Overlooked posts in 2020 that I consider worth a look

These are the posts which don’t show up in the list of top posts that I consider are worth a further look:

• Reflections on War
  Growing up as a kid, my favourite Uncle was a man (Uncle Clive) who had a gentle sense of humour. Unlike the other rellies, he would never push a joke too far, whereas the others would not notice when something had gone from funny to upsetting. He also had been what was derided as “a choco” in Papua-New Guinea (PNG), at that time an Australian territory (two, technically), during World War Two - a chocolate soldier, or member of Australia’s Citizen Military Force (CMF), what is now generally referred to as our Reserve Army, which is the way a small standing force is enlarged during times of war.
  He had a joke about his time in the CMF as well. After they finally got tin helmets (they were underequipped and undertrained, partly because they were initially allowed to go to PNG only for non-combat purposes - so they were meant to build roads, defences, etc, but they were not supposed to actively fight, but that decision was taken away by the Japanese  invasion of PNG), he said they should have two, because when they went  into combat, their face was buried so deeply in the mud their backside was what stuck up most, and it should have a tin helmet of its own.
  He was, in my view, a lovely man, and we kids all loved him.
  He also told me that they “didn’t always bring back prisoners” during their time fighting in the jungle.
   . . .
• Some brief thoughts on change, protests and repression
  Building on my previous post, there have been violent protests in a number of places around the world of late - you can see maps of this here, and in various human rights reports.
  To egregiously over-simplify, typically a despot or authoritarian person who is s*** scared of difference or anything which even hints of disorder, let alone chaos, does something repressive (say, arrests an opposition figure, or sets police onto peaceful protestors, or weakens or denies democracy in some way), possibly does that for many years, and those being repressed, being human, may snap and react out of anger, hate, or fear.
  We are currently rehabilitating a dog that was egregiously abused by her former "owners", and she sounds aggressive in any circumstance that she feels threatened or unsafe in. It is a reaction akin to the military notion of "offence is the best form of defence", and is something that happens to some people when they are afraid.
  That is, in fact, one of the fight, flight, freeze, or network and nurture responses, after all. (It is amazing how many men refuse to include that fourth aspect - is it too far out of their repertoire of responses? If yes, they should never be allowed to have a relationship or any children, IMO. * )
  This is also part of the responses by the lyin45ettes (my term for supporters of POTUS45) - incidentally, on them, see here.
  Such reactions are human ... and as ineffective as the incompetent (non)responses I wrote about in my previous post.
   . . .
• More thoughts on human rights
  Recently, a staggering incident of duplicity and/or racism was exposed when a court was shown CCTV footage that may clear an Indigenous man of the assault police had charged him with - footage the police claimed did not exist. If it was not duplicity or racism, it was an equally staggering level of professional incompetence. Given that state's history of racism generally, I doubt it was incompetence. The article on that incident is here. The man has been bailed, and the court case is continuing - with the judge having questioned the conduct of police and prosecutor.
  In contrast to that, activities for Human Rights Day at my company included circulating this link, to a splendid and inspiring video on inclusion and diversity that every single police officer in the world - everywhere - should be compelled to watch multiple times every day.
  Next, a couple of calls for new human rights.
   . . .
• Backlash and other thoughts
  One of the many problems of the world relying on minorities to fight their own battles is that we do not have the resources to fight the bigger battles - things like ensuring students in school are EFFECTIVELY taught anti-racism, the truth around gender variety, how not to be sexist, and so on.
  I want to be perfectly clear on that: if a child continues to be racist, sexist or transphobic, their education has been a failure - this is not one of those situations where it is about expressing a different opinion: if children grow up with racist, sexist, transphobic or other failings they are morally as much of a failure as a mass murderer, because that is what they are often doing.
  If you doubt that, look at police killings of people of colour, the murders of women that are misnamed "honour" killings, and the abuse of transphobic people that leads to suicide.
  Teachers need to disabuse themselves of the notion that they are only passing on intellectual skills and abilities: they are active influences on children
   . . .
• Why can't a woman . . .
  There is an infamous line in the play and film "My Fair Lady" where the main antagonist, the at-that-stage still misogynistic Professor Higgins, asks:
  "Why can't a woman . . . be more like a man?"
  It was a patronising, paternalistic remark that sums up many of the problems in society - and I'd like to touch now on how that applies to engineering.
   . . .
• Some thoughts on governance
  Let’s begin this with what would seem to most people to be an absurdity: a family that is run as a business is.
  In this absurdist example, children are not cherished and nurtured, they are “held to account” for the amount of profit they make - they have to reduce their costs, and generate increasing amounts of income. Children are not a joy: they are a burden to be brought to productivity as soon as possible. The profit does not stay within the family, it goes elsewhere - maybe previous generations living in other houses, or, if we were to extend this analogy to include takeovers, those who owned the family being considered in this absurdist example (i.e., slaves).
  It would be psychologically abusive, unhealthy, destructive, and - to use a weasel word - “inappropriate”. It would not be a family,
   . . .
• A draft proposal for a "gold standard" for inclusion and diversity
  I've had some time to do some thinking of late, and have a few posts lined up. This first one is, as the title states, a draft proposal for a "gold standard" for inclusion and diversity. I've come across the term "gold standard in a wide range of contexts, but it basically means (in the sense I'm using) the best of something - specifically, in this instance, inclusion and diversity for organisations.
   . . .
• A (non)reaction problem: "testimony" by "Mellissa Carone"
  This week saw some - in the words used a fair bit in the more rational and credible sections of the USA - "testimony" by someone named Mellissa Carone that was "lacking in credibility". Actually, I think the phrase was "utterly lacking in credibility".
  It did, indeed lack credibility, it harmed whatever #45 thought his team would do, and it was a waste of everyone's time.
  The unfortunate Congressperson trying to deal with this infantile behaviour was generally praised - certainly in everything I've come across. Personally, I think he looked a bit like a stunned mullet - it was, after all, a bit like turning up to a launch of a Saturn rocket and having someone say "the flames won't hurt me - they're all fake", and then stand right underneath just before the engines ignite while everyone else is kilometres away.
  But the problem is, she is not alone.
   . . .
• How does one distinguish the baby from the bathwater?
  Sounds ridiculous, put like that, doesn't it? And yet it is a useful saying: don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. It means: don't overreact, don't get rid of what is good while also addressing a problem.
  In real life, however, the problem is that distinguishing what is baby, and what is bathwater, is not necessarily clear cut.
   . . .
• A new term: FBU - Flummoxed By (the) Unfamiliar
  I've written up a definition of a term I will probably start to use more (created for my upcoming autobiography). The main listing is on a glossary site of mine at https://gnwmythrsglossary.blogspot.com/2020/05/fbu-flummoxed-by-unfamiliar.html , and the text is below.
   . . .
  

