Chronicle of Higher Education, Are You in a BS Job? In Academe, You’re Hardly Alone:
I would
like to write about the bullshitization of academic life: that is, the
degree to which those involved in teaching and academic management spend
more and more of their time involved in tasks which they secretly — or
not so secretly — believe to be entirely pointless.
For
a number of years now, I have been conducting research on forms of
employment seen as utterly pointless by those who perform them. The
proportion of these jobs is startlingly high. Surveys in Britain and
Holland reveal that 37 to 40 percent of all workers there are convinced
that their jobs make no meaningful contribution to the world.
... According to a 2016 survey,
American office workers reported that they spent four out of eight
hours doing their actual jobs; the rest of the time was spent in email,
useless meetings, and pointless administrative tasks. ..
Police block roads to stop tech support chap 'robbing a bank'
ON-CALLSirens blared, roads were blocked, and sheepish grins were eventually grinned
MPs slam UK.gov's 'unacceptable' hoarding of custody images
Keeping innocent mugs on file is unethical – tech committee
Daniel Hemel (Chicago), Justice Alito, State Tax Hero?:
I had been waiting with bated breath for the Supreme Court’s decision in Murphy v. NCAA, formerly Christie v. NCAA.
(Sorry, Chris Christie: You won’t have your name attached to the
winning side of a landmark constitutional case — your successor will.)
Anyhow, it came down yesterday — and it’s way more interesting than I
anticipated. In a nutshell: Not only did the Supreme Court strike down
the federal law at issue, which had stopped states, counties, and cities
from legalizing sports gambling within their borders, but it also
appears to have invalidated a broad swath of congressional limitations
on state tax authority. (Oh, and it also saved sanctuary cities.) ...