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Not that bioturbation was on your “To Think About” list for today… but you should think about bioturbation and its role in the larger biosphere. Fascinating stuff!
Mapping the seafloor sediment superhighway | YaleNews:
“Our analysis suggests that the present global network of marine protected areas does not sufficiently protect important seafloor processes like bioturbation, indicating that protection measures need to be better catered to promote ecosystem health,” Tarhan said.
Petersen here defies what many of us who have spent our lives in academia or adjacent to it in some way feel… the institutional impact of certain places on our careers, our self-judgements, and eventually our self-worth can be crucibles that define our lives for years. Seeing past that is indeed difficult work, especially when we want to confer respect for ourselves and our future students.
Worthy read here whether you’re a teacher, preacher, parent, or trying to figure things out at age 45 like me…
Ten Years Out of Academia – by Anne Helen Petersen:
When it comes to these students, the best gift we can give them — whether they are our children, our advisees, our peers, our employees, or just ourselves — is clear communication of worth. It’s spaces to fail with security and create and build community outside of resume-building. It’s ongoing assurance of their value: not because of their grades, or their ability to “work hard,” but simply because they are. It’s respect, which looks a lot different than surveillance. Creating these environments requires a lot of work, most of it invisible. It’s arduous in part because it requires refusing so many legible norms of “good” parenting or mentorship. But its eventual value is beyond measure.
I don’t have the same optimism that Thompson does here, but it’s a good read and worth the thought time!
The Great Flattening – Stratechery by Ben Thompson:
What is increasingly clear, though, is that Jobs’ prediction that future changes would be even more profound raise questions about the “bicycle for the mind” analogy itself: specifically, will AI be a bicycle that we control, or an unstoppable train to destinations unknown? To put it in the same terms as the ad, will human will and initiative be flattened, or expanded?
Reblog via Merianna Harrelson
Fifteen years ago, when I pursuing a Master’s in Literacy, we wondered and pondered about the impact of screens for readers. We questioned and discussed how literacy needed to be taught differently because of the availability of so much content and with so much reading occurring on a screen. I attended and participated in professional developments centered around “the screen between.” We discussed and debated how the screen between eliminated so many of the social cues and nonverbal communication that takes place between two people in person in conversations and in classrooms.
These discussions were way before so many people had a handheld device with a screen that fit in their pocket. Now as a minister, I find myself in conversations and debates about that same “screen between,” and how emboldened people feel to type something in a comment thread or text that they would never say to a person’s face.
And that’s just it. We don’t see each other anymore. The screen between us disconnects us from our joint humanity even as it advertises more connections and connetions from around the world.
As I have tried to be more intentional about my own use of screens, especially around our infant, I’ve noticed just how prevalent screens are. There is no small talk in the elevator or grocery store anymore because we are all looking down. Even restaurants have started to put screens on the tables and in their wait staff’s hands which I am sure streamlines the ordering process, but also interrupts the connection that you make with the person who is taking their time to serve you.
I can’t help but wonder when like Dorthy and her followers, we will discover the man behind the curtain or rather the fellow humans behind the screens. While these devices may seem just as great and powerful as the Wizard of Oz, there’s something missing and something we are all longing for. Eventually we are going to have to decide whether we want a screenshot of life, a projection of what appears to be or whether we want to live life with and among those that surround us.
We all want to be seen. We all want to know that we aren’t on this journey alone. But in order to do that, we are going to have to put away the screen between us and look each other in the eyes and say, “I am here. You are here. And here we are together.”
The post The Screen Between appeared first on Merianna Neely Harrelson.
I have lots more to say about this, but I wanted to share this vital part of a recent article about “dumbphones” in The New Yorker. I’ve been attempting to be much more deliberate about using technology and devices, especially in front of my children and students.
The Light Phone (and Camp Snap camera) have been a significant part of that effort. I’ve been in love with the Light Phone since converting from an iPhone earlier this year.