 

Fake media

With some of the utter drivel I've read in/from the far right wing media over the last few years (e.g., this, but also this), I've sometimes thought we should be using the expression "fake media", rather than fake news. 

However, the big driver with media is what sells/ gets clicks - on all sides. And the best reaction to that is still, in my opinion, teach children better critical thinking - beginning with being able to see through the business propaganda (aka "advertising") that Edward  Bernays  developed, and continuing with basic lessons for EVERYONE in rhetoric, which will help with seeing through political spin to substance, and civic/citizenship education, to how to analyse what is seen in professional media and social media - which has been underway in an ad hoc way for adults for some time now. 

That way, it won't matter as much what is published- by anyone - in the media or on social media: people will not be so easily duped. 

There is still a need to manage lies and deception, but that is a different topic to my point here - as is what to do adults who are gullible over the next half century after the above is effectively and uniformly implemented.

China vs. India

As an initial comment, the CCP is continuing its economic attack - the one sided nature of direct economic actions means it is not a war - on Australia. 

The main commentary I wish to provide, however, is on the Caspian Report's latest video, titled "A tiny Indian archipelago makes China nervous". 

This channel has looked at India and China previously, including their conflict on the India-Tibet border: 

• see here (on recent developments in the border conflict), here (which is of particular relevance to the current video), here, here, and here on one of India's other regional conflicts; 
• here (on China's reliance on having invaded and occupied Tibet, where it is also committing a genocide, to achieve its plans to dominate the region), here on links between China and Pakistan, here on China's 17 border disputes, here on China's Belt and Road Initiative (relevant to this week's video), here, here (on the Chinese mindset), here (catching up with the West) and here (China's own Silicon Valley), here (China's growing influence in Eastern Europe), and here (is China running out of people?); and 
• here for a geopolitical analysis (albeit in 2017) of South Asia, and here for a forecast for a pre-pandemic 2020.
  

