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In Which the News is Good
Dallas's index Ebola Zaire patient, Thomas Duncan, was at home for four days while he was symptomatic with Ebola. His family were not infected with the virus.
While Duncan infected two nurses at the hospital during his final days (when he was leaking blood from every available orifice) he didn't infect the people who lived with him when he was very sick-sick enough to have gone to the hospital and been sent away.
One of the commenters on my last Ebola post pointed out that Ebola has a very low basic reproduction number, R 0, of about two. R 0 is not an inherent characteristic of a virus, but depends on the environment. The R 0 for Ebola Zaire has been calculated as 2.7 in some outbreaks, but 2.0 in this one in Africa. As long as R 0 is greater than one, the disease will continue spreading. If R 0 were intrinsic, Ebola Zaire would continue spreading until eventually everyone got sick. Fortunately, R 0 will be lower in a more developed nation than in the Third World.
In Which Math is Still Hard
I've written here several times, under the category "math is hard," about Americans' innumeracy with regard to risk and danger. I have a theory:
Americans overestimate the danger (risk times harm) of things that they are willing to do something about (terrorism!), and underestimate the danger of things that they are not willing to do something about (obesity!).
The government, meanwhile, has an interest in overstating the danger of things that it is profitable for corporations to do something about (terrorism!) and understating the danger of things that it is unprofitable for corporations to do something about (obesity!).
There are 8,000+-about 2^13-Ebola Zaire cases; that number is doubling monthly. There are 2^33 people on earth, give or take. That's 33 months from one case to everybody being infected, at the current rate. We've used up thirteen of those months; we have twenty months left. Of course the current rate of infection can't be sustained-the virus might not spread as fast in more affluent countries with their indoor plumbing and their medical care, ((Or it might:
In Which We Are Being Lied To
[via The White House.]
I'll take the last point-which may be literally true-first: "Ebola is not spread through casual contact with someone who has no symptoms of the disease." Per the CDC, "Initial signs and symptoms are nonspecific and may include fever, chills, myalgias, and malaise.... The most common signs and symptoms reported from West Africa during the current outbreak from symptom-onset to the time the case was detected include: fever (87%), fatigue (76%), vomiting (68%), diarrhea (66%), and loss of appetite (65%)." So as long as everyone you have casual contact with does not have a fever, feel chilled, have muscle aches, have diarrhea or vomiting, or feel worn out or not hungry, you're probably okay. But those symptoms are nonspecific, which means that people who don't obviously have Ebola (have you ever had fever, fatigue, vomiting, diarrhea, and loss of appetite without having Ebola Zaire?) may be infectious.
In Which My Good Deed is Punished
On April 5th TSU law student Amir Tavakkoli sent me this message via my website:
Your name: Amir TavakkoliYour E-mail Address: [redacted]Your Phone Number: [redacted]The defendant's Name: Amir TavakkoliThe defendant's date of birth: [redacted]The court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals/Appeal from 9th COAThe case number: 09-13-00082-CRYour message to Bennett & Bennett:Dear Mr. Bennett:I hope this email finds you well. My name is Amir Tavakkoli and I am graduating from law school in May. You may know me from my days working at the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. I have a request.I filed a writ of habeas corpus last year for a 2006 misdemeanor conviction that I have which is giving me immigration issues. This is the only thing on my record. When I google my name, there is a link to your cite that takes it straight to the opinion for my writ. As a lawyer, you know the importance of reputation and the use of google by perspective employers. While I know that I must disclose my misdemeanor to employer, I do not necessarily want to let everyone know about the immigration issue and hope to put it in the past. I am requesting that you remove this case from your list. The case number is 09-13-00082-CR from the Ninth Court of Appeals and discretionary review denied by TX Court of Criminal Appeals.Thank you for your understanding.
In Which I Defend, Against Franks and Citron, Your Right to Sext
In the same way that sovereign citizens and jailhouse lawyers take snippets of language from cases and quote them as gospel truth, applicable in all cases, anti-revenge-porn zealots take snippets of language from cases and quote them as gospel truth, applicable in all cases:
While Bennett has accurately described categories of speech that the Supreme Court has deemed "unprotected," there are other types of speech that are lesser-protected. The most established example of lesser-protected speech is commercial speech.The Supreme Court has also recognized that "speech on matters of purely private concern" receives "less stringent" protection from the First Amendment (Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. v. Greenmoss Builders, Inc., 472 U.S. 749, 759-60 (1985)). That sounds quite a bit like the speech Citron is talking about when she says that revenge porn bans should be limited to private communications between people in a trusting relationship. And footnote 190 of Citron and Mary Anne Franks's article, Criminalizing Revenge Porn, suggests that this is precisely the area of First Amendment doctrine Citron is referencing.
