Saturday, January 23, 2016

Another hole in the Fourth Amendment

During the course of The Legal Watchdog’s short-lived but glorious podcast, we discussed the court of appeals case State v. Dumstrey where the court held — despite a scathing dissent — that we don’t have a privacy interest in our locked, underground, enclosed parking garage of our condo or apartment.  The case was obviously so wrongly decided — every single one of the factors in the multifactor balancing test pointed toward the existence of a privacy interest — that the state supremes announced they would be taking the case for review.  At the beginning of this podcast we gave our predictions.  Although “the skeptic in me” was cautious, I said that I was “going out on a limb for our supreme court.” I predicted that “even this supreme court, with these justices, will reverse it.”  So what happened?  

Friday, January 15, 2016

Robots Rising

I absolutely hate those super trendy commercials showing young people completely enamored with their “apps,” “social media,” and “mobile devices.”  Sure, this “technology” feeds their insatiable appetites for a non-stop stream of mindless “content.”  But what the kids don’t realize is that this same technology, while well-suited to their short attention spans, is also taking away their jobsor preventing them from landing jobs in the first place.  In Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless FutureMartin Ford explains how robotsor, more accurately, smart algorithms that know how to teach themselvesare now doing jobs that college grads used to do.  This, in turn, forces a very large percentage of college grads into jobs that do not, in any imaginable way, require a college degree.  Then, the workers that would typically have held those unskilled jobs are forced into long-term or even permanent unemployment or underemployment. 

Friday, January 8, 2016

Goin' mainstream

I recently joined the Wisconsin Law Journal as a monthly columnist.  My first article, A Call to Arms (So to Speak), just came out in print, and is now available on-line.  My monthly column, CRITIC'S CORNER, will archive all of my articles as the months pass.  I'll put a link to that on the right hand side of the blog, near the links to my books, articles, and MU blog posts.  Enjoy!