Lady professor by day. Reader by night. Sometimes I write books.
Reading for pleasure seems indulgence, but it’s honestly the best workout we can give our brains. Reading a book is like a gym for your noodle.
I can give you five reasons for reading fiction–totally guilt-free. Check out my article at The Startup.
Do you feel guilty when you read for fun? If you don’t, how did you set yourself free?
I have bad hair. I’m fine with it. But I haven’t always felt that way.
Here’s a piece I wrote for P.S. I Love You about how I accidentally got a haircut that makes a radical statement about me. I didn’t realize that until I walked around in the world with short hair!
It turns out, though, that what people say about your hair says a lot more about them than it does you.
What does your hair say about you?
Ever wonder why people believe in fake news? I used to believe it was confirmation bias, which is the usual explanation. Confirmation bias says we tend to believe what we want to believe based on what we already believe. In other words, if you have an abiding hatred for networking events, as I do, you’d be delighted to read a news story that says networking events are the leading cause of all natural disasters and were actually invented by Hitler. You and I would very much like to believe that story.
But it turns out that confirmation bias is only part of the problem. The real issue is that some people just don’t like to think. And it’s the lack of critical thinking that is keeping fake news from dying. We believe fake news because we don’t have enough energy, desire, or ability to think our way through it.
If you want to read more about some research in this area, check out one of my latest articles for ArcDigital. It’s called “We Aren’t Too Partisan to Spot Fake News; We’re Too Lazy.”
