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”.