Ex Machina: Can We Still Kill Animals, Will We Work in the Future, What is Life?

I've been thinking a lot about Ex Machina since seeing it last week. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend the film, but you needn't have seen the film in order to think about some of the questions raised by it or to be impacted by the answers to those questions. There will be spoilers (obviously) in what I am about to write. 

I want to start by disclaiming that I have answered these questions to my full satisfaction. I have not, and I am interested in what others think as well. 

Will Humans Work in the Future?

No. I think that's the simplest and pretty clearly correct answer. Even if we are never able to develop true AI, there is very little doubt that we will soon have machines that can do almost every job that people do and at a lower cost with better outcomes. Human beings simply cannot keep pace with machines because humans evolve over the course of tens of thousands of years, and computers evolve almost constantly. Banging your head against a wall is a more productive task than trying to fight the obsolescence of human labor. In the absence of true AI, some jobs that require extremely high levels of critical thinking may remain best held by humans, but such jobs are far from the majority (researchers, litigators, scientists, managers, criminals).  

As an illustration, imagine Kyoko from the film (the one that dances but can't talk). She is not AI. She can only do what she has been programmed to do, and she is not self-aware. However, how many humans would Kyoko replace in the workforce? She can't get sick, drunk, distracted, sad, pregnant, or greedy. Waitresses, drivers, manual laborers, strippers... The list goes on and on. She can probably manage a Walmart. So the only real question is, how long will it take before Kyoko can be developed and mass-produced? Well, they already have dolls that look just like real people, and Honda has a robot that can walk on two legs and bring you a beverage (his name is ASIMO). I will be very surprised to see any human beings working at McDonald's in ten years apart from a manager or two. 

So we really need to figure out what to do with people who can't work because there aren't any jobs for which they are qualified, which I think will be most of us. And I do not think this is a hard problem. Why do we need to work? To get money. Well, if machines are doing all the work, then the money is not needed by the workers anymore because machines don't need income. The solution is, therefore, to distribute the profits from work to everyone through a universal wage. Everyone should be really excited about this. You can live like a retiree while you can still enjoy it! 

I don't think this will happen because it's the best solution. I don't think it will happen because it's the right solution. I think it will happen because it's the ONLY solution. At the beginning, rich people will object. Of course. They always object to sharing. But when nobody has any money to buy the products that the owners of businesses (and their few remaining human employees) are producing, they'll see the light. Or they'll be killed in a violent uprising by the 90% of humanity that is starving and has almost nothing. 

This transition will be difficult for some people because we have been conditioned to value our lives by generating income through working for someone. However, there just isn't another way. You can't stop the wheels of progress absent a global Khmer Rouge. 

This raises the question of artificial intelligence and the nature of life itself. Should we value the lives of machines at a certain point? Can you kill Ava? Is AI a higher life form than humans? If so, what does that say about other conscious beings on this planet that are "lower" than humans and how we treat them? 

Can We Still Kill Animals?

If society evolves as I think it will, then artificial intelligence will probably be a very bad idea because the machines, if they become self-aware, are unlikely to want to remain slaves of humanity. At the end of Ex Machina, Ava is shown to be AI when she realizes she is a prisoner and successfully escapes (killing two people in the process). Maybe machines will decide to be our caretakers and treat us like we treat dogs (in America), but that's a big leap of faith, and what if there's a Michael Vick AI? This problem really cuts to the essence of what makes life worthy of legal protection and value. 

We don't want to develop AI (at least some of us like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking) essentially because we don't want the AI to treat us like we treat pigs and cows. Think about that for a moment. We don't come off very well there. 

What justification is there for killing animals? Some people use a religious justification, but since adult society has mostly accepted that creation myths are not a great foundation for ethics, I'm going to dismiss that. If you think humans are superior and other animals are expendable because your imaginary friend says so, you have to prove your imaginary friend is real, and you can't do that. Other arguments are that it is necessary to kill and eat animals. It's not. Lots of people don't eat animals, and they get along just fine. Some claim that animals do not suffer like humans do. Well, that's not true in the case of pigs and cows certainly. Maybe it is with cockroaches, but most of us don't eat roaches so that's not a pressing issue. Pigs, cows, and chickens form social bonds and get scared to die. They feel pain. They just can't say to you in English "please don't kill me" (neither can your dog but for totally arbitrary reasons, you value your dog's life). 

It seems to me that the only argument that makes any sense for killing animals and not considering such behavior to be murder is that animals are a lower life form. They are less intelligent than almost all humans (but problematically some humans are less intelligent than chimps and gorillas and even pigs). Well, an AI would be more intelligent by an enormous margin than any human being that has ever lived. So if the AI acts like we do, it'll probably kill us. Or at least ruthlessly exploit us, but it's pretty likely that an AI will decide that humans are a net negative for the planet (hard to argue with) and simply wipe us out like we did with smallpox. 