First Amendment 101
Danielle Citron compensates for her ignorance of First Amendment law with her certainty:
Disclosures of private communications involving nude images do not enjoy rigorous First Amendment protection. They involve the narrow set of circumstances when the publication of truthful information can be punished.
Slate, All States Should Outlaw Revenge Porn.
Laypeople don't know that Citron is wrong and have no reason to doubt this bald assertions, and fellow academics are afraid of being called names for challenging zealots, so it falls to practicing lawyers to point out that this is the state of First Amendment law:
Speech is presumptively protected.
Content-based restrictions on speech are presumptively void.
For a content-based restriction on speech to pass muster, the restricted speech must fall (at least mostly) within one of several narrowly defined categories of unprotected speech:
Robert S. Bennett (Absolutely No Relation)
I've written about Robert S. Bennett from time to time, and I'm not impressed by him. But neither was I impressed with the State Bar's effort to disbar him, which effort succeeded in March. Robert S. Bennett was barred:
from practicing law in Texas, holding himself out as an attorney at law, performing any legal services for others, accepting any fee directly or indirectly for legal services, appearing as counsel or in any representative capacity in any proceeding in any Texas court or before any administrative body or holding himself out to others or using his name, in any manner, in conjunction with the words ‘attorney at law,' ‘attorney,' ‘counselor at law,' or ‘lawyer,'"
¡Justice, Sí, Safety, No!
Harris County District Judge Katherine Cabaniss's email pleading for votes in the popularity contest that is the Houston Bar Association's Judicial Preference Poll (via Robb Fickman, who I hope will have something to say about it when he's out of trial) is right across the SWRVs' ((Scared White Republican Voters'.)) home plate:
Dear Fellow HBA Member,The Houston Bar Association's Judicial Preference Poll will be released on Monday, September 8. I am asking for your vote.In the HBA poll released earlier this year, I was voted either "Well Qualified" or "Qualified" by almost 87% of respondents.I was a prosecutor for more than 11 years in Houston. I also served as Crime Stopper's Executive Director for 6 years. Since being appointed by Governor Perry in 2013, I have worked to see that justice is done in every single case, every single day, in my courtroom.It is the election season, and I need your help to keep Harris County safe.Please take a moment to complete the HBA poll before the deadline, September 29. I would be honored to receive your vote. Additionally, please let a friend know about the poll, and ask them to vote as well.Thank you for your time and consideration.Katherine CabanissJudge, 248th Criminal District Courtwww.judgecabaniss.compd pol ad • Katherine Cabaniss Campaignwww.judgecabaniss.com
Free to Be Stupid
You think it's insane that Arizona allows a 9-year-old to shoot at a firing range? ABC News reports that one in Texas allows them to do so at age 6.
So we make the leap from dumbass puts fully automatic pistol in hands of little girl, winds up dead to it is insane to allow children to shoot at shooting ranges
A well-run shooting range is one of the safest places in America. The rules, which when followed provide no opportunity for firearms accidents, are strictly enforced. If the question is, "should my child learn to shoot at the range, or somewhere else?", "the range" is the right answer.
So then the question becomes, "should my child learn to shoot?" In a society in which children might come in contact with guns without parental supervision (for example, at a friend's house where the parents have an unsecured gun), "yes" is the right answer. Guns are fascinating to children-especially to little boys-and firearms education demystifies them and teaches the proper respect. The alternative is to teach children to "just say no" to guns; we have seen how well that works with drugs and sex.
On Twitter, Be Your Own Censor.
When I saw this Polygon post last month, about how Twitter "gives so little attention to the now-routine harassment experienced by so many members of the service" because "it drives engagement," I thought, "surely there's a market solution":
I've done some Twitter scripting, and the three proposed tools would, I think, be easy for a third party to implement.- Mark W. Bennett (@MarkWBennett) July 31, 2014
The three proposed tools were allowing a user to block all users whose accounts are less than 30 days old, allowing a user to block all users whose follow counts are less than some threshold, and allowing a user to block any user who has been blocked by more than N people she is following. The proposed tools came from this post, titled, "The least Twitter can do."
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