(I have also written about China - see here, here, and here.)

This week's offering from this excellent channel is, in a nutshell, about the whys and wherefores of India's militarisation of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands near the Strait of Malacca.

The key points are:

• India has historically focused on a land  army, but this focus is now moving more towards their  navy. India is developing  newer  nuclear armed submarines (which is a backward step for the world as a whole, but one that is largely being driven by China's growing aggressiveness) which are currently expected to be ready early next year. While that is a significant "force multiplier", India is only two thirds of the way to meeting its naval needs;
• Progress has been restricted by limited resources and the other needs of India's roughly 1.3 billion people (see here, here, here, here, here, and here, here, here, and here). To compensate for these restrictions, India is building alliances (especially through "the Quad", which is currently India, Japan, Australia and the USA, and was described by Shirvan as a potential "Asian NATO"), "returning the favour" by increasing India's presence and influence in "China's backyard" (the  South  China  Sea), and - as mentioned - militarising the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The islands will be militarised over the next 10 years, under a unique - for India - combined military command, and, in the meantime, seabed surveillance which will also counters China's submarines;
• The Andaman and Nicobar Islands region are of great importance to the world's modern shipping - including 80% of China's hydrocarbon's imports, which is, from India's point of view, a force multiplier, and from China's point of view, a "troubling" (Shirvan's nice wording - I would put it more strongly) development;
• China's response has included occassional deliberate flare ups of the border dispute in the Himalayas, in an attempt to try to change India's behaviour - however, as Shirvan points out, distraction can only delay, but not stop the planned militarisation of the Andaman Islands;
• Shirvan ends with a timely warning that these actions could backfire in a number of ways, including the creation of an arms race.

Overall, this video continues the excellent production values of the channel, and provides informative insights on the topic of India's strategy around managing China's threats. I thoroughly recommend having a look - especially at the risks which this could lead to.

Change - including changing with the times and the evidence

One of the sites I follow is Aeon, which typically has some interesting articles / thinking / stimulus to thinking in their weekly newsletter service. 

One of the recent articles was "How to let go of a lifelong dream", with the additional sub-heading comment "Adaptability is as much of a virtue as grit. Overcome any feelings of loss or failure by pivoting toward a new passion". 

The article is based at the personal, and I thoroughly recommend it. Years ago I heard a manager talking to juniors in the company about goal setting, and saying that it was important to be determined and never waver from your goal - making him and his blind stereotypical bulldog addiction to a single, fixed course a fool of the first degree. 

One of my strengths is being able to change plans in response to changes. This first emerged when I was competing in sailing dinghies as a kid, where I would plan a broad strategy - say, go up the left side of windward beat to take advantage of more wind there, but suppose an unexpected wind shift came that meant the right side was now advantaged, I would assess whether the losses involved in switching sides of the beat would be worth the gain when we got there and possibly throw the original plan out altogether. 

I've also had to do this in engineering - for instance, back in the days when I was supervising construction (decades ago, now), we might find a patch of soft ground and have to adapt the design on the spot. 

This is one of the many reasons I consider people who think everything can be planned and the plan relied upon in engineering are getting dangerously close to incompetent - they're certainly lacking in real life experience, and possibly suffering from the previously mentioned problem of "blind stereotypical bulldog addiction to a single, fixed course".

In my role as a technical specialist, I could be working on half a dozen projects at any one time - always in a minor but significant role: I don't direct the project, and thus am subject to the vagaries of what happens. I am also subject to unexpected - and thus unplanned - calls from people who have suddenly realised they need my unplanned for help, and give me a call out of the blue. This sort of thing makes even trying to complete my timesheet a day early ludicrous - as is the case for many of my colleagues. But we still have the addicts to planning. 

Being prepared and willing to adapt "on the run" is not just crucial to the personal, it applies to other areas - my day job, other professions, and especially military planning. 

It also applies to economics and politics, which are plagued by zombie ideas - such as the trickle down fallacy (see here, here, and here, for instance) - largely because people are unable to give up their lifelong dream of, for instance, seeing trickle down fantasies somehow come to work. 

This is a variation of the old saying that the personal is political. In this instance, the political - and economic - is being poisoned and twisted by personal character flaws. 

Don't be rigid in your thinking and planning. If you find that difficult or uncomfortable, then you need to do some work on it - beginning with article mentioned in the second paragraph of this post.