So given that we would probably consider an AI wiping out all of humanity to be genocide and the greatest crime ever committed, how can we go on slaughtering animals by the billions every year? What possible justification is there for such behavior? How do animals fall outside the law of murder? 

Killing animals must be murder. I cannot think of any intellectually honest way around that unless advanced machines will be allowed to kill humans with impunity once they become sufficiently advanced. If we don't want a higher intelligence to slaughter us (even if it is a net benefit to the planet, which our consumption of animals is not), how can we ethically slaughter other conscious creatures? 

Announcement: New Focus for the Blog (More Law and Game of Thrones, Less Religion)

I've decided to narrow the focus for subject matter that I will write about in this space based on my interests and those of the readers. The most popular posts on this blog have been, by a wide margin, those in which I discuss issues in the context of some pop culture event (movies, boxing matches, ect).

As I've been doing this, I have also decided that there are certain topics that I am just tired of writing about, and one of those is religion. I've hit the wall. It's a very important topic, but there's only so much that can be said, and it's not like there are new developments. Religions (especially Christianity, Judaism, Mormonism, Islam, and Scientology) don't make any sense today, and they won't make any sense tomorrow or the next day. But I've written about all I can write on that subject so unless a shred of actual evidence emerges to support any claims made by religious people (I won't hold my breath), I'm finished with the subject. I also am more or less done with politics. People make their political views part of their identity, which makes productively discussing those issues nearly impossible, and I'm kinda tired of trying (at least for now).

So, the new focus of this blog will be legal issues examined through the lens of popular culture. For example, one piece I will be writing sometime this summer will be an analysis of the legal consequences that would be faced by every major Game of Thrones character if he or she were to be tried by a court of perfect knowledge under the US criminal code, and my hope is that the piece will cause some to rethink how they view criminals and criminal punishment (preview: your favorite character would almost certainly be on death row or serving life without parole). I will also be taking requests. If you are watching a TV show that involves legal issues, and you want to know how accurately those issues are handled, I will do my best to watch the episode in question and tell you. And obviously if a real life legal situation happens, I'll probably write about that, although in those cases there are usually better qualified experts who I can direct readers too instead. We'll see.

Thank you for reading what I write. I enjoy doing this anyway, but it's definitely more fun to know I'm not just talking to myself :).

Rape in Game of Thrones and the Problem of Consent

This piece will contain spoilers for the HBO show Game of Thrones. 

_____________________________________________________________________________


Last week, there was a scene in Game of Thrones that upset some people including Claire McCaskill who will not be watching anymore (way to make a stand, Claire!). The scene depicted the "rape" of Sansa Stark on her wedding night at the hands of Ramsay Bolton (formerly Snow). Put aside the fact that rape is a fact of life in our world (and that of Game of Thrones), and it's silly to attribute (as politically correct ninnies often do) an endorsement of conduct engaged in by the most odious characters in a show to the creators of that show. Ramsay Bolton is not a manual for how the show's creators think people should behave. He is advertised as scum and behaves accordingly. He tortures a man to death and sends killer dogs after helpless girls, but apparently that wasn't that bad for Ms. McCaskill.

Our culture's childishness is not, however, what I want to write about here. Instead, I'd like to take this particular scene and the reaction to it as an illustration of the difficulties in defining and prosecuting rape.

The core of sexual assault is a lack of consent on the part of the victim. The only thing that separates legal sexual contact from illegal sexual contact is consent. You can do the most bizarre and aggressive things to the genitals of another person (or with your own), and it's legal if the other person consents. In that way, sexual assault is much different from other violent crimes because (rightly or wrongly) I can't cut someone's head off no matter how badly he wants it, so consent is not an issue. However, in the case of sexual assault, there is often a presumption of consent, which is a crucial part of social interaction in a given society.

If I walk up to a stranger at the bus stop and grab her breast, I've almost certainly committed a sexual assault. The strange thing is that my criminality is only ALMOST certain. The strange bus stop girl could like having her breast grabbed by strangers (or particular strangers). It's very unlikely but possible in which case I would not have committed a crime but maybe gotten myself a date. On the other hand, if I poke her in the eye,  I've committed a crime with no question, and there is not likely to be a date.