The Dumbphone Boom Is Real | The New Yorker:
Like Dumbwireless, Light Phone has recently been experiencing a surge in demand. From 2022 to 2023, its revenue doubled, and it is on track to double again in 2024, the founders told me. Hollier pointed to Jonathan Haidt’s new book, “The Anxious Generation,” about the adverse effects of smartphones on adolescents. Light Phone is receiving increased inquiries and bulk-order requests from churches, schools, and after-school programs. In September, 2022, the company began a partnership with a private school in Williamstown, Massachusetts, to provide Light Phones to the institution’s staff members and students; smartphones are now prohibited on campus. According to the school, the experiment has had a salutary effect both on student classroom productivity and on campus social life. Tang told me, “We’re talking to twenty to twenty-five schools now.”
The disappearing Insta grid – One Thing:
Snapchat and BeReal understood this preference shift long ago. And now, scrubbing your feed is a way of taking some control back, refusing to put your past on display. It’s a design choice. Embracing negative space. Making anti-brand the brand. Refusing to participate in the popularity contest and the attention economy.
I know… let’s go back to blogging on our own domains (no, seriously)!
I don’t want to end this on a bummer note, but I do think it’s probably time to accept that we have reached the limitations of the social web as it’s currently constructed. It’s likely that TikTok was the last “social” platform and even more likely that all the behaviors that we can do on these platforms have been mapped out already. We can rearrange them and try them out in different orders and react to slight algorithm tweaks, but this is it. This is how people will behave as long the company’s that own and operate the web continue to do so. And it’s probably time to start imagining something else — no, not AI — before we forget how to do it.
I’m not one to argue with Elvis Costello and I love re-reading this list every so often (especially in a new year). However, In My Life shoud be the #1 Beatles song.
Before that album, “We were just writing songs à la the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly,” Lennon said, “pop songs with no more thought to them than that.” He rightly called “In My Life” “my first real, major piece of work. Up until then, it had all been glib and throwaway.”
“Sympathy, though gained as an instinct, is also much strengthened by exercise or habit.”
Darwin, Descent of Man, Ch. 4
I’ve just finished Robert Sapolsky’s (excellent) book, Determined. You should read it for yourself, obviously, but Sapolsky does an expert job of providing the argument that our conception of determinism and what we colloquially call “free will” are to be examined under a much stricter microscope society-wide.
These sorts of philosophical arguments rarely escape the ivory tower of The Academy. However, Sapolsky is a masterful speaker and has attracted a good deal of attention in the mainstream for his seemingly outlandish idea that we do not, in fact, possess free will.
I think he’s right and on to something monumental. If we took his admonishment with intention and began to examine the structures our society (especially our educational systems) place on behavioralism, exceptionalism, and perceived meritocracy… our society would look quite different. Dare I say it would be more just.
I picked up Darwin’s Descent of Man (1871) this morning and began reading. The beginnings of Chapter 4 here lay out a very similar thought construction about where we gather our conception of morality and sympathy in the context of what he labels natural history.
I was taken by his statement that:
“We are indeed all conscious that we do possess such sympathetic feelings, but our consciousness does not tell us whether they are instinctive, having originated long ago in the same manner as with the lower animals, or whether they have been acquired by each of us during our early years.”
Reading both of these texts together is an incredible thought experiment!
The Museum of You – Herbert Lui:
I see a lot of discussion on how people miss blogs, and RSS, and internet culture before what we call Web 2.0 (social media, platforms, ecommerce, etc.) came along and wiped it away.
The best way to pay homage is to bring it back—to set up our own blogs that we control, to preserve our own libraries of content in multiple places so they don’t disappear with social media, to actively document our lives the way we miss and the way we would want to be remembered. We can choose a responsibility, every day, to collect the best of what came before us, to embody it, and to preserve it by sharing its charms with other people.
Much agreed, and this is one of the reasons I’ve kept my own blog and podcast here since 2006. I thought back then, “What if these awesome new tools like MySpace (or early Twitter) somehow go away or fall into the hands of the wrong leaders?”
I read previous posts and thoughts here occasionally and marvel at how naive, bold, brave, or afraid I was at various points in my life. Now looking back on this Museum of Me, I can glimpse previous iterations of my own self and perceptions and not just remember but learn.
Blogs like this, however silly they may seem in the face of social media apps, are powerful places!