A possible attack on professional integrity / the quality of training of professions

This is a post in my Ethics, Lazy Management, and Flawed Thinking series - see https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2019/11/ethics-lazy-management-and-flawed.html - although I am overdue to update that particular listing.

***

Technical literature in a profession is how professionals in that area of work stay up to date - in Engineering, and possibly other professions, it is termed "Continuing Professional Development", or CPD.  These articles are peer reviewed (I and many others did that last week for a conference next year) are advise of new developments, new speculations / possible new directions, and experiences using recent and old approaches. 

It is how people going to a doctor know they will get the most up-to-date treatment, how people going to a structural engineer know a building or bridge will not fall down (which is supposed to be the main motivation behind Victoria's new Engineers Registration Bill, but I question that for several reasons), and how people using computers and software know they have the best - including most resistant to cyber-attacks - technology. 

And technology, in this day and age, is of far greater impact than anything else: forget about "who controls the means of productions" - that no longer lies with whoever directs what happens in factories, it lies with those in control of the technology that runs the factories, our cars, our planes, our medical technology - even, to a disturbing extent, our homes and personal space. 

All people who argue about means of productions are around two to three decades out of date, and utterly irrelevant. 

I have grave concerns about some of this, and great admiration for other aspects - not only that I can type on a PC and post to the Internet, but the medical advances,, the improvements in safety, the connectedness that helps people who are isolated or otherwise unable to have social contact or do the sorts of daily activities that others take for granted.

And now a tech company has introduced a requirement that technical papers potentially be - in my word choice - biased. 

The articles will be scrutinised by marketing people in order to ensure an adequately positive tone.

Despite comments that challenges should not be hidden, it appears at least some papers have been changed in concerning ways by this. 

From this article:

Four staff researchers, including senior scientist _, said they believe _ is starting to interfere with crucial studies of potential technology harms.

“If we are researching the appropriate thing given our expertise, and we are not permitted to publish that on grounds that are not in line with high-quality peer review, then we’re getting into a serious problem of censorship,” _ said.

_ states on its public-facing website that its scientists have “substantial” freedom.

Tensions between _ and some of its staff broke into view this month after the abrupt exit of scientist _, who led a 12-person team with _ focused on ethics in artificial intelligence software (AI).

I've removed the identifiers for several reasons: 

• I consider this problem potentially applies across the tech industry, given my experience in engineering (see below), and to single one company out is to possibly fail to address the problem; 
• further developments may resolve this issue; and 
• I'm not interested in getting into any legal arguments with large and powerful corporations - particularly when I consider - see my first dot point - that misses the issue.
  

As I just mentioned, other professions have had problems with technical literature, CPD, and related ethical issues. 

I recall a few years ago concerns around the medical profession and the influence that medical supplies companies were having (through free trips/accommodation/perks, from memory). 

In my profession, papers have been published that are basically advertising plugs for equipment or new treatment processes. 

I want to be clear, though: we need to know about the new, but it should be presented in a way that is objective, and free of marketing spin. It is not the content I am concerned with, it is the presentation. 

And that, by the way, has been subject to some companies trying to enforce rules similar to what is being written about above, so this is (a) not new, (b) not limited to IT, (c) of great concern to the community, and (d) utterly missed by all attempts at regulation / registration / enforcing a professional Code of Conduct. 

ALL professions need to recognise and start addressing this issue - leave suppliers' involvement in conferences to open and declared sponsorships (which I approve of, knowing how difficult it can be to get enough funding to put on any conference or event, let alone one meant to be a "high quality", seemingly "professional" event - which alludes to some of the problems I have with the superficiality of appearance based criteria, but that is a criticism of society and people more than the weak-minded professions who go along with personal irrational biases - and mine are clearly showing :) ), and make sure companies comply with the published rules on technical literature not being marketing - contact companies in your industry and TELL THEM THAT.

And all people involved in regulation / registration / enforcing a professional Code of Conduct need to start focusing on this, rather than fallaciously assume all CPD is good (or relevant).

Pardons by #45, limitations to immunity, and "ecocide"

The pardons being given by POTUS45 (#45) are like giving the rats * fleeing a sinking ship life-jackets. 

Putin has been doing something similar for himself. 

Something that's worth contemplating is that crimes against humanity cannot be protected against that way - they fall into a special class of law referred to as universal jurisdiction (which is reserved only for the most appalling of crimes) which means offenders must be prosecuted by whatever nation catches them. 

