Expiration Dates for Claims That Things Are Good Things or Bad Things?

It’s rather amazing that we continue to use the words “good” and “bad.” Can you think of any words that are less precise than these? Do these words even have valid or reliable meanings? “Good” and “bad” often seem to serve only as hazy placeholders for shots in the dark or ineffable emotions. Philosophers have struggled to define good and bad things for millennia with very little of practical use to show for all of their labor. Except for such fundamental things as having food and shelter and avoiding unwanted physical pain and death, people constantly disagree about what is good and bad. The subjects of these disagreements are everywhere. They include such things as good and bad food, cities, politicians, cars, jobs, art, children, pets, technology, habits, websites, books, moral choices, friends and romantic partners.

But let’s set aside our ubiquitous disagreements for a moment. Let’s assume that within our own particular comfy community we can somehow find a general consensus that something is a “good” thing. If that were possible, it would reveal an equally big problem that is the focus of this article: Good things often only seem good only until they play out in real in the real world. To our dismay, good things often turn out to be bad things with the passage of time. And things that seem bad today often turn out to be good.

• You got fired from your job (bad), which opened up a better opportunity (good).

• You got that job you always wanted (good), but two months after beginning that job, you hated it (bad).

• WWII caused terrible suffering for millions of people (bad), but that hellacious war inspired countless acts of heroism and resulted in the defeat of tyranny (good things).

• You were late to the airport and missed the plane (bad), but the plane crashed (good for you that you weren’t on it).

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WTSocial: Alternative to Facebook is Announced by Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia



Jimmy Wales' (founder of Wikipedia) has a new project, WTSocial  

I'm going to presumptively speak for "the World" here:  The World is ready for an alternative social gathering spot that respects users' privacy, discourages acrimony and tamps down hard on misinformation. I'm an early financial supporter because I really want this project to take off. This will be a fundamentally different business model than Facebook in that it will be funded through user donations. Here's are a few excerpts from a Financial Times article about WTSocial:

“It won’t be massively profitable but it will be sustainable,” [Wales] said . . . Wales said he believes the time is now right for a new venue that is free from what he calls “clickbait nonsense”. “People are feeling fed up with all the junk that’s around,” Mr Wales said.

Regarding his goals for numbers of users, Wale stated: “Obviously the ambition is not 50,000 or 500,000 but 50m and 500m.”

Photo Credit:  Photograph: ed g2s - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15707

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Homeland Security Border Suspicionless Searches of U.S. Citizens Ruled Unconstitutional

You might be surprised to hear that U.S. federal government has been demanding to inspect the digital content of the phones, computers and other devices of many U.S. citizens re-entering the U.S. even though the government lacked any suspicion of wrong-doing by the U.S. citizen. That's insane, right?

Now after a long battle by the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a federal judge has ruled that the Department of Homeland Security has been acting illegally when it does that. This is a big victory against our own government, which was acting unreasonably and oppressively.

Common Dreams reports:

"This is a great day for travelers who now can cross the international border without fear that the government will, in the absence of any suspicion, ransack the extraordinarily sensitive information we all carry in our electronic devices," EFF senior staff attorney Sophia Cope said in a statement.

The lawsuit, Alasaad v. McAleenan, was filed by EFF, the national ACLU, and ACLU of Massachusetts on behalf of 10 U.S. citizens and one lawful permanent resident who had their devices searched without warrants. The suit named as defendants the Department of Homeland Security and two agencies it oversees—Customs and Border Protection as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

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I Cannot Read your Mind. Or your Face.

I'm not good at reading other people's minds, even when they think that I should have seen the emotions on their faces. Now there is science substantiating that I am not unusual in this regard.

Most of the time, other people can’t correctly guess what we’re thinking or feeling. Our emotions are not written all over our face all the time. The gap between our subjective experience and what other people pick up on is known as the illusion of transparency. It’s a fallacy that leads us to overestimate how easily we convey our emotions and thoughts.

The above excerpt is from an excellent blog, Farham Street.
Therefore, if we happen to be together, if you want to make sure that I understand what you are thinking, please use your words!

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Law in the Trenches: A Warning that the Practice of Law is Not Always Glamorous

My friend Joe Jacobson has often regaled folks on Facebook with his stories from the legal trenches. I love how Joe keeps an even keel and works hard to give others the benefit of the doubt, even when things get thorny.

I usually get along swimmingly with opposing counsel. The better they are at trial law, the easier it tends to be to get along (a lot of people find this surprising). Today, however, I had a long difficult conversation with a young opposing attorney and I struggled to give the opposing attorney the benefit of the doubt. Here’s what happened. I hope you find this somewhat entertaining and doesn’t simply come across as whining.

Here’s the background: A federal judge appointed me to take over legal representation for a man who filed his own lawsuit alleging that he had been physically abused by prison guards. For technical reasons, only the guards are parties to the lawsuit, not the prison. I’ve taken a few depositions of individual witnesses, but I decided I needed a Rule 30(b)(6) “corporate representative” deposition of the prison to finish my discovery. This rule (30(b)(6) can be a power and powerful technique for learning information lodged in the inner belly of big organizations like prisons. Therefore, I sent out my subpoena and notice of corporate representative deposition last week, listing about 25 topics I wanted to discuss. The government attorney’s job is to fill the deposition chair with one or more witnesses who can answer my questions about those topics under oath.

Today’s phone call was from the government attorney, who was complaining about the way I set forth my topics. He annoyed me from the start with his know-it-all tone of voice. Here’s how the conversation went:

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