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Latest Read: Why We’re Polarized

Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein. Ezra is a journalist, political analyst, and New York Times columnist. He co-founded Vox and formerly served as the website’s editor-at-large.

Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein

In addition, he has held editorial positions at The Washington Post and The American Prospect, and was a regular contributor to Bloomberg News and MSNBC. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from USC.

Ezra writes extensively about his discovery of America’s toxic political system. In confronting polarization he shows what this increased level will do to American society.

He begins by sharing a simple view of the New Deal coalition created in the 1960s, following party realignments along southern geographic and racial political lines. Much was attributed to white anxiety regarding the the shift in America’s demographics. This is also a fairly straight forward look at bias.

He proves rather insightful in communicating that Trump’s election was not a surprise at all. Yet while both Democrats and Republicans indicated his election was very unprecedented, the GOP won the White House by the exact same tactics used by their party for more than 50 years.

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Education Reading Technology

Latest Read: We See It All

We See It All: Liberty and Justice in an Age of Perpetual Surveillance by Jon Fasman. Jon is a senior reporter at The Economist for 15 years. He holds a Master of Philosophy from Oxford. His writing has appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, Slate, and The Washington Post.

We See It All: Liberty and Justice in an Age of Perpetual Surveillance

Jon is revealing how current laws and policies are too far behind the times regarding next generation technologies. Ultimately, Jon asks for the public to hold government at the federal, state, and local levels accountable to protect privacy rights and liberty of their citizens.

In fact, this book’s investigation into the legal, political, and moral issues surrounding how law enforcement, including courts utilize surveillance systems confronts the citizen of any country reveals that citizens may live in a free country in the name of safety.

This has certainly escalated rapidly since 9/11. Issues of next generation system already deployed impact privacy and the rights of citizens.

Jon is addressing such topics as moral, legal, and political that are now generating data by advanced tools. For example scanning technologies including facial recognition, license-plate readers are triggering activity by law enforcement.

This certainly book draws similar outcomes to The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, and Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet by Yasha Levine. Law enforcement use of technologies results in higher ticket and arrest data in unique zip codes across major metropolitan areas.

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Education Reading

Latest Read: Numbers Don’t Lie:

Numbers Don’t Lie: 71 Things You Need to Know About the World by Vaclav Smil. Vaclav a Czech-Canadian scientist and policy analyst. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg Canada.

Numbers Don’t Lie: 71 Things You Need to Know About the World by Vaclav Smil

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the 2000 recipient of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Award for Public Understanding of Science and Technology.

In addition, Vaclav was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its 2010 list of FP Top 100 Global Thinkers. In 2013, he was appointed by the Governor General to the Order of Canada. Finally, he was the 2013 EADS Distinguished Visitor at the American Academy in Berlin.

I read his book How the World Really Works late last year, enjoying his writing and his messages. However, downstream many people do not understand or they unknowingly misinterpret the analytics or statistical outcomes. To get an accurate view of the world, Vaclav is emphasizing that creators of these number really must focus on delivering the correct context to their reporting.

In many instances the demands of today’s post pandemic world certainly requires an understanding of science and statistics. More importantly, it requires effort. We must be willing to pay attention, looking beneath the surface to fully understand the material we are reading.

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Education Reading

Latest Read: The Hard Sell

The Hard Sell: Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Startup by Evan Hughes. This book traces an Opioid startup and its hard fall. The book is set to be a Netflix release in 2023. called Pain Hustlers.

The Hard Sell: Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Startup by Evan Hughes

This book tells a story of widespread, flagrant abuse selling opioids. In fact, the company’s leaders looked sideways as profits soared. I found this to be an important book as the American opioid crisis remains critical, however the message is a bit weaker after reading five other books about the crisis. The press however have made this story relevant.

John Kapoor created pharmaceutical firm Insys Therapeutics. The company was certainly not the first to sell opioids. In fact it was competing with the Sackers’s Purdue Pharma. However Insys developed a unique approach to deliver fentanyl (called Subsys) quickly in to the body.

Subsys was sprayed under the tongue. The drug’s fentanyl impact began in less than 5 minutes, almost as quickly as taking the drug in an IV. Yet when not measured accurately, a single dose will kill you. And it did indeed kill a lot of people.

However, Insys simply pushed their innovation. To drive success Kapoor hired a number of aggressive young executives. The story reveals how Mike Babich, hired from Chicago-based Northern Trust who became a cut throat sales leader.

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Education Reading

Latest Read: The Disordered Mind

The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves by Eric R. Kandel. He is the winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology for his foundational research into memory storage in the brain.

The Disordered Mind: What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves by Eric R. Kandel

Eric is recognized as one of the pioneers of modern brain science. In fact, his work continues to shape our understanding of how learning and memory work and to break down age-old barriers between the sciences and the arts.

He is able to address upon his research experiences and noted studies regarding the brain. Yet when the neurons communicate, they can be disrupting. This is where Eric’s research into disordered minds certainly sheds light into autism, depression, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s, and PTSD.

So, we now can understand via Eric’s research among many more, how our brain functions under autism. A neurological change in the brain which directly impacts social interactions. This is providing profound insights. In fact, we also understand more clearly how depression impacts our emotions linked to the integrity of one’s self.

In fact, the brain holds over 86 billion neurons which communicate with one another very precisely. However, if those connections are disrupted, the brain processes that give rise to our mind can become disordered, resulting in diseases such as depression, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s, and autism.

This book is a wonderful next step from my previous reads The Elephant in the Brain and The Leading Brain.

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