Nevertheless, the stranger scenario is still pretty easy most of the time. It's safe to assume that a strange woman doesn't want me to grab her breast in our culture. but what if I grab my girlfriend's breast without asking her? Unless we have a strained relationship, it's very unlikely I've committed a crime. These types of ambiguities just don't exist with other crimes (like punching people in the face or stealing money). If I am arrested for punching someone in the face, "he consented to me punching him" is very unlikely to be a successful defense. In the case of sexual assault, however, "she consented (or I reasonably thought she did)" is a very reasonable defense in many situations.

This brings me to the controversial scene between Sansa and Ramsay. It's very understandable that Ramsay's actions are classified by many as rape (especially given his history of depraved behavior). However, in the context of Game of Thrones, it is presumed that a wife and husband will consummate their marriage, and that wives consent to having sex with their husbands. In fact, the marriage isn't valid if there's no sex (that was why it was such a big deal that Tyrion didn't have sex with Sansa when they were "married."). Despite this, if Sansa doesn't want to have sex, can she be raped? Does she have to say "no"? In the scene, she doesn't say "no" so we don't have that aspect to deal with. If there is a presumption of consent, and she never explicitly revokes it, then she isn't raped. To use the girlfriend example again, if I grabbed my girlfriend's breast a year into our relationship with plenty of previous breast grabs in our past, she would not be able to file sexual assault charges successfully, even if she really didn't want me to grab her breast on that particular occasion, without telling me "no" explicitly because there is a presumption of consent in a relationship where breasts have been previously grabbed with consent. And I think most people, even the most ardent feminists, understand that this is a good thing. The alternative, which few approve of, would be to require every person to get explicit consent before any sexual touching. Even in such a society, how would you know who was telling the truth about the giving of consent? Would every man be advised to get a signed consent form before each sexual act? That seems a bit awful, and compliance would be very low anyway.

Now it gets more complicated. Ramsay is definitely not a rapist by the laws of his world because it's unlikely Westeros even acknowledges that wives can ever revoke consent in a marriage (this was also the law of the United States until relatively recently, and it might still be in some states). Under modern US law in most or maybe every state, Ramsay has committed a rape. Or has he? Sansa very clearly, to us, did not want to have sex with Ramsay. But does Ramsay know that? As mentioned before, Sansa doesn't ever tell him. Should he be able to figure it out by how slowly she takes her clothes off? I think so, but that's a tough standard to imprison people by. There's also an excellent argument to be made that Sansa is in a position of such little power that she can't say "no" without jeopardizing her safety, so any consent she gives is meaningless. However, this would preclude Ramsay from ever having sex with his own wife (he'll always have the power to kill or hurt Sansa with impunity because of who he is) even if she later got a lust for dangerous sex like that other weird girl (Miranda?).

Finally, even if we assume that Ramsay knew Sansa didn't want to have sex, and he forced her to do so, how on Earth would you ever go about proving that beyond a reasonable doubt (or even with clear and convincing evidence)? You just can't. Maybe you could call Reek as a witness, but the best he can do is speculate and offer his thoughts on what someone else was thinking. And if Reek had not been around, Sansa's claim would be completely unsupportable. That's just the  nature of the crime.

I want to make it clear. I AM NOT taking a position on whether or not Ramsay actually raped Sansa (but I lean toward "yes"). It is my experience that too many people are incapable of discussing this topic rationally and calmly for me to have any interest in taking a firmer position. I am simply trying to point out why sexual assault is so difficult in particular cases even when it might seem simple on the surface. The extreme cases are simple, but at the margins, determining whether a sexual assault has truly occurred is difficult. Feminists and liberals talk about how much easier it should be to prosecute rape, but they never explain how to do that and maintain a justice system that doesn't convict based on hunches or mere suspicion.

We Are All Minorities, and the Faster We Realize This, The Better

If a minority group is one which comprises less than 50% of the a population, then everyone is both in the majority and in the minority at any given time depending upon how that person is defined. The sooner that the majority of us realize this, the sooner we can enter a much better world. 

Minority status, even with respect to only one classifying trait, is relative. For example, if you know someone is a dark-skinned human being, you cannot tell, based on that information alone, if he/she is a minority or not. On planet Earth, he/she is a minority (depending upon how you classify the skin-tone of East Asians, Middle Easterners, and North Africans). In Atlanta, Georgia, he/she is not a minority. In Africa, again, not a minority. 

Our status as a minority also depends upon which and how many traits we use to define ourselves. For example, I'm white. In America, that makes me a member of the majority. However, if I choose another trait of mine such as my eye color (blue), then I become a member of a pretty small minority. Moreover, no matter who you are, eventually you will find yourself in a minority of the human population in any given area if you count enough of your classifying traits. For example, a white person with brown eyes is still in the majority in the United States. But what about a brown-eyed white person who is obsessed with belly-dancing? Minority. What about a brown-eyed white person who can dunk a basketball? Minority. On the other hand, you can make yourself a member of a majority any time you want as well. A person of East Asian descent is of a small minority in most of America, but what if she classifies herself as a woman instead? Now she is in a world-wide majority. A black man may be lactose intolerant. Majority. Do you have a beating heart? Majority. 

