delanceyplace archive | eclectic excerpts delivered to your email every day from editor Richard Vague Today's encore selection -- from "Busting Big Myths in Popular Psychology" by Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, John Ruscio, and Barry L. Beyerstein. "People often opine that releasing anger is healthier than bottling it up. "Popular media also assure us that anger is a monster we must tame by 'letting off steam', 'blowing our top', and 'getting things off our chest.' "Yet more than 40 years of research reveals that expressing anger actually amplifies aggression. "Psychologist Jill Littrell of Georgia State University concludes from a published review of the literature that expressing anger is helpful only when accompanied by constructive problem solving or communication designed to reduce frustration or address the immediate source of the anger. "Why is this myth so popular?
German Library Burns Books That Aren’t Politically Correct By Joshua Krause Most people like to believe that the West is some grand refuge of freedom and liberal democracy, and that any of the terrible things we’ve done, are all in the past. This belief especially applies to issues like censorship. The public tends to think that restricting free speech is something that prudish or narrow-minded conservatives did during the McCarthy era, or perhaps they’re reminded of the book burnings of Nazi Germany. Kurt Nimmo of Infowars.com recently reported on a translated German article, which suggests that a German library is culling insensitive books. So not only were Kästner’s works burned by the Nazis, they were burned again because of words that were written in a time period that wasn’t as sensitive as ours. But don’t think that this sort of thing won’t happen in America. I think we are facing a new era of censorship, in the name of political correctness. So America’s future won’t be teaming with book pyres for as far as the eye can see.
The delicate little flowers on today's college campuses It seems like every week there's a new horror story of political correctness run amok at some college campus. A warning not to wear culturally insensitive Halloween costumes sparked an imbroglio at Yale, which went viral over the weekend. A lecturer asked in an email, "Is there no room anymore for a child to be a little bit obnoxious … a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?" Students went ballistic. Washington Post columnist (and Tufts professor) Daniel Drezner was initially horrified by the spectacle but ultimately backtracked. As a Hayek fanboy and champion of localism, I should be quite sympathetic. Jonathan Haidt, a social scientist, and Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, recently wrote a sweeping survey titled "The Coddling of the American Mind" for the Atlantic, in which they cataloged how students are being swaddled in an emotional cocoon. Taco bars at fraternity fundraisers are considered offensive. Well, a lot.
Samsung Says You Shouldn't Be Worried About Its TVs Recording And Transmitting Your Voice Finally Home — Would you complain because a beautiful sunset... Harald Kautz-Vella – Black Goo, Part 1, 2, and 3. | A Sweet Dose of Reality Some interesting stuff..stick with it…~TS Part 1. There are 2 forms of Black Goo, one made by the earth, and another that was landed here by intention, in a meteor swarm, 80,000 years ago. Both are sentient and are designed to create life from the materials on the planet. The intelligence that seeded the off world goo, is creating life that is bypassing the natural order, and bringing lifeforms to a higher level of order than they should naturally be. In this first of 3 parts, German researcher and discusses smart dust, and the Black Goo. These interviews are released for free, as a public service, by the Bases Project. Harald is co-author with Cara St Louis of Dangerous Imagination, Silent Assimilation. Part 2. Harald Kautz-Vella continues this detailed interview on the alien Black Goo, concentrating on Morgellons, and the existence of “M State” matter. A short clip of something that is claimed to be derived from the alien black goo is shown. Part 3. Smart Dust and Bio Robots. Like this:
When Grading Harms Student Learning There are so many forces at work that make educators grade, and grade frequently. For sports eligibility, coaches constantly look at grades to see if a student is at an academic level that will allow him or her to play. Colleges review transcripts to examine what type of courses students took and their corresponding grades. The Dreaded Zero I used to give out zeros in the hopes that it would force students to do work and learn. Points Off for Late Work I'm guilty of this one as well. Grading "Practice" Many of our assignments are "practice," assigned for students to build fluency and practice a content or skill. Grading Instead of Teaching As mentioned earlier, many teachers are required to enter grades on a frequent basis. Hope Our work as educators is providing hope to our students. With that, I will leave you with an essential question to ponder: How can we grade and assess in a way that provides hope to all students?
