OTBT | MM | TT | WW

THEDAILYBEAST.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: In 1999, Hazar Imam said he watches other (non-Ismaili) communities to learn how they retain their heritage, identity, and traditions.] ARTICLE: Mainstream sects are shifting away from the strictures, rituals and teachings of religion to embrace the new spirituality of redemption through social justice activism. There are at least two big problems ... First, almost all the religious institutions most committed to this course are also those in the most serious decline ... Ultimately, the new religions, seeking to fill the void left behind by traditional faiths, offer little to families in search of moral instruction ... A world without the old faiths may still be spiritually engaged, even hysterically so, but we may lose the lessons of community, sacrifice, discipline and faith that the old religions taught to bind our societies together. ...

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[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- LIBERATIONIST.ORG -- Think of any innovation that changed how any organization [or institution] operates. I'm willing to bet the driving force behind it wasn't conformity, but curiosity. Curiosity  -- someone asked a question no one else dared before. If conformity is the enemy of innovation, why are rebels so scarce then? Maybe leaders don't know how to deal with troublemakers -- they feel threatened. Nonconformism is painful but essential. It stimulates us to think more broadly, deeply, and honestly. It requires courage to speak against groupthink. Organizations misunderstand the power of rebellious people -- they see the trouble, not the possibilities. True rebels are not crazy or out of control. Their actions are not meant to defeat the current regime, but to improve it. ...

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THEFEDERALIST.COM -- As time passed, the link between religion and health care has slowly fallen to the wayside in favor of strict clinical practices and medical protocols. Despite multiple studies over the last several decades concluding that those who are religiously involved live longer. For example, researchers at the Mayo Clinic concluded, "Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide. Several studies have shown that addressing the spiritual needs of the patient may enhance recovery from illness." ...

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THEFEDERALIST.COM -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: In 1999, Hazar Imam said he watches other (non-Ismaili) communities to learn how they retain their heritage, identity, and traditions.] ARTICLE: Greg Smith, the director of research at the Pew Research Center, confidently explains that while the more liberal mainline churches have been tanking dramatically, things are completely different for evangelical and non-denominational churches.... Harvard/Indiana University sociologists wanted to test whether the "secularization thesis" was indeed true for America. Their findings were clear and remarkably counterintuitive: "We show that rather than religion fading into irrelevance as the secularization thesis would suggest, intense religion (strong affiliation, very frequent practice) is persistent, and in fact, only moderate religion is on the decline in the United States." Get that? "Only moderate religion is on the decline in the United States," which is precisely what Stark and Pew found. ...

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BRANDMAN.EDU -- BRANDMAN UNIVERSITY -- Many universities, such as Stanford and UC Riverside, are actively recruiting homeschool graduates. MIT claims that they have long accepted homeschooled students, who become "successful and vibrant members of our community." Jonathan Reider, a Stanford admissions counselor who helped the institution realize the potential of homeschooled applicants, explains: "The distinguishing factor is intellectual vitality. These kids have it, and everything they do is responding to it." If the point of an education is to foster the kind of "intellectual vitality", [then] why wouldn't we take what we've learned from homeschooling successes and apply it to the education of all our students? Forget iPads. Students need what homeschooling offers: autonomy, versatility, and freedom -- in other words, jet skis. ...

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BUSINESSINSIDER.COM -- "Homeschooling really cultivates a trait of open-mindedness and [being] open to new experiences," says Claire Dickson, a Harvard sophomore who was homeschooled from kindergarten through her senior year of high school. A small but growing body of research suggests homeschoolers, compared to kids in traditional schools, grow up with stronger friendships with other kids, better relationships with their parents and adults, greater empathy, and, at least as adolescents, a greater sense of social responsibility. "They're doing just as well or better," Brian Ray, a homeschooling researcher at the National Home Education Research Institute, tells Business Insider. ...

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CHRONICLE.COM -- THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION -- For at least a generation, academics have elaborately and publicly denounced the ponderous pedantry of academic prose. So why haven't these ponderous pedants improved, already? The critics would say the ponderous pedants are doing it on purpose. Academics supposedly indulge in pettifogging to obscure their own muddled thinking. Or, in a more generous reading, professors write obscurely because they know obscurity is expected of them, and they fear for their jobs if they phrase their insights with populist clarity. ...