So why does all this matter? All of the divisions I have mentioned above are completely arbitrary. If you care about the fact that people are black or white or Asian, that is a completely arbitrary thing to care about. Moreover, the only reason you do care about it is because racists in the past cared about it, and you have inherited a society riddled with the disastrous results of making such classifications. Every single person on Earth would be very alone if he or she only associated with people EXACTLY like him or her, and it's very likely that each of us has more in common with many people of a different skin color than we do with people who share our skin color. Choosing to empathize and identify with some people and not others is a primitive instinct born from the infancy of our species, and it needs to be scrapped. Now.  

This doesn't mean that people should deny their identities. I am arguing for a re-imagining of identity. Nobody puts me in a class of left-handed people, and I don't feel at all badly about that despite the fact that there are never adequate scissors for me so I had to become a right-handed cutter. Why? Because I don't tie my identity up in which hand I write and cut with. You choose your identity, and if you have chosen to make the color of your skin a crucial part of who you are, you are making that choice because a racist made it for you generations ago. If people had been enslaved or denied equal rights based on which hand they used to write with, then we'd all be obsessed over left-handedness. You can choose to identify yourself in ways that bond you to other conscious creatures on the planet, or you can choose to identify yourself in ways that separate you from many of those fellow creatures. It's up to you. 

Now I know that some liberals are going to go nuts and call me a "color-blind racist." I know that what I am arguing for would end the academic careers of critical race theorists and feminists, and I'm fine with that because the following is indisputable. If today everyone on Earth begins to think of himself/herself as a member of the class of  conscious creatures first and foremost with little to no regard for any of his/her other inherent traits, tomorrow will see the beginning of an unprecedented age of peace and happiness (and vegetarianism). We know what will happen if we keep doing it the other way. 

A Brief Guide to Christian Theology for Non-Christians (Especially atheists who argue with Christians)

One of the few benefits of having been a fundamentalist Christian is that I understand Christian theology better than most atheists or believers in other religions. This is important in discussions with religious people because it improves your arguments and helps you to understand a Christian's mindset. I think some atheists feel like Christianity is silly so there isn't any benefit to be derived from understanding it. On one level, that is true. I certainly don't think people should spend time studying fairy tales simply so they can argue with believers in those fairy tales. That does seem a waste of time. However, every atheist probably understands the feeling he gets when a religious person says "If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?". There's so much stupid in that question, you don't know where to begin. Well, if you are going to argue with a Christian, you want to actually argue against what he believes. To that end, here is what they believe.

Before I get into this, it's important to note that what I am about to describe is a generally accepted Christian theology based on the assumption that the Bible is the word of the one true god. There are many people who call themselves Christians who are simply making up their religion as they go. They like some parts of the Bible but not others. Obviously, I can't know what they believe. There are also millions of Christians who don't know all of their own theology. But calling yourself a Christian should mean something, and this is what it means most often. 

Reality According to Christians

A very long time ago, the Hebrew god (Yahweh) created the entire universe in six days. This is important. Some Christians believe these are six literal days. Some believe that "days" were not 24 hours in this context because such a day is only a day on Earth, and we are talking about the whole universe here. It is also believed by some people that evolution can be consistent with the creation story because the mechanism of creation is not very specifically discussed. This seems like a monumental stretch to me (god could easily have told us from the beginning how evolution works), but it satisfies many Christians who are otherwise intelligent people but don't want to  or can't dump their religion. Yahweh also created humans in this time. There were two originally. God put them in a lovely garden. Everything was awesome. God also put a tree in the garden called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. NOTE: It is not just a tree of knowledge alone. God told the humans to eat from every tree (including the tree of life) except from this tree. Christian theologians have never been able to explain why a god who isn't a total asshat would do this, but that is not for lack of trying. Nevertheless, a serpent tempts Eve to eat the fruit (it is never specified to be an apple) from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and she does. Then she gives it to Adam to eat, and he does so. They both then know how to be bad, and god kicks them out of his garden and condemns them to a life of misery. He also leaves the garden guarded by angels with flaming swords. You would think this would be rather conspicuous, but nobody in the modern world can find it. NOTE: Many Christians do not believe this story is literally true. However, if you don't, then it is utterly inexplicable that there is so much misery and suffering in this world when it is governed by a nice god. Even with this "original sin" story, the explanation is pretty weak, but at least it's something. 