Thus, strictly speaking, Argentina, far from sheltering Eichmann, should have actually put the monster on trial. This is why the UK had to arrest the monster Pinochet. Both those actions were seen as "novel", or new, but they actually drew on existing laws. 

On that, the move towards an "ecocide" law is a good thing, but the email claiming the terms crime against humanity and genocide were made during the Nuremberg trials is wrong: crimes against humanity came out of a protests by the Allies against the Armenian genocide being committed by the Ottoman Empire (now a denialist Turkey) which were changed from "crimes against Christianity" because the UK's empire then included predominantly Hindu India, and the word genocide was created by Raphael Lemkin in the early 1940s. 

The two terms largely came together in the Genocide Convention of 1948 - two years after the main Nuremberg Trials being referred to. The charges at Nuremberg did not include genocide. 

(The four charges were: (1) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace [which goes back to the Paris Pact of 1928, a part of customary international law which was also the basis for charges against Japan - and could potentially be used against the USA for actions such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but not the first Gulf War nor the actions in Afghanistan after 9/11]; (2) Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace; (3) Participating in war crimes [defined by a series of Hague Conventions going back to the late 1800s]; and (4) Crimes against humanity. Incidentally, the fact that some charged were found not guilty shows this is not a case of "victor's justice", and the previous treaties relied on shows it was not "ex-post facto".) 

Putin's actions internationally could potentially make him subject to international law, but I don't know whether - bad as they are - they meet the requirement for severity that would trigger that. On balance, I suspect Putin will escape international justice - and his law means he will likely escape domestic justice.

#45 has had little interest in international matters, other than the trade war against China, and hasn't, in my opinion, done enough to generate even any interest in international charges. Ironically, his culpability for hundreds of thousands of deaths in the USA from the pandemic does not meet the strict criteria for the Genocide Convention, which covers defined actions against "a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" for a specific, defined purpose - and, in this context, national refers to another nation, not your own. 

This means that the genocide committed by the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia does not strictly meet that definition either.

However, unlike Putin, #45 is potentially subject to domestic law for his abuses while President . . . which he can possibly pardon himself for, but the debts he is reported to have, dating back to before his election, are a different matter entirely. 

All told, 2021 may be an interesting year for justice. 

 * By the way, I've known people with pet rats, and they are actually quite personable, pleasant and clean. Mice, on the other hand, have odour issues. The association of rats with despicable character or flaws possibly goes back to when humans needed to protect granaries of crops, and rats were difficult to find animals eating from the same food source. I couldn't find a good online explanation, but the Online Etymological Dictionary  suggests the negative connotation goes back to the 1620s, and came about from the belief that rats would leave a "ship about to sink or a house about to fall".

Cross posting: Post No. 1,728 - Some Thoughts on PTSS

This was originally posted on my main blog at https://gnwmythr.blogspot.com/2020/12/post-no-1728-some-thoughts-on-ptss.html.

***

A bigot who claims they've stopped being a bigot and thus all is well is like a thug committing a violent assault who stops and then tries to get their bruised, bleeding and broken victim to say all is well - and possibly for the same reason: to avoid the consequences, whether legal charges, moral criticism, or karma. 

This is a particular issue for me, as I am experiencing a recurrence of PTSS from decades of ongoing transphobia - the flashbacks are an absolute s**t. (There are actually other causes as well, but it is the transphobia that has been triggered.)

By the way, post traumatic stress syndrome is the current term for what used to be called PTSD: by using the word "syndrome" rather than "disorder", a whole stack of negative connotations are avoided (as I tried to explain to my former doctors - which is why they are now former).

So . . . what to do? 

Well, I keep going with my meditation and self awareness work, but I also need to resume counselling (which helped with the PTSS I was experiencing a while ago from past DV and sexual assault/abuse - including childhood). Its been a bit difficult to get that during the lockdown (especially as the counsellor I had been seeing has moved, so I am on a quest for a new counsellor, and it is important they match), but (a) the lockdown has eased here, (b) the medical profession has caught up with this thing called the Internet, and (c) I've now got a good medico. 

Alternative practices have a role and a place, but when you need conventional medical assistance, get it. 

This is particularly important during this pandemic, when there is so much conspiracy fantasy rubbish floating about the place. 

Information on PTSD here and here, and complex PTSS here. For those who need urgent assistance (in Australia), see here. 

