Weekly Web Harvest for 2016-09-04

  • The Myth of the Millennial as Cultural Rebel | New Republic

    Fusion’s Patrick Hogan counted 47 institutions and industries that millennials have been accused of destroying so far, including credit, car culture, the American Dream, relationships, and golf. Of course, in each of these cases, there is a real story to be told: Yes, young people are buying less on credit; yes, car sales are down; and, not surprisingly, 48 percent of economically squeezed under-30s don’t buy into the uplift of the American Dream, according to one poll.

  • Benefits | NASA GRC WordPress

    The following are the main benefits we’ve found in using our implementation of WordPress as a content management system for the NASA Glenn Research Center web sites we maintain.

  • THIEF! | People’s History Archive

    “The Worst Thief Is He Who Steals The Playtime of Children” — W.D. Haywood — Join The I.W.W. And Help Put The Thieves To Work.

  • What If Medicine’s First Principle Were Also Education’s? | Psychology Today

    • In a study in which 150 college students were asked to described the two most negative experiences in their lives—experiences that negatively affected their development—by far the most common reports (28% of the total) were of traumatic interactions with school teachers.[5]  In a study in which adults were interviewed to find out about positive, peak learning experiences occurring in their schooling, few could recall such experiences, but many recalled negative experiences, which interfered with rather than supported their development.[6]

    • Hair cortisol levels in young children were found to be significantly higher in samples taken two months after starting elementary school than in samples taken two months prior to starting elementary school.[7]  Hair cortisol level is reflective of chronic stress, the sort of stress that can seriously impair physical growth and health.

    • A large-scale national survey conducted by the American Psychological Association (reported here) revealed that U.S. teenagers feel more stressed-out than do adults and that school is by far the main cause of their stress (noted by 83% of the sample). In the same study, 27% of teens reported experiencing “extreme stress” during the school year, compared to 13% reporting that during the summer.

    • The rate of emergency mental health visits leading to at least one overnight stay (the sort of visits that derive from serious breakdowns or attempted suicide) at a children’s medical center was found to be more than twice as high during school months as compared to summer vacation months (here).

    To this add the sheer amount of children’s and teenagers’ time that is wasted by the school system.  If you don’t believe it ask the principal of your local school for permission to “shadow” a student for a day—that is, spend the whole school day doing just what the student is required to do.  Every adult I know who has done that—including a number of teachers—were shocked at the tedium, the time wasted, during which they were not free to occupy themselves with anything of their own choosing.  None of them wanted to do it for a second day.  Believe me, children and teens have no more tolerance for tedium than do adults; they just have no choice in the matter.

  • Super Punch: Mall design: “you never, ever, ever make a straight hallway longer than 600 feet, or a curved hallway much over 1000 feet”

    If the average American can see that it’s more than 600 feet from where they’re at to the store they want to go to, they’ll leave and go back to their car, intending to drive around to a closer entrance. But, studies showed, once in their car, half of them decide to just simply go home.

  • The power of machine-generated channels

    Every tweet that mentions @SlackHQ ends up in a channel, using the Twitter integration in the Slack App Directory. It’s good for any company to track their mentions on social media and at Slack our CE team answers every question directed at them on Twitter.
    While the team also uses social media management software, having tweets in Slack means the noteworthy ones (both good and bad) can be shared and discussed in relevant channels. I manage the customer testimonials on our wall of love entirely in Slack by reviewing a channel of tweets that mention Slack, and retweeting the best ones via a custom slash command.

  • College of Arts and Letters – Michigan State University :: Investing in Online Scholarly Presence

    The College signed a contract with Reclaim Hosting to provide its graduate students and faculty with a full commercial web hosting package and domains that they control in order to build online spaces for professional portfolios, digital projects, and more. The College of Arts & Letters is the first at MSU to offer this type of service.

  • Cognitive bias cheat sheet – Better Humans