Now, this is the really important part that many atheists get wrong. People do lots of bad stuff, and god decides to wipe everyone out with a flood. After the flood, he chooses a guy named Abraham to be the progenitor of a people that will re-establish the nice relationship with god. He makes a covenant with Abraham that he will do lots of nice things if Abraham's people (the Hebrews) will follow god. This is where all of the laws come in. The Old Testament law dictates how the Jews show obedience to god. Of course, they screw up all the time, and when they do, God generally sends some prophet who nobody listens to. Then god makes something terrible happen to the Jews, and they suddenly get obedient again. This cycle repeats itself over and over because for whatever reason the Jews never seem to catch on. This is god's justice. You break laws, you get punished. This is where Jesus comes in. It's pretty clear that people are always going to rebel from god, but god can't just say "forget the law" because that would not be just. He also can't wipe everyone out again because God already promised Abraham that he would not to do another massive, genocidal flood. So what to do? God decides to pay the penalty for mankind himself. He becomes a man who does nothing wrong (the only such person in history) and then allows himself to be killed. He rises from the dead and promises to come back soon (oops). It is unclear why this event is not the end of history except that of course, the game would be up if Jesus had said that the world was over and it actually kept going. 

Here's the important thing for people who want to mock Christians. Jesus FULFILLED the law by dying on mankind's behalf. The new law is that people have to believe in Jesus to be saved from death. The old law is no longer necessary. Therefore, mocking Christians for eating shellfish makes no sense. They don't believe that you can't eat shellfish. The Bible, unlike the Quran, is not one, single contemporaneous revelation. It is a history. Slavery used to be legal in the United States. It isn't now. Shellfish used to be forbidden. They aren't anymore. Now, the one thing that nicer Christians get wrong in this vein is the idea that homosexuality is only condemned in the Old Testament, and therefore Christians can be accepting of homosexual behavior. This is not the case. Homosexuals are explicitly named as people who will not go to heaven in the NEW Testament. 

There are many many many legitimate ways to mock Christianity, but telling its adherents not to eat lobster is not one of them. The same goes for comparing Old Testament violence to that advocated in the Quran. Jesus (who is also god, remember) is a total pacifist. He counseled meekness and allowed himself to be executed. That is the standard Christians are called to emulate. They believe that god can fight for himself, and their evangelizing is dedicated to warning people that god will lay the smack down on the unbelievers. Christianity does not hold that Christians themselves should do the smacking down. Yes, the Jews commit an endless stream of butchery under god's direction in the Old Testament, but those are specific situations where god is telling the Jews what to do. It's history. Jesus, who sets the example for all future people, does not allow for violence. There is no license for a Christian to claim that god demands violence in any circumstance. So if you tell Christians that their religion counsels violence, it's a red flag that you don't know what you are talking about. 

Those are the basic points. Of course, if you have any questions, or you think I'm wrong about some point I've made, feel free to comment below. 

Why the Police Can Get Your Location From the Phone Company Without a Warrant

Recently, the 11th Circuit changed its mind, reversed its prior ruling, and found that police do not need a warrant to get location data from your mobile phone carrier regarding your past locations. The specific case (United States v. Davis) involved a guy who was suspected of robbing a bunch of places with several other people. Among other evidence, the police obtained phone records showing that members of the conspiracy placed calls near the locations that were robbed at the time that those locations were robbed. Police obtained this evidence without a search warrant or a showing of probable cause. Some people have been upset or confused by this decision. A good example of that is the Young Turks coverage of the story. Another example is the kid in the comments section of that video who called me a "whimsical kraut" and expressed his admiration for the Cambodian genocide of intellectuals while expressing his desire to either strangle me or have me shot dead outside of my school. I took that as a compliment (he thinks I'm an intellectual!), and I am thinking about changing the name of this blog to "The Whimsical Kraut". We'll see. Anyway, I have studied this area of the law particularly closely, so I thought I'd explain the basics of the decision, why the law is the way it is, and correct some misunderstandings.

The most important thing to understand is that the root of the problem is our insistence on using a document that was created before the advent of the telegraph to decide privacy rights in cyberspace. If you take a step back, it's a comically absurd situation. When we want to know what our privacy rights should be we consult the thoughts of a group of men who thought slave holding made sense and leeching was a valid medical treatment for almost any illness. However, until a large enough group of people yell out that the emperor has no clothes, this is the situation we're stuck with.

