Confirmation bias is a tendency to seek out and interpret evidence that confirms one’s existing opinions while overlooking or dismissing opposing beliefs. In other words, it’s a form of applied prejudice at the expense of objectivity. Following are ten reasons to avoid confirmation bias. In group settings, carefully examining alternative viewpoints while challenging our own […]
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“Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!” Mr. Micawber, David Copperfield Charles Dickens often generated 90 pages of quality text a month, and he published novels like Great Expectations chapter by chapter in weekly periodicals. No doubt, Dickens was a rare breed, but he set a standard that every serious writer should consider. There’s no
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Poetry is far from becoming a cultural artifact regardless of the Information Age’s dry mechanical demands. The discipline serves too many vital functions to be avoided or overlooked for any extended period of time. In fact, everyone should write a poem, and soon. Following are ten reasons why. When you write a poem, you participate
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When the poet and critic Ezra Pound issued his famous literary proclamation to “make it new,” he uttered a phrase that became so identified with modernist literature that it’s difficult to imagine modernism happening without it. Of course, like many fitting pronouncements, over the years this one’s become a cliché, having been extensively quoted and
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“Every good manager effectively threatens his players with professional extermination if they don’t give him the best effort that they are capable of giving; Casey Stengel, Billy Martin, Whitey Herzog and Earl Weaver are masters at it, as was Durocher. They are not nice people. . . .” – Bill James, The Bill James Baseball
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I have taught many resistant students: gang members, drug dealers, disaffected kids with no direction, shy introverts, you name it. But the one thing I could always use to level the playing field was Shakespeare. You’d think something more in line with The Outsiders or some other gang-themed novel would have done the trick, but
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