The Baloney Detection Kit: Carl Sagan’s Rules for Bullshit-Busting and Critical Thinking By Maria Popova Carl Sagan was many things — a cosmic sage, voracious reader, hopeless romantic, and brilliant philosopher. But above all, he endures as our era’s greatest patron saint of reason and common sense, a master of the vital balance between skepticism and openness. In The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (public library) — the same indispensable volume that gave us Sagan’s timeless meditation on science and spirituality, published mere months before his death in 1996 — Sagan shares his secret to upholding the rites of reason, even in the face of society’s most shameless untruths and outrageous propaganda. Through their training, scientists are equipped with what Sagan calls a “baloney detection kit” — a set of cognitive tools and techniques that fortify the mind against penetration by falsehoods: The kit is brought out as a matter of course whenever new ideas are offered for consideration. Sagan ends the chapter with a necessary disclaimer:
curator's ǝpoɔ Content Curation: Copyright, Ethics & Fair Use >>Click here to download the eBook. The most common and fundamental questions that come up whenever I talk about content curation (especially in the context of content marketing) is, “How can you use other people’s content? How does that work with copyright, fair use, and more generally ethics?” This is a topic that I have covered before in earlier blog posts, but since it’s central to curation, it is worth revisiting once again. Interests of the Three Parties Involved Before we dive into specific recommendations on best practices, let’s take a look at the interests of the three parties involved when it comes to content curation: The publisher – the individual, publication or other entity who has created original content. The curator – The curator is the person or organization who wants to curate the content of the publisher and promote to their audience. The audience – Lastly, we have the audience who wants to consume the best and most relevant content in a convenient manner. Fair Use
How Nonprofits Get Significant Value from Content Curation Harold Jarche (Click for Original Article) On December 17 at 6:30 pm, I am facilitating a discussion and presenting at one of Scoop.It’s “Lean Content” events in San Francisco. The topic is “The Unanticipated Benefits of Content Curation for Nonprofits.” Content curation is sifting through information on the web and organizing, filtering and making sense of it and sharing the very best content with your network. Rather than another potential recipe for information overload, content curation can be a method for self-directed learning that builds your expertise while enhancing your organization’s brand and content strategy. Content curation can empower us to learn more and use that knowledge to get deeper impact for our nonprofit’s programs. Content curation is not about sharing links as you find them. Jarche mentions some techniques from three different curators on how to add value. Ross Dawson’s Five ways of Adding Value How do make sense of information you curate?
Behind the Curator's Code | netmag The Curator's Code was recently unveiled. The system aims to codify the "attribution of discovery in curation as a currency of the information economy", which would honour the "creative and intellectual labor of information discovery by making attribution consistent and codified, celebrating authors and creators, and also respecting those who discover and amplify their work". In pure practical terms, the scheme provides new symbols for 'via' and 'hat tip', which link back to the Curator's Code website, although the site notes these are optional and its main aim is to encourage more attribution across the web. From the start, the system proved divisive. The bigger picture We spoke to Curator's Code creator Maria Popova, to ask her about the scheme. Popova also told us she profoundly disagrees with the suggestion discovery doesn't matter. The importance of attribution This mixture of selection, juxtaposition and editorial is labour. Context is what matters