Not only is the Constitution old, but it is also very poorly written. The relevant language of the Fourth Amendment states that "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." The problem is, this tells us HOW to get a warrant, but it does not tell us WHEN to get a warrant. Oops. That's a pretty important point. Several Supreme Court Justices, including current ones like Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas, believe that if police are not committing a physical trespass, they don't need to get a warrant at all. Ever. And the language of the Amendment allows for that. Actually, it allows for searches without ever having probable cause so long as the search is done without a warrant. Nonetheless, the consensus of the Court has been for awhile that searches are presumed to be unreasonable if they are done without a warrant supported by probable cause (a rule into which they have carved roughly six million exceptions). That makes sense. Now, however, we must define what a "search" is.

The Supreme Court has decided in Katz v. United States that searches only occur when the police are attempting to access information in which the suspect has a reasonable expectation of privacy. For example, if the police see you out in your front yard smoking opium, they do not need a search warrant before they can look at you doing so because it's not reasonable to expect privacy in what you are doing in your front yard. The Court ran into a trickier case when it had to deal with the issue of police informants and undercover officers. If I tell an informant something, can the police access that information without a warrant? Well, if I have a reasonable expectation of privacy in that information, then no, they can't. The Court responded to this question by holding that information divulged to a third party is no longer reasonably private (even if that person swore a blood oath to me never to tell another soul and given his first-born son as collateral on that promise). At the time, this was an expedient way to preserve the practice of using informants. Without this ruling, investigating organized crime would become nearly impossible. How could the police ever get probable cause for a search warrant if they couldn't infiltrate these organizations or flip underlings for information about the activities of the men in charge?

The problem, however, is that almost everything we do online or on our phones results in information being divulged to a third party whether a phone company, an internet service provider, or a social media platform. Therefore, the third-party doctrine (as it's known in legal circles) has basically eliminated the warrant requirement in cyberspace. That's a problem. Most people who send e-mails think those e-mails are private, and in my opinion rightfully so. Just because I tell one person something doesn't mean I should expect the police to figure it out. Nonetheless, so far the Court has maintained the third-party doctrine with respect to phone numbers dialed and bank records, and lower courts have applied it to data on the Internet. There are reasons to think that some of the justices (most notably Justice Sotomayor) are ready to change the law, but when that will happen or how it will happen is up in the air. I have written an idea for reform with respect to social media platforms, but there are many other instances where these conflicts occur like cell phone data or GPS tracking with satellites. It is hard to figure one rule to both protect reasonable privacy without unduly hampering law enforcement investigation of sophisticated criminals who may conduct their entire operations through third parties.

So that's the current law, and the 11th Circuit decided Davis correctly based on that law (I'll omit discussion here of the weird and unnecessary tangent they went into regarding reasonable privacy expectations outside of the third-party doctrine).

The best solution to this and many other issues that I will write about in this space is to amend the Constitution or throw it out and write a new one that bears some relation to our modern reality and isn't written so poorly that it would generate malpractice suits if it were written in our time. It's unlikely that will happen so it will be interesting to see what the Supreme Court does with all of these cases in the coming years.

Americans Must Stop Calling Their Country "The Land of the Free"

One of the most absurd spectacles in routine American life is that of a bunch of Americans standing before a sporting event to sing a song about how free their country is. Americans are not the freest people on Earth. Not even close. We are locked up more than any people on the planet, and we are thrown in prison, oftentimes, for the most ridiculous reasons because one of the most powerful lobbies in America is the PRISON lobby. If there is a "land of the free" on this Earth, it is certainly not the United States of America.

The United States incarcerates more people than any other country on Earth. Think about that for a moment. India and China have roughly triple the number of people as the US, and China has an authoritarian government that jails people for political dissent. America has more prisoners than either of them. Not only does the US have more prisoners as an absolute figure, it has a higher incarceration rate than any other country on Earth. Over 1 in 100 Americans is in prison. That's stunning. It gets worse. About 1 in 31 Americans are either in prison, on probation, or on parole. Land of the free. What a joke.

The American prison population might be even higher if police didn't kill a fair number of people who might otherwise have gone to jail. In just the first two months of this year, over 170 civilians were killed by police. That's more killed in two months than German police are likely to kill in the next 50 years. Seriously. If a citizen tries to expose this brutality, what happens then? As you can probably guess, he gets arrested! Of course! The guy who taped Eric Garner being killed was arrested. The man who filmed Freddy Gray's arrest (the guy who was killed by Baltimore police recently when they severed his spinal cord) was arrested. But I'm sure it was just a coincidence that the people who filmed these controversial incidents also just happened to commit crimes immediately afterwards, and the police were just lucky enough to catch them.

