’s a lot of lost…
San Francisco State psychology professor Dr. Kevin Eschleman and his colleagues measured the effect of creative hobbies on over 400 employees. In two separate groups—one rated by coworkers and one self-rated—those with a creative hobby were more likely to be helpful, collaborative, and creative with their job performance. | As an added bonus, outside of…
This article makes an excellent point. The essential connection between the positive message that makes the pro-girl ad worth sharing and the product being sold is tentative at best. In a recent ad for Always feminine hygiene products, women and men are asked to demonstrate how it looks to “run, throw and fight like a…
Students continue to change… I’m doing a lot of thinking, about how I can adjusting my teaching strategies, so that I can still rely on my own strengths but also make use of the things my incoming students are really good at (not just what they say they want, and not just what they can…
Former NFL player and current pastor Joe Ehrmann reflects on the power coaches have over the identities of boys. There’s two kinds of coaches in America: You’re either transactional or you’re transformational. Transactional coaches basically use young people for their own identity, their own validation, their own ends. It’s always about them — the team…
A good collection. I’m only linking to it because there are 8 or 10 photos all on one page — I wouldn’t give it the traffic if it were a “slide show” with separate ads on each clickbaity page. The rest are on imgur. Similar:MTV VMAs: Will Smith Family's Reaction Was to Gaga, Not Miley…
Up to now, I refrained from posting anything on the FB “contagion” issue, but this article seems to have the right approach. Facebook has made no secret of the fact that its news feed is a manipulated version of reality. It selects the posts and links to display prominently that it has found through testing…
This is flexible, fluid thinking — children exploring an unlikely hypothesis. Exploratory learning comes naturally to young children, says Gopnik. Adults, on the other hand, jump on the first, most obvious solution and doggedly stick to it, even if it’s not working. That’s inflexible, narrow thinking. “We think the moral of the study is that…
I’m sorry for… This is wrong because… In the future, I will… Will you forgive me? —cuppacocoa. Similar:A Video Game About Changing What Happens In Shakespeare's HamletElsinore is a game where you play as Oph…CultureMy #AugustWilson #Steampunk NightmareToday is my last official day teaching a…AcademiaThe Liminal Classroom”What,” I asked, “are we to make of Plat…AcademiaSarek…
Summary of not-so-new scholarship, but perhaps worth a look if you are curious about the psychology of motivation and procrastination. If I were to ask [you] to describe the practice regiments of world-class musicians, you’d probably envision a shut-in artist who plays all day long and then tucks in their instrument at night. Amazingly though,…
NPR has a story that should probably have run last weekend, for Fathers’ Day. It’s still an interesting exploration of how the traditional definition of masculinity in culture has changed, as more men are not only studying and working alongside women (and seeing them as peers) but also playing a larger part in childcare. Noguera…
A reminder that polls that ask people to predict (or remember) their behavior are not as reliable as measurements that track what people actually do. (This is why usability testing — asking people to use something and measuring how well they perform — differs from simply gathering opinions.) The more attention-starved we feel, the more…
We tend to assume that pressure makes us more efficient. I work fastest when I’m on deadline. I stretch my grocery budget the most when my funds are running low. But in reality, it’s not that you’re working better when you’re stressed. It’s that the opposite situation, overabundance, often makes us less efficient. It’s a…
Kids learned better in a sparse lab setting than they did in a decorated room. Of course, if they were familiar with the room, and the decorations came from their own artwork and class projects, perhaps the items would be reminders rather than distractions, but the study didn’t test that possibility. For the study, 24…