 

Some interesting reading

I've come across some interesting reading that I thought I would share. 

• First up is an article about POTUS45's appalling claims that the pandemic is fake - which is one of tens of thousands of lies #45 has made.
  "I had four families that I called and told them their loved one was never coming home. I was devastated, I didn't have an emotion left, I was numb."
  But a moment even worse came for Dr Keeperman when President Donald Trump suggested in a tweet that what he and his colleagues were doing was fake.
  On November 30, Dr Keeperman posted a selfie on Twitter from the Renown Regional Medical Center's makeshift ward in the hospital's car park. / He simply wanted to thank his co-workers and encourage them to stay strong after five COVID-19 deaths in 32 hours.
  Two days later, Mr Trump retweeted a now-blocked post claiming the car park ward was a "scam".
  There is a somewhat questionable set of informal awards called the "Darwin Awards", described on Wikipedia as "a tongue-in-cheek honor originating in Usenet newsgroup discussions around 1985. They recognise individuals who have supposedly contributed to human evolution by selecting themselves out of the gene pool from dying or becoming sterilized via their own actions". 
  #45 doesn't qualify, but his actions have led to so many avoidable deaths that I - in despair - wonder if there should be a special category for him in these "awards"?
  See here.
• A call for philosophers to stop "shit stirring" - which is the best thing I've heard in that field for years:
  "Non-action in the face of threats such as climate change, pandemics and technologically facilitated extremism has moral implications of its own, and it’s utilitarianism that offers the most emphatic responses to these problems.
  But philosophers often don’t do a good job of discussing utilitarianism. They traffic in astounding thought-experiments – is it right to harmlessly kill your newborn infant if it’s screaming a bit too much? . . .
  But ‘gotcha’ answers to ethical enquiries about how to raise, or not raise, kids are a triumph of a philosophical style that prioritises aggravation over moral substance. Those who offer them are not engaged in good-faith philosophical debate. They’re engaged in what I call ‘moral shit-stirring’. . . .
  Similarly, shit-stirring has become the great enemy of good-faith debate in contemporary philosophical ethics."
  See here. 
• "What Election Day Revealed About Progressive Policies"
  From the USA: "Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich explains how policies that embrace humanity and dignity are a winning electoral strategy, given the success of progressive ballot initiatives and candidates on Election Day."
  See here. 
• Not equality by any means, but a significant step towards it at an earlier date than I knew: the UK Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919. 
• A US woman farmer who inherited a farm in 1897, only used profits to pay for expansion, followed the results of science (which is not always good for animals - nor is the farming she was doing), insisted on hygiene 30 years before it was legislated there, and played music for her cattle.
  “Howie’s application of prescribed female values to the rural environment in Wisconsin was just one element of the large-scale progressive reform movement that swept the nation during the long Gilded Age and Progressive Era (the 1870s through the 1920s). Many middle-class women claimed that they were compelled to activism by the skewed American value system that was the result of male domination of business and technology. Profit had replaced morality, these women charged, as men focused on financial gain as the sole measure of success and progress. In the factories whose profits turned a few individuals into millionaires, working-class men, women, and children toiled long hours for low wages in unsafe conditions, only to go home to urban squalor. Non-renewable resources were exploited with no thought to their conservation. And farmers, often struggling financially, heedlessly exhausted soils and raised animals in filth, seeking to maximize their profits from the impure crops and stock they foisted on an unsuspecting public. In the face of so much gross injustice, women, long prescribed to be the civilizers of men, staged protests and organized reform efforts.”
   . . .
  “Howie’s cattle were “brushed and petted and everything done to make the barn as sanitary and attractive as possible.”10She made no effort to hide her emotional attachment to her cattle: “I love the cows on my farm as one would love a person and I do not believe the people generally have an appreciation of the worthy and noble animals commensurate with their true worth.” ”
  Unger, N. (2017). Adda F. Howie: “America’s Outstanding Woman Farmer.” Wisconsin Magazine of History, 100(4), 40–45. http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/wmh/id/52633/rec/399 
• "Deficit Attention Disorder: Partisan-Motivated Reasoning About Government Overspending
  Working Paper", by John V. Kane New York University and Ian G. Anson University of Maryland, Baltimore County - which I found on Twitter here, which pointed to this website,  which led to this download.
• "Can the Judiciary Guard Democratic Transitions of Power? An Indian-Israeli Perspective". by Prof. Rivka Weill.
  
