Fake news. It's complicated. - First Draft News This article is available also in Deutsch, Español, Français and العربية By now we’ve all agreed the term “fake news” is unhelpful, but without an alternative, we’re left awkwardly using air quotes whenever we utter the phrase. The reason we’re struggling with a replacement is because this is about more than news, it’s about the entire information ecosystem. And the term fake doesn’t begin to describe the complexity of the different types of misinformation (the inadvertent sharing of false information) and disinformation (the deliberate creation and sharing of information known to be false). To understand the current information ecosystem, we need to break down three elements: The different types of content that are being created and sharedThe motivations of those who create this contentThe ways this content is being disseminated This matters. This is far more worrying than fake news sites created by profit driven Macedonian teenagers. The Different Types of Mis and Disinformation
Dana Schutz’s “Open Casket”: A Fraught Painting Sparks Fraught Calls for Its Destruction An art world controversy widely reported over the last week has rekindled the debate about left-wing-advocated censorship. Dana Schutz’s painting “Open Casket” — which depicts Emmett Till, the Mississippi teenager lynched in 1955 — has been met with heated protest, with calls not only for its removal from the Whitney Museum’s 2017 Biennial, but also for its destruction. The most prominent call to destroy the painting came from artist Hannah Black, who wrote a widely publicized open letter calling for the painting to be “removed, destroyed, and not entered into any market or museum.” The vehemence of the demand is specific to the hideous weight of the painting’s subject, but it also represents the sticky logical conclusion of current discursive trends. One floor above “Open Casket” at the Whitney, there’s another painting of a black man rendered black a body by white brutality. In her open letter, Black wrote: Real black suffering, by contrast, has been continually ignored.
UW class on how to spot fake data goes viral within hours Two University of Washington professors are taking aim at BS in a provocatively named new course they hope to teach this spring. The professors would like to push the course materials online — teaching it as a MOOC, for example, a freely available course taught over the web. When it came to picking a title for the course they will teach this spring, University of Washington professors Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West decided to abandon academic stodginess and get edgy. Their new course title? Bergstrom and West figured using a minor profanity was a surefire way to draw attention to the course. The webpage went live at midnight, and “we woke up the next morning and it was over the whole planet,” West said. “It resonated,” he added, in a bit of an understatement. Although some people online took it as a joke, there’s serious intent behind the provocative title. “We’re sick of it. But sometimes, he said, they’re also nefarious. But who would sign up for that?
Why Spatial Reasoning Is Crucial For Early Math Education | MindShift | KQED News When Nicole Thomson first heard about the importance of teaching spatial reasoning and geometry in her kindergarten math curriculum she had already been teaching for several years. Her teacher training program hadn’t mentioned these skills, and yet at a professional development session for math teachers a group of researchers from the University of Toronto explained the large body of research that ties spatial reasoning skills to future success in math and reading. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) recommends that spatial reasoning should be a large focus of preK – 8th grade math education. “At first we had no idea what it meant,” Thomson said, but as the researchers explained cognitive science studies showing the power of spatial reasoning in the early grades they were gradually convinced that it was worth trying. “We would take those lessons and games and think about what else we could do with these. “We started making sure we labeled this as math,” Thomson said.
How Did Marijuana Become Illegal in the First Place? In less than a week a number of states will decide the fate of legalized or medical marijuana. While progress has been a long time coming locally there has been no sign marijuana will budge from its Schedule 1 status federally, which means that research into the plant’s therapeutic efficacy continues to suffer. It also means that the feds will keep intervening with state’s rights when they so choose. For a plant that humans have utilized for millennia—our brain’s endogenous cannabinoid receptors make us easy targets—restrictions are recent. The 1906 act did not restrict marijuana, Hudak writes, but did expand the federal government’s power regarding drugs. Enter Harry J. Like alcohol, marijuana was painted as a scourge on society, ruining the moral fabric of America, breaking up families, and decreasing Americans’ capacity for gainful employment. Anslinger manipulated data to his own ends. Nixon has previously employed a ‘Southern Strategy’ to vilify minority groups and hippies.