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THEATLANTIC.COM -- Harvard's Steven Pinker authored an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education in which he used adjectives like "turgid, soggy, wooden, bloated, clumsy, obscure, unpleasant to read, and impossible to understand" to describe academic writing.... A disconnect between researchers and their audiences fuels the problem, according to Deborah S. Bosley, former University of North Carolina English professor. "Academics, in general, don't think about the public; they don't think about the average person, and they don't even think about their students when they write," she says. "Their intended audience is always their peers. That's who they have to impress to get tenure." ...

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QUIETREV.COM -- If you're an introvert, have you ever noticed that you tend to be good at asking questions? Do you ever feel that this is just a weakness of yours, something you fall back to when other conversational options seem exhausted? Have you ever wondered how to frame questions like the thoughtful and skilled conversation partner you are (or could be)? In this article written for the Quiet Revolution community, Warren Berger, author of The Book of Beautiful Questions, contributor to the New York Times, and "Questionologist" column writer, explains how and why questioning is the quiet person's "secret weapon." ...

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MAYOOSHIN.COM -- Professor Jerry Uelsmann stood in front of his film photography students, and announced that the class would be divided in two. The "quantity" group of students would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced. The greater the number of photos submitted, the higher the grade. The "quality" group of students would be graded solely on the quality of work produced. These students were only required to submit one nearly perfect image, to get an "A." At the end of the term, Uelsmann graded the students in both the "quantity" and "quality" group. The results were astonishing. The best photos were all produced by the first group being graded for quantity. ...

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FS.BLOG -- Inefficient does not mean ineffective, and it is certainly not the same as lazy. You get things done - just not in the most effective way possible. You're a bit sloppy, and use more energy. But don't feel bad about it. There is real value in not being the best. To understand how inefficiency can help you get ahead, let's start with a story. Imagine a tree that grows ...

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SCIENCEMAG.ORG -- AAAS -- Scientific progress, and scientific careers, depends on novel ideas. One might therefore expect the scientific community to welcome intellectual innovations as boons to advancement. Two recent studies, however, show just the opposite. One examines how the presence of a prominent, established leader in a research field discourages new people from entering it and presenting ideas considered unconventional. The other reveals a "bias against novelty" that often keeps innovative research from gaining the attention and recognition it deserves, at least initially. Together, these results imply career risks for scientists who put forward new theories or interpretations even though ...

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[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- QUILLETTE.COM -- Root causes are alluring for several reasons. They appear to simplify complex problems ... There is also the possibility of killing two or more birds with one stone, as multiple problems may have the same root cause. If only it were so simple. A well-trained mechanic can normally diagnose the root cause of why your car has broken down. But for complex social problems, the task of finding something that could be described as a root cause is far more difficult. Most social problems are multifaceted, with different causal layers and dimensions interacting in ways that are not reducible to a single phenomenon. ...

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[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- AREOMAGAZINE.COM -- We pine for straightforward solutions to complicated political, cultural, [community] and economic challenges and analysts, academics, pundits and politicians respond with an abundance of ideological and policy solutions that appeal to our political preferences. But wicked problems, by their nature, elude definitive, universal answers. They even elude universal definition. Wicked problems are problems that don't just sit there and let you work on them ... Solving a wicked problems requires people who see it from multiple perspectives ... So how do we build a new culture of collaborative perspective-sharing that allows wicked problems to be solved? ...

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TED.COM -- Most of us will do anything to avoid being wrong. But what if we're wrong about that? "Wrongologist" Kathryn Schulz makes a compelling case for not just admitting but embracing our fallibility. Schulz: "This attachment to our own rightness keeps us from preventing mistakes when we absolutely need to and causes us to treat each other terribly. But to me, what's most baffling and most tragic about this is that it misses the whole point of being human." ...

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FS.BLOG -- Before you smugly slap an open-minded sticker on your chest, consider this: closed-minded people would never consider that they could actually be closed-minded. In fact, their perceived open-mindedness is what's so dangerous. Nobody wants to admit to themselves that they're closed-minded. But the advantages of having that courage are massive. The ability to change your mind is a superpower. The rate at which you learn and progress in the world depends on how willing you are to weigh the merit of new ideas, even if you don't instinctively like them. Perhaps especially if you don't like them. ...

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