• "Australia's eSafety commissioner would be able to remove 'seriously harmful' content under proposed cyber abuse laws".
• An investor group - often described as activist - is wanting companies to avoid reputational loss in the first place - which is what I have been wanting to see for some time now. See here.
  

My most popular posts from 2020

Now that Blogger has improved its statistics feature, I thought I'd look back at the last 12 months, and see what articles have been most popular.

• In defence of democracy
  Democracy has often been portrayed as being about freedom. It is, but that the common portrayal is a simplification . . .
• Changing jobs / careers
   . . .
  Ageism these days seems to start when people are in their 40s: in my case, I noticed a pronounced increase when I was in my 50s, and I think it is largely driven by an aspect people haven't talked about: personal "comfort" - in the sense of wanting to work with people who are similar, which, when that is free of bigotry, can result in stronger teams, but, in most circumstances, is simply a fancier glossing over bigotry against people for being different
  . . .
• A commentary on policing
  In my experience, something many people either do not know or forget, is that police have two roles. Firstly, enforcement of law, and there are problems with that - such as unconscious bias (being fought well by some police forces), reliance on predictive techniques rather than evidence, and militarised enforcement; but the second part, enforcement of ORDER is where we really get major problems because
   . . .
• Ethics, Lazy Management, and Flawed Thinking: The Hypocrisy of the "No Emotions at Work" Dinosaurs
  One of the things that annoys me is the utter hypocrisy of those dinosaurs who take the "no emotions at work" line ("be professional"). Those jerks are actually getting a warm fuzzy from their inhumanely cold non-display - they are just so out of touch with themselves, or have buried normal human emotions (which are a key, essential part of being human) so deeply that they don't realise it.
  The argument that they are uncomfortable with emotions is not quite correct: they are uncomfortable with displayed emotions, probably because they have become so incompetent as human beings that they
   . . .
• Thoughts on embracing uncertainty
  One of the biggest problems with people inclined towards authoritarianism is their fear of chaos. However, many such people, in my experience, are perfectly comfortable with an unregulated or relatively unregulated housing / car market - they feel no need to see rigid controls on prices, and, in fact, would probably bitterly resent and resist that.
  And yet, in other areas of life - around behaviour, social variation, they are doing the exact equivalent of what they would object to around cars and houses
   . . .
• Some quotations
  I have been collecting a few quotations, and now, before the list gets any longer, I thought I’d do a post with them all in. In due course, I will add these to my quotations page on my main blog.
   . . .
• Lessons from the bushfires - preliminary notes for later
  It is too early to properly, comprehensively learn all the lessons from the devastating fires that are destroying so much of Australia at the moment, but these are some preliminary thoughts of mine for later.
  I'm going to look at these in three categories:
     1. At the fire front;
     2. Fire-fighting logistics;
     3. Prevention and minimisation
   . . .
• My submission on the Morrison "government" 's proposed religious discrimination bill.
  This is the final version of my submission - just emailed off.
  Apologies for the formatting - I lost most of what I had around indents etc when I pasted this in.
   . . .
• The dualism of the profession of engineering
  The Adani coal mine has been and continues to be a divisive issue - largely between those on the one hand who consider environmental impacts and ethical considerations take precedence over profit or even jobs, and those on the other hand who believe the economy trumps all, no matter what other problems may flow from it.
  This division is now becoming apparent in those engineering companies which have been working for Adani, as reported here, for instance.
  Now, there is an engineering organisation which set standards for registration and conduct for engineers in Australia: Engineers Australia,
   . . .
• The releasing of the racist worst in some people
• At one of the supermarkets I go to, there is a busker who is in a similar age group to me, and we often chat about life (his has been very interesting), the universe and everything. He is slowly getting rid of some of his collection of books, and he'll keep any on society and human rights for me to have a look at. Some of those he now sells on line - with one, in a bit of social satire, being described as portable source of toilet paper, with individually numbered sheets so you know how many you have left ☺(the platform didn't see the humour, and made him take the ad down).
  More seriously, when I was talking to him earlier this week, he described an incident a few days before
  . . .

I may also do a post on which posts have been overlooked that are worth more attention . . .

Also, one of the aspects of blogging that I find most fascinating is where people view my blogs from. This year, the main views have come (from most to least) from the USA, Australia, Portugal, the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany, Ukraine, Ireland, and “Other”.