Fascinating… now think of the implications in an era of deep fakes, AI, and ubiquitous access to information of all varieties at one’s choosing…
In this replication, which rigorously recreated the method and procedure of Wade et al. (2002), participants were interviewed over three interview sessions using free recall and imagery techniques about three true and one fictitious childhood event photos. The balloon ride was modified to a culturally appropriate target event – a Viking ship ride – to ensure that the doctored photograph was functionally equivalent. The results showed almost identical patterns in the two studies: 40% (n = 8) of the participants reported partial or clear false beliefs or memories compared with 50% (n = 10) in the original study. The participants who reported false memories reported detailed and coherent memory narratives of the Viking ship ride not depicted in the doctored photograph. Our study successfully replicating the results of Wade et al. (2002), suggest that memories can relatively easily be implanted, regardless of cultural setting.
If you ask why incessantly, something strange starts to happen to you. You begin to notice the nuances and subtleness of the creation and life. Your eyes, ears, and senses open up to new sources of insight about what is happening inside and outside you.
There is no secret or formula to happiness or even success. Curiosity can help you achieve those goals, but curiosity can also bring anxiety, doubt, and apathy if not coached well. When paired with ethical empathy, curiosity is the root of actual paths to concepts such as happiness or well-being.
Unceasingly and insanely, always pursuing root causes, hows, whys, whens, and wheres will overcome generational trauma and an individual’s perceived limitations. Curiosity is a gift from God meant to wake us up to the way of intentional being.
Stoicism teaches us (me, at least) that virtue is the only good and that our characters are entirely in our power to shape and improve. In this context, curiosity becomes a tool for self-improvement and understanding the world. It aligns with the Stoic principle of living according to nature (where we derive the word physics), which involves understanding the nature of the universe and our roles.
Consider this quote from Marcus Aurelius:
“Look within. Within is the fountain of good; it will ever bubble up if thou wilt dig.”
This highlights the Stoic belief in introspection and self-awareness nurtured by curiosity.
Ethical empathy, in Stoicism, is closely tied to sympatheia, the mutual interdependence of all things in the universe. The Stoics believed that realizing this interconnectedness leads to a natural inclination to act virtuously and empathetically toward others.
Here’s a thought from Seneca that encapsulates this idea:
“We are members of one great body planted by nature. We must be helpful to one another, remembering that we were born for cooperation, like feet, hands, eyelids, and the rows of the upper and lower teeth.”
Therefore, when guided by the principles of Stoic virtue, curiosity transforms from mere inquisitiveness into a tool for personal and ethical growth. Through this lens, we begin to see the subtleties of life not just as isolated phenomena but as interconnected parts of a greater whole. This perspective fosters a deeper understanding and appreciation of life’s complexities, allowing us to find joy and contentment in pursuing knowledge and wisdom.
However, without ethical empathy, curiosity risks becoming a self-centered pursuit, detached from the greater good of humanity. The Stoics remind us that our actions and inquiries should not only serve personal growth but also contribute to the welfare of others. As Epictetus said,
“What ought one to say then as each hardship comes? I was practicing for this. I was training for this.”
Thus, curiosity becomes a form of life training, preparing us to face challenges with resilience and empathy.
Curiosity and ethical empathy, when aligned with Stoic virtues, curiosity, and ethical empathy lead us to a deeper understanding of the world and toward a more fulfilling and meaningful existence. They awaken us to the potential within ourselves and encourage us to live in harmony with others and the world.
I uploaded this post into ChatGPT-4 and asked DALL-E to create an image reflecting my words and the concept of curiosity related to ethical empathy and Stoicism. I think it did rather well! If you have no idea what any of that means, that’s ok… but you will soon!
There’s a reason there are always songs and music in Lord of the Rings and Star Wars and even Star Trek…
Music to Raise the Dead: The Secret Origins of Musicology:
By the way, this book could perhaps be described as the result of my own personal quest. For many years now, I have built my research and writing on a very simple statement of purpose—which I repeat, almost as a mantra, on every possible occasion, in print or public lectures: Music is a source of enchantment and a catalyst in human life, and my vocation is to celebrate its often forgotten power, not just as music history but also as a latent potentiality in our own day-to-day surroundings. In other words, songs are not just songs, but agents of change for individuals and societies.
I spent many hours reading Popular Science as a young person (and into college) in the high school library and sharing amazing stories with friends. I understand the business side of this, but it still feels to me like we’re losing something very valuable…
After 151 years, Popular Science will no longer offer a magazine – The Verge:
After 151 years, Popular Science will no longer be available to purchase as a magazine. In a statement to The Verge, Cathy Hebert, the communications director for PopSci owner Recurrent Ventures, says the outlet needs to “evolve” beyond its magazine product, which published its first all-digital issue in 2021.