10 Ways to Search Google for Information That 96% of People Don’t Know About In our era of advanced technology and high-speed Internet connections, you can find information on virtually anything. In the space of just a few minutes, we can find recipes for the tastiest pie or learn all about the theory of wave-particle duality. But more often than not, we have to sift through a vast body of knowledge to get the information we need, and this can take hours rather than minutes. This is why Bright Side has put together a list of the most effective methods for searching Google to help you find the precious material you're looking for in just a couple of clicks. 1. Either this or that Sometimes we're not sure that we've correctly remembered the information or the name we need to start our search. 2. Our language is rich in synonyms. For example, if you search for the term "healthy ~food" you'll get results about the principles of healthy eating, cooking recipes, as well as healthy dining options. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
TED-Ed - Recognizing Rhetoric Heretics! And the dangerous beginnings of modern science in glorious graphic detail | Science | DW | 14.07.2017 DW: A major theme, I found, in your book "Heretics!" was thinking differently. It's an illustrated, graphic, history of philosophers and the early scientists and the risks many of them faced because they dared to think differently. And it starts with a very stark image of a philosopher being burnt, having been sentenced to death. Steven Nadler: We started there because it represents what was at stake for a lot of these thinkers. The church, for example, was very supportive of a good deal of scientific research. I thought it was a good place to start the book to put these thinkers in a religious and historical context. It seems a constant battle though between faith and science, seeking to explain natural phenomena through empirical reason or some higher being. Baruch Spinoza: miracles are "events whose natural causes are unknown to us" Let's bring Ben in here, because I'm also interested in the form of the book. Steven (father): Well, we're still speaking to each other! Good question!
Trustworthy advice for a post-truth world - University of Alberta How do you tell fact from fiction in an online world where fake news often seems like the real thing? When the Oxford English Dictionary picked “post-truth” as word of the year for 2016, it seemed to signal a shift in the way we perceive the world—the triumph of emotional response over rational thought. But our susceptibility to “fake news” is not a new problem. It goes back at least as far as the 1890s, when the term “yellow journalism” emerged in the New York newspaper wars to denote a brand of sensational reporting more interested in circulation than accuracy. As early as 1620, philosopher Francis Bacon warned of false notions that impede human understanding, most notably the “idols of the cave” that trap us in our own conceptual biases. Fast-forward 400 years and, with the advent of the Internet, Bacon’s cave has transformed into the modern-day echo chamber, amplifying and reflecting our own preconceptions in the ostensible pursuit of truth. Echo chambers and filter bubbles
How to tell fake news from real news In November 2016, Stanford University researchers made an alarming discovery: across the US, many students can’t tell the difference between a reported news article, a persuasive opinion piece, and a corporate ad. This lack of media literacy makes young people vulnerable to getting duped by “fake news” — which can have real consequences. Want to strengthen your own ability to tell real news from fake news? Start by asking these five questions of any news item: Who wrote it? Real news contains the real byline of a real journalist dedicated to the truth. What claims does it make? When was it published? Where was it published? How does it make you feel? If you get in the habit of asking all 5 of these questions whenever you read a news article, then your basic news literacy skills will start to grow stronger. Laura McClure is an award-winning journalist and the TED-Ed Editor.
Refugee scientists who fled Nazis greatly benefitted US click 2x Much of Albert Einstein's best-known work, including his famous formula, was conducted in Europe, but when the Nazis came to power, he and other famous scientists brought their talent to the U.S. Selimaksan/Getty Images/iStockphoto hide caption toggle caption Selimaksan/Getty Images/iStockphoto Much of Albert Einstein's best-known work, including his famous formula, was conducted in Europe, but when the Nazis came to power, he and other famous scientists brought their talent to the U.S. The horror of recent events was a wake-up call for many Americans about the rise of American groups dedicated to the tenets of fascism. I was just coming out of the woods after seven days on the Appalachian Trail when I got a text from someone asking: "Did you hear about the Nazis?" In the face of this real and present danger, we all should stop for a moment and reflect on our history and the way the fight against fascism has shaped our nation. Then the Nazis showed up. That was how the exodus began.
10 Ways to Spot a Fake News Article - EasyBib Blog For many of us, 2016 is going down as a year to forget. Election upsets, Zika, the Syrian crisis, and unfortunately tons of fake news about all of the above and everything in between. Denzel Washington was recently quoted as saying, “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. 1. Links and citations allow us to easily access, read, and explore more about the information found in the article. Many big name news sites, such as CNN, do not include links or citations, but other sites do. 2. An article without an author’s name is another red flag. 3. Do a Google search on the author’s name to find their occupation and locate other articles that the author has composed. 4. On the top or bottom of most websites, you should see a section titled “About Us.” 5. Authors tend to read and re-read their articles numerous times prior to posting. 6. Copy and paste a quote from the article into Google’s search bar. 7. Do a simple keyword search on Google for a similar article. 8. 9. 10.