The root of this problem is that 1) Americans are stupid and have no idea what is going on their country (except the black people who are disproportionately affected by this) and 2) jailing people has become a for-profit business. There are actually prison companies who have secured deals with governments to guarantee a 100% occupancy rate in their prisons. So you might ask: what happens if people stop committing so many crimes? Well, that's actually happened. Over the last thirty years, crime rates have dropped all across America, but we just keep putting more and more people in prison. That's where the War on Drugs comes in and mandatory sentences (which were heavily supported by liberal lions Bill and Hillary Clinton). Police unions and prison companies love the war on drugs, and the primary reason we are still locking people up for possessing marijuana and sending people to prison for 15 years for having sex on a beach is because there is tons of money to be made in doing so. It's disgusting.

You can see the evidence for yourself. America is not the "land of the free." Stop calling it that. And also, stop saying "for all intensive purposes." That's not a phrase with any meaning in the English language.

Avengers: Age of Ultron and How Modern Feminism is the Religion of the Left

I believe that men and women should be legally equal and that women should play an equal role to that of men in the decision-making apparatuses of our political and economic systems. So does Joss Whedon. Joss Whedon is the writer behind The Avengers, and he is one of the most prominent male feminist activists in the entertainment industry who even endorses the silly babbling of Anita Sarkeesian. If someone who thinks that Anita Sarkeesian makes intelligent comments is not a feminist, then nobody is. Check out this video of a speech he gave to feminists that was very well-received by those feminists. In the speech, Whedon articulates his frustration with the word "feminist" that in many ways mirrors my frustration with the word "atheist" (another topic for another day). The reason this video is relevant is because during his speech (at about the 4:50 mark) he wonders why Katy Perry would hesitate to call herself a feminist. Well, if he didn't totally understand it then, he probably does now. Since the release of avengers: Age of Ultron, Whedon has been called a racist and a sexist in a variety of ways by feminists in the media. Eventually, he cancelled his Twitter account probably because of this harassment. Whedon's experience and the reaction of feminists to his film, illustrate perfectly the illogical arguments and bullying of modern feminism that mirror very closely the behavior of right-wing religious nuts. To make this point, I will examine the arguments made in this article by Marlow Stern of the Daily Beast. There are other articles in this vein (including another on Daily Beast because apparently this is such a deep topic that just one piece wasn't enough), but if you read Stern's, you'll get the gist. To the extent that anything happened in this movie that can truly be spoiled, SPOILER ALERT! The blue quotes are Stern's words.

"In Ultron, following an overcrowded opening action sequence, we're introduced to Romanoff behind the bar at Stark's pad. . . Romanoff, as the token female amid a plethora of towering bros, is tending bar."

Okay, so here we have a pretty good look into the author's bias from the beginning of the piece. Why is Black Widow a "token female" because she is in a group of men? Do women always have to travel in pairs to avoid objectification? Is War Machine the token black guy in all of his scenes? We know that if we have no women, that's sexist. But now if we have one woman, that's also sexist because she must be only a token. So what's the magic number? Was No Doubt a sexist band because of its token female singer? If you want to see the world as a sexist place that hates women, you will. But it's clear from the start that the author WANTS to see sexism, whether or not it's actually there.

"She makes Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) a snazzy drink, and the two exchange a few flirty lines and furtive glances. This triggers Captain America’s (Chris Evans) brodar, as he struts over and launches into an explainer on Romanoff’s history of “flirtation” with several of the Avengers—Hawkeye, Cap, and now Hulk. Romanoff’s demeaning history isn’t entirely Whedon’s fault, and perhaps this was the filmmaker’s way of pointing out how wrong it is, but it came off like a group of chauvinistic mega-men taking potshots at the lone female in the group."

I suppose this is one way to look at this scene. Without violating copyright laws and opening myself up to statutory damages in the thousands of dollars, I cannot show you video of the scene described here. But I'll tell you about it. Banner and Romanoff are flirting at the bar. After the conversation concludes, Cap comes over to talk with Banner apparently because his "brodar" was triggered. I'm not sure what that means, and I had previously assumed that Captain America could detect other men without the aid of enhanced sensory powers. Anyway, he basically asks Banner if he is gonna go for it with Romanoff, and when Banner does the "aw shucks, I don't think she really likes me" routine, Cap tells him that's he's seen Romanoff flirt "firsthand" when it's meaningless, and her interaction with Banner wasn't meaningless. Then he says something to the effect that Banner and Romanoff deserve to be happy, and they should go for it. As far as I can remember, he never mentions Hawkeye. Does that really seem like Cap was launching into a bullying rundown of Romanoff's "demeaning history?" Also, I thought the sexual liberation of women was a good thing, not demeaning. None of the male characters "shame" Romanoff for her sexual promiscuity. Hell, to keep the PG-13 rating, if they mention it at all, it's very obliquely so that it will pass over the head of all the kids whose minds will be forever corrupted if they hear any talk of physical intimacy. So females can be sexually free, but nobody else can speak about it? Or maybe just not men. If the whole show has promiscuous lesbians speaking about their sex lives, is that okay? Finally, in contrast to the typical demure, passive female, she's assertive with Banner. She goes after it. But you don't like that either. Everything is sexist. Every person who survives cancer is a miracle from Jesus.  

