Welcome to the first book post of 2021! As with December, I’ve added a TV show to this one.
Let’s take a look at what I’m reading in the new year.
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I made my previous COVID-19 data in Iowa post at the end of August 2020. After spikes in March/April and June, the COVID-19 situation in Iowa had stabilized in August. However, there were some threats looming on the horizon. Primary among those were the upcoming re-openings of K-12 schools and colleges.
Let’s take a look at what happened after August.
Senior executives claim they work a lot. How much? On average, they report working 62 hours per week. If we expand to studies including middle management, we come up with average work weeks up to a whopping 72 hours. Talk about work!
Well, yes. As we’ll see, that’s the idea. Are senior executives and other managers some new proletariat, as they want us to believe? Do they toil away at work all day like real life hero-leaders from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged? Would the world fall apart if they quit doing what they do – if the people working under them took over their roles?
Not exactly.
In one sense, it feels a bit quick to already write one of these end of year reviews (see also 2019 and 2018). They always creep up. And yet 2020 dragged on. I mean, it really dragged. While the end of summer moved pretty quickly, I think it took about 5 years to get through March.
How long did 2020 take? If you recall, back in January we were talking about the Bernie Sanders campaign. Now that seems like it was…what, 10 years ago?
Anyway, let’s take a look at 2020!
Editors dedicated a recent issue of Science, Technology, and Human Values to the topic of ‘ghost variables.’ Articles focused on this topic through the lens of race. The brief idea is that certain features don’t appear directly within the scientific data. However, they ‘haunt’ the data, existing as invisible traces. I think we can put this idea to good use.
Let’s look at a topic I wrote about awhile back: standardized testing. Could there be ghost variables at work? Standard disclaimer: as some of you know, I work in the testing industry. My opinion – as always – is my own and only my own.