How To Make Your Mind Happy: 5 Secrets To Mindfulness Sometimes it seems like your brain just sits around creating lousy feelings and worries. You want this, you’re frustrated about that, you’re annoyed about some other thing and the list never stops. And it makes it impossible to be happy. What would be nice is to have a perspective that helps your brain deal with all of these negative emotions. And there may be one — and you’ve probably heard the name a lot lately: Mindfulness. And research shows it works. Three big names in the field have collaborated to produce an app that can teach you how to be more mindful. Dan Harris is the anchor of Good Morning America and author of 10% Happier, where he recounts his journey from mindfulness skeptic to believer. Now here’s the part where I give you an actual definition of mindfulness, right? You and I are gonna walk through the first few steps on how to be more mindful so you don’t just sound like Merriam-Webster, but you really understand what the deal is and how to do it. From The Upward Spiral:
Recreating Balance: How to easily convert any music to 432hz and why A frequency is the number of movements up and down per second, called hertz. Energy is the ability to move, it is what fuels the movement up and down. 432hz tuning simply means that the note A in the middle of the musical scale will vibrate at 432hz, then all other notes along the scale are tuned accordingly. All octaves of the A note will be doubles or halves of that 432hz frequency (27, 54, 108, 216, 432, 864, etc) Here are various cosmic measurements, where we find the exact same numbers : Saturn polar diameter : 108,000 km Saturn orbital period : 10,800 day Venus orbital distance : 108 million km Earth orbital velocity : 108,000 km/hour Sun’s diameter is approximately 108 times the Earth diameter Earth distance from the Sun : 108 solar diameters Moon distance from the Earth : 108 lunar diameters Moon diameter : 2160 miles Earth meridian circumference : 21,600 nautical miles 25920 years of the galactic cyle/procession of the equinox : 432 x 60, 60 being at the basis of how we measure time Voila !
Henry F. De Sio, Jr., Addresses International Symposium on "Why Empathy Is As Important as Reading and Math" December 1, 2015 (Arlington, VA) - Henry F. De Sio, Jr., Global Chair for Framework Change at Ashoka; author of "Campaign, Inc: How Leadership and Organization Propelled Barack Obama to the White House" and former Deputy Assistant to President Obama recently served as the keynote speaker at the International Symposium on the "Transformative Nature of Education: Underpinning Social and Economic Transformation." Henry was introduced to this distinguished group as a "prominent advocate of empathy in transformational change." This is a new learning framework for life success and contribution in a world defined by change, a world where hierarchies are flattening, silos are collapsing and advances in technology are lowering the barriers to individual participation. Read Henry’s paper from the e-book, "Education Transforms – Papers and Reflections" [PDF download] >> About Ashoka Ashoka is leading the way to an "Everyone a Changemaker" World. Contact TDonovan@ashoka.org
A Message to the People-Pleasers: You are not Helping Anyone. What would you say takes up the vast majority of our time—mental space and energy? Work? Parenting? Bill-paying? Maybe it’s anxiety, personal relationships or money stress? It’s likely none of those things. It’s probably something much, much more tedious, boring and insidious. The ultimate time-and-energy-suck is something that sounds pretty, but is more toxic than second-hand smoke. It’s “being a nice person” (a.k.a. How do I know this? I used to spend most of my time trying to be “nice.” Any version of trying to be responsible for someone else’s feelings (basically, anything we don’t feel right about doing but we justify anyway because we “don’t want to hurt their feelings”), trying to make someone else happy (which sounds nice, but really it’s just an attempt to control someone’s mood-state), or hustling in such a way that we hope “people like us,”—this is all stuff I believed that, for most of my life, made me “a good person.” Sound familiar? How do I know they think I’m a good person? 1.
The Realist Report: How the "Holocaust" was faked The alleged "Holocaust" of "6 million Jews" at the hands of Adolf Hitler and National Socialist Germany during WWII is the biggest lie ever foisted upon humanity. The very idea that the Germans organized and executed a complex conspiracy involving "homicidal gas chambers" and other barbaric, sadistic forms of mass murder designed to exterminate European Jewry during WWII is laughable on its face when you stop and objectively think about it. National Socialist Germany and her allies were fighting a multi-front war against some of the most powerful nations in the world at the time, including the United States, the British Empire, and the Soviet Union. The idea that they would divert their precious and extremely scarce resources and manpower towards implementing a systematic campaign of mass murder specifically designed to annihilate European Jewry is absurd. There was no German conspiracy to systematically genocide and destroy European Jewry during WWII. Or this one:
What Can Schools Do to Address Poverty? Editor's note: This piece was adapted from Turning High-Poverty Schools into High-Performing Schools by William H. Parrett and Kathleen M. Budge. "Some say we can't fix education until we fix poverty. It's exactly the opposite; we can't fix poverty until we fix education." Childhood poverty rates are higher in the United States than in any other industrialized country, and this rate is on the rise. Whose Problem Is Poverty? James Coleman's (1966) conclusion that schools could have only a limited effect on students who live in poverty began a debate that has continued for decades. Others assert that schools can, and do, make a significant difference in the lives and the academic outcomes of students who live in poverty (Barr & Parrett, 2007; McGee, 2004). What Can Schools Do to Address Poverty? Eliminating poverty is a both/and proposition -- reforms must occur in both the broader society and in schools -- and schools do make a considerable difference. Notes Anyon, J. (2005).