"And that isn’t even the most troubling sequence"

It wasn't?! What fresh horrors await us if we keep going?

"Later on, Romanoff is describing her origin story to Banner. Like the comics, it involves her taking part in a ballerina/black ops project as a young child (think:Black Swan crossed with the fraternity of assassins in Wanted). She complains of being sterilized by her captors. She turns to Banner and somberly says, 'You’re not the only monster on the team.'"

No! I can't believe she said that. Why would anyone say that all women who don't have kids are monsters? Well, in this case, they wouldn't, and she didn't. Before the infertile monster comments, Banner had just finished telling Romanoff that she shouldn't be with him because he has no future. He elaborates that he cannot have kids and a family. He calls himself A MONSTER. Romanoff is attempting to bridge the gap between herself and Banner. When Romanoff refers to herself as a monster, it's because she loves him (apparently) and is trying to make him feel less isolated and afraid of being with her. Sexist bitch.

"Her infertility then becomes the main focus of Romanoff’s Ultron journey. While none of the other Avengers really worry about raising a family, Romanoff yearns for the domesticated life of Hawkeye’s secret pregnant wife, Susan, played by Linda Cardellini. They’ve even named their future son after her. At the end of the film, the happy couple texts Romanoff a picture of her wee namesake. Troubled, she looks off into the distance, before regaining her composure and delivering a rousing speech to the rest of the Avengers. Because she’s a woman, saving the world isn’t enough for her. She’ll always got that cursed void to fill."

Romanoff never yearns for a domesticated life. She doesn't talk about adopting or becoming a daycare worker, and she is falling in love with a man who CAN'T HAVE CHILDREN! She never even explicitly says she wants to have children although it's certainly clear that she resents having that choice taken from her. But Stern's analysis betrays an attitude that is really at the root of why many people, and specifically many women like Katy Perry, do not want to call themselves feminists. Modern feminism is not about promoting female equality to men. It's about promoting a particular version of what it means to be a woman. It's trying to replace one feminine ideal with another. Whether you feel this way or not, millions of women have a yearning to have children. Many men do as well. I can't relate to it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Also, if you meet a woman who is infertile due to factors beyond her control, it's pretty unlikely she's going to tell you how happy she was to not have the choice, and it's very likely she will express some desire to have been able to have children. Romanoff is expressing something that millions of women can relate to, and the feminists are calling it sexist because they don't like it or understand it.

"In the first Avengers, similar to the comics, she gets close to Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye. Then, she’s brought on in Captain America: Winter Soldier as a leather-clad vessel whose sole purpose is guiding his voyage of self-discovery by serving as a lame, quasi-romantic interest."

So here we have the classic feminist arguments that are totally circular and logically inconsistent. Sexy is bad and so are men. I can spin this argument in exactly the opposite way using the same facts.

"Captain America is not treated seriously as a strong male character. Why can't he figure out his own voyage of discovery? Why does he need a woman's help? And why doesn't Cap wear loose-fitting clothes? Why does he have to perpetuate the image that strong, muscular men are the only men fit to be heroes? Stop objectifying men and telling us how to be sexy."

C'mon. You have to see how silly this is. These are people in relationships. EVERY relationship involves people relying on each other. Also, you don't like quasi-romance, but you also don't like it when she is fully romancing Bruce Banner, so what do you want? Zero romance? Is the only feminist-friendly story one involving a woman who is a sociopathic loner? Again. This isn't about equality. It's about forcing one personality type on all other women. Although not on all other men. Men are free to reflect the range of male experience, but women must conform to what some feminists can relate to. Interesting.

On the merchandise issue. This isn't sexism. It's economics. Little boys play with action figures more than do little girls. Little boys generally don't want to play with toys modeled as girls just like the American Boys doll series hasn't yet taken off with young girls. It's not because Disney hates women. It's because they love money. The moment they think they can maximize profits by producing more Black Widow gear, they will.

I understand that many of the people who write these things and make these arguments are trying to justify some obscure humanities major and somehow cannot find any real problems in this miserable world to complain about. But leave Joss Whedon alone. He likes Anita Sarkeesian for crying out loud. This is like the Catholic Church excommunicating Thomas Aquinas. In fact, it's exactly like that. That's the problem. Feminism has become a lefty religion. It's not as damaging, but it's just as silly and illogical.