Category: Read in WSJ
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Fitting in vs. Belonging: The Costs and Benefits of Conformity
A while back, I wrote about Brene Brown‘s inspiring TEDxHouston talk on Wholeheartedness as connection through courage, vulnerability and authenticity. I have since read her most recent book, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are, and was so moved by her insights that…
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Virtual Reality, Somatic Cognition, Homuncular Flexibility and Object-Centered Sociality and Learning
Jaron Lanier recently wrote about virtual reality and its potential application to learning, utilizing some evocative terms and offering an educational scenario that reminds me of a seminal 1997 paper that described how a Nobel prize-winning biologist fused with her objects of study. The Saturday Wall Street Journal article gave me a keener appreciation for…
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The facts and opinions surrounding the Proposition 8 ruling
I was elated by U.S. District Court Judge Vaughan Walker's ruling agaist California's Propostion 8 last week. The 136-page ruling, overturning the state's ban on same-sex marriage, renews my hope for full civil rights for all of us's, including lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Over the weekend, I have read some interesting facts…
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Minority Report and Recent Advances in Pervasive Personalized Advertising
Several recent articles I've read about new developments in tracking and advertising in different countries – most of which reference the science fiction movie, Minority Report – reminded me of a quote often attributed to science fiction author, William Gibson: The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed The articles describe the…
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Coffee, Community and Health
An article reviewing the health benefits and risks of coffee by Melinda Beck in yesterday's Wall Street Journal includes a number of studies that have yielded conflicting results on the effects of coffee. Coffee consumption of varying levels has been correlated with significant differences in the likelihood of being diagnosed with diseases such as diabetes,…
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Coffee, conversation, community and culture at Starbucks
Given my long-standing interest in the social and community aspects of coffeehouse culture, I was intrigued by a number of articles about Byant Simon‘s book, “Everything but the Coffee: Learning About America from Starbucks“, that turned up during web searches and in some of the links in the tweetstream of @CoffeeShopChat. Over the last several…
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Blessing and Wounding: Longing, loss, pain and transformation
I was transfixed by an article in today’s Wall Street Journal – In Praise of the Crackup: A novelist peers through darkness to find glittering gems in writing and art – by Jeanette Winterson, in which she explores “the collision of creativity and mental instability”, digging deeper into the way that artists are often able…
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Cyberbullying: Prevalence, Preventability and Politics
Perhaps due, in part, to things I’ve read, thought and blogged about recently regarding cybershaming and accountability, and the fearful overreactions of parents and other authorities over teens’ use of MySpace, I had a more skeptical reaction to a Wall Street Journal article this week on "Schools Act to Short-Circuit Spread of ‘Cyberbullying’" than the…