Revelations from Dollywood…
Black Friday Joys – Merianna Neely Harrelson:
I have always found the juxtaposition of having Black Friday right before Advent begins jarring. Just as we are preparing to welcome the most powerful presence to earth in the humblest beginnings, our culture is flooding us with messaging that we need more and more, especially when it is a deal. Maybe instead what we need to start the Advent season is the joy of being present with each other and seeing the world through someone’s else’s eyes. Their firsts become our reminders to live here and now with gratitude.
Newton has the best take I’ve read (and I’ve read a lot) on the ongoing OpenAI / Sam Altman situation… worth your time:
OpenAI’s alignment problem – by Casey Newton – Platformer:
At the same time, though, it’s worth asking whether we would still be so down on OpenAI’s board had Altman been focused solely on the company and its mission. There’s a world where an Altman, content to do one job and do it well, could have managed his board’s concerns while still building OpenAI into the juggernaut that until Friday it seemed destined to be.
That outcome seems preferable to the world we now find ourselves in, where AI safety folks have been made to look like laughingstocks, tech giants are building superintelligence with a profit motive, and social media flattens and polarizes the debate into warring fandoms. OpenAI’s board got almost everything wrong, but they were right to worry about the terms on which we build the future, and I suspect it will now be a long time before anyone else in this industry attempts anything other than the path of least resistance.
I do agree with his take on what education will look like for the vast majority of young and old people with access to the web in the coming decade. Needless to say, AI is going to be a big driver of what it means to learn and how most humans experience that process in more authentic ways than currently available…
AI is about to completely change how you use computers | Bill Gates:
In the next five years, this will change completely. You won’t have to use different apps for different tasks. You’ll simply tell your device, in everyday language, what you want to do. And depending on how much information you choose to share with it, the software will be able to respond personally because it will have a rich understanding of your life. In the near future, anyone who’s online will be able to have a personal assistant powered by artificial intelligence that’s far beyond today’s technology.
Here are the “12 Problems” I’ve built my current life around. These are non-negotiables, and they are also the focus of everything I do. If a situation doesn’t fit into one of these problems, I’ll generally relegate it, delegate it, or ignore it.
I don’t generally recommend this practice for everyone. It’s a very difficult ethical standard to hold, and it can be cumbersome to run the mental math of “which problem am I trying to solve?” at any given time.
However, this approach’s clarity and focus far outweigh the negatives.
Here are my 12 Problems. I highly urge you to come up with your own:
How can I have a positive impact on this world?
How can I thrive while operating contrary to the dominant social or cultural trends?
How can I inspire young people to appreciate learning as a practice?
How do I provide for my family while remaining true to my calling?
How can I live with the most ethical sustainability while not sacrificing my enrichment in balance with the Creation?
How can I be the best role model for my espoused ideals and ethics as presented to my children and students?
How can I live according to nature (kata phusin in Stoicism)?
What does it mean to really be an effective teacher who can make connections and expand the worldview of my students?
How can I be a good Dad, and what does that mean?
How can I be a good partner, and what does that mean?
How can I explore my own self and brain and express that in my life?
How do I always maintain my own curiosity despite the challenges that the outside world might present?
Fascinating research here on the usefulness of team decision-making versus independent decision-making based on similar variables:
As counterintuitive as it seems, increasing the number of people involved in a difficult decision will likely decrease decision-making quality. Whatever unique knowledge individuals could offer to deliberations often goes unshared or disregarded. When decision-making stakes are high, don’t let your valuable UX insights fall victim to the common-knowledge effect. Be a vigilant team facilitator to ensure that all of us are at least as smart as each of us.
Common-Knowledge Effect: A Harmful Bias in Team Decision Making:
It’s Monday, and we’re not together in class (weird), but we’ll fix that tomorrow on Optimistic Day. Get some rest, take your vitamins, and drink water… big week ahead! Here’s what is happening in Life Science, Environmental Science, and AP Physics!
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Here’s what is in store for our Life Science, Environmental Science, and AP Physics classes this week at Wilson Hall! See https://harrelsonscience.com for more.
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I love incorporating paper airplanes into my classroom lessons on dynamics, flight, movement, gravity… the list goes on and on. They’re so applicable to so many scientific principles but also appeal to the curious nature inside all of us that loves to fold and learn…
History of the Paper Airplane: Paper Flight Technology Inspires Drones:
“The magic of a paper airplane is that all of these little flight corrections are happening continuously throughout its flight,” Ristroph says. “The plane is hanging under a vortex that is constantly swelling and shrinking in just the right ways to keep a smooth and level glide.”
Emotions are not reactions to the world. You are not a passive receiver of sensory input but an active constructor of your emotions.
How Emotions are Made – Lisa Feldman Barrett
Every teacher (and parent) should read this book. It’s transformative on many levels regarding our own personal development and how we should think about the emotional health and support of young people!
I’ve become much more of a book person as I’ve gotten older. Also, notebooks. That would seem quizzical to my younger self that reveled in every new productivity and reading app released on iOS or Android as I combed through blogs, subreddits, and Twitter lists, looking for the latest and greatest note-taking app.
Alas, getting old is interesting.
Screentime is definitely something that’s been on the front of my mind for the last few decades as I’ve welcomed children into this world (including Lily as of August 1!) and young people ranging from 12 to 18 into my classrooms.
I plan to read this book, so I’m using this as a space-saver for myself to return to when I’m done (and in the middle of the school year).
Screentime is a fascinating cultural concept. The amount of “screentime” we actually consume is lower than it’s ever been (no, really). But is the measurement of “time” really what we should be focused on or worried about?
Regardless, my students will still have their devices in the “off” mode, and we’ll focus on the great ideas with our brains, pen/cil, paper, and each other’s voices like we’ll continue to not have devices on during dinners or downstairs time here in our home…
A Different Way to Think About Screentime:
Parents have a hard time when they don’t know something. I’ve written this elsewhere, but I think one of the basic things that underlies a lot of the book bannings and pronoun panics from parent-activists on the far-right is the very simple fact that parents don’t know what their kids do all day. My daughter Maeve is 7, and I volunteered this spring to help with a field trip for her first-grade class. The bus was late, and so I ended up just sitting in her classroom for about 45 minutes while the day went on as usual. Maeve is very talkative, and she loves telling us stories about her day, but it wasn’t until I sat in that classroom that I realized how little I actually knew about what the ordinary beats of that day were like, what the social dynamics were, what kind of job her wonderful teacher — hello, Mr. Diego Fernandez — is tasked with doing.
More shortly! I just wanted to dust off the podcast. Subscribe here or via your podcast player of choice if you’d like (just search for my name).
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One of the biggest revelations I’ve had this summer doing in-depth research on Mind Body Education (thanks to the Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning and Wilson Hall for introducing me to current educational psychology research these past few months) is the value of retrieval practices in classroom learning.
A particular eye-opening part of that summer learning for me is how we process information as learners immediately and in the long-term. This quote from Willingham’s Outsmart Your Brain hit me particularly hard as someone who has been a highlighter for the last 20 or so odd years! I’ll be writing more about these topics in the next few days. Thanks to Readwise for resurfacing this quote from my readings earlier this summer!
Got my classroom name plate for my new classroom and teaching position at Wilson Hall today. I’m teaching 7th grade science, Environmental Science, and Physics. All three subjects should be a blast.
I look forward to this being the last classroom name plate I collect to finish out my career here at Wilson Hall in the next few decades (I still have my others from previous schools)! So exciting!
Voyager 1 and 2 were launched in 1977 and have, by all expectations, exceeded their missions and then some. I was born in 1978, so I share some sentimental affinity with these two marvels of human engineering. Glad to see we reconnected with Voyager 2 after a few scary days there as it continues its incredible journey outside our solar system.
We’ll be in touch with the two Voyagers until they run out of their power reserves sometime in the 2030s. That will be a sad day. May we all contribute a verse to humanity’s story and the cosmos, much as these robots have done during their time!
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my daughter was born on August 1, either 😉
NASA reestablishes full communications with Voyager 2:
Voyager 2 resumed communications with Earth after remaining silent for two weeks. At 12:29 a.m. EDT on Aug. 4, the spacecraft began returning science and telemetry data, indicating it is operating normally and remains on its expected trajectory, stated NASA.
