Table of contents for April 2015 in Reason

IT’S NEVER TOO EARLY to be reminded how willfully awful the political press can be during presidential campaign season. In early February, some 11 months before the 2016 Iowa caucuses, a four-day foofaraw over vaccines provided a template for the tendency of the Fourth Estate and the partisans who game it to direct coverage away from government policy and toward a falsely Manichean separation between Team Science and Team Stupid. It all started innocuously enough, with President Barack Obama going on the Today show February 2 and being asked by Savannah Guthrie whether, in the wake of increasing measles outbreaks near Disneyland and elsewhere, “there should be a requirement that parents get their kids vaccinated.” The president then said three things that just about everyone on allegedly opposing sides of…

EQUAL PAY for equal work seems only fair. So when governments encounter a difference in the average wages of men and women, they often assume invidious discrimination. In 1988, Ontario passed the most comprehensive pay equity legislation in the world, requiring employers to proactively devise and implement programs to eliminate the gender wage gap. In the Fall 2014 issue of Contemporary Economic Policy, two Lehigh University economists seek to answer the counterfactual question: What would have happened to the wage gap in Ontario if the act hadn’t been passed? To answer it, they employ an algorithm that uses data from other Canadian provinces, including Gross Domestic Product per capita and employment rates, to construct a “synthetic” version of Ontario before and after the law was passed. The only difference between…

THE FBI has declared its right to use devices—called “stingrays” or International Mobile Subscriber Identity catchers—that act like fake cell towers to monitor cell phone locations, calls, and texts, all without a warrant. The claim, made during private briefings with Senate Judiciary Committee staff, comes on the heels of a November Wall Street Journal report that small Justice Department aircraft could collect identification and location data from tens of thousands of phones per flight. Nine states have passed laws requiring police to obtain a warrant before using a stringray to track a phone. It is unclear, however, whether citizens will know when the authorities use such devices. The Harris Corporation, a Florida-based company that manufactures the snooping tools, requires police departments to sign a non-disclosure agreement that explicitly warns them…

“I think the nation needs to realize that when we tell you to do something, do it.” —Jeffrey Follmer, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, interviewed on MSNBC about the police killing 12-year-old Tamir Rice, December 15 “I regret that I was unaware that the phrase/hashtag ‘all lives matter’ has been used by some to draw attention away from the focus on institutional violence against Black people.” —email from Smith College President Kathleen McCartney apologizing for saying that “all lives matter,” December 2 “I admire Hillary [Clinton], she’d be a great president, but you know, she isn’t my first choice I guess.” —Jennifer Herrington, chair of the Page County Democrats in southwest Iowa, The Wall Street Journal, January 5 “Senator @marcorubio is acting like an isolationist who wants to…

WHEN OBAMACARE passed in 2010, roughly half of the projected increase in health insurance coverage was expected to come through expanding Medicaid, a health care program for the poor and disabled jointly run by the states and the federal government. Some 16 million Americans were supposed to get coverage through the program by 2019, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates. A 2012 Supreme Court decision had the practical effect of making the Medicaid expansion optional for individual states, muting the potential impact somewhat. But Medicaid remains a major vehicle for coverage expansion under the health care law. Between October 2013 and December 2014, the program saw its overall enrollment increase by 9.7 million, much of which is directly linked to Obamacare. Yet new Medicaid enrollees may have trouble using their…

Jeremy Howard is the founder and CEO of Enlitic, a company that uses “machine learning” to improve medical diagnostics. In December, he gave a TED Talk on “the wonderful and terrifying implications” of an algorithm known as “deep learning,” which processes huge amounts of data in order to teach itself to understand pictures, read words, speak foreign languages, and more. Deputy Managing Editor Stephanie Slade spoke with Howard in January. Q: Are computers that can learn a good or a bad thing? A: In the last five years [deep learning] has become about 10,000 times faster and about 10 times more accurate at understanding the content of images. We’re just starting to see it go down the same path at understanding human language. Overall, my expectation is that computers are…

LETHAL AUTONOMOUS weapons systems that can select and engage targets do not yet exist, but they are being developed. Are the ethical and legal problems that such “killer robots” pose so fraught that their development must be banned? Human Rights Watch thinks so. In its 2012 report, Losing Humanity: The Case Against Killer Robots, the activist group demanded that the nations of the world “prohibit the development, production, and use of fully autonomous weapons through an international legally binding instrument.” Similarly, the robotics and ethics specialists who founded the International Committee on Robot Arms Control want “a legally binding treaty to prohibit the development, testing, production and use of autonomous weapon systems in all circumstances.” Several international organizations have launched a global Campaign to Stop Killer Robots and a multilateral…

Walter Williams, syndicated newspaper columnist and guest host for Rush Limbaugh, is one of America’s best-known free market economists. A new PBS documentary on his life, Suffer No Fools, shows how he learned about the problems with government economic policies from experience. A poor teen growing up in the projects in Philadelphia in the ’50s, Williams worked odd jobs to make money—until child labor laws got him fired. In 1959, Williams had to put his education on hold when he was drafted and packed off to the segregated South. (Williams is black.) He deeply resented this confiscation of his labor and caused as much trouble for his superiors as he could: writing letters, staging protests, and eventually earning a discharge in 1965. Williams, now 78, still raises hell about coercive…

The Immortalists, a genial documentary now making the film-festival rounds, reveals the scientific passions and private lives of two leading anti-aging researchers, Aubrey de Grey and Bill Andrews. Andrews is the CEO of Sierra Sciences, whose slogan is “Cure aging or die trying.” De Grey is the founder of Methuselah Foundation and the SENS Research Foundation. “The first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 already,” de Grey said in 2004. Straightarrow Andrews is an ultra-marathoner; luxuriantly bearded de Grey is rarely seen without a pint of stout. Shot over two years, the film shows both men dealing with 80-something parents in declining health. De Grey’s mother dies. At age 60, Andrews marries for the first time. At age 50, de Grey is polyamorously partnered with his 68-year-old wife…

ELIZABETH NOLAN Brown is a staff editor for reason, where she covers issues related to reproductive rights, free speech, food policy, and more. Prior to that, she was an editor and blogger with Defy Media and AARP publications. In “Sex, Love, and Robots” (page 26), Brown, 32, explores the future—and present—of intimate human-android relations. When not covering sex, politics, or the politics of sexy robots, she says, “I love reading and writing about nutrition, psychiatry, and neuroscience.” “How to Survive a Robot Uprising” (page 60) is the George Mason economist Robin Hanson’s review of Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future (Basic), a book by Martin Ford. Hanson, 55, who worked for nearly a decade as an artificial intelligence researcher, is skeptical of the book’s…

“IT IS clear that decades of U.S. isolation of Cuba have failed to accomplish our enduring objective of promoting the emergence of a democratic, prosperous, and stable Cuba,” reads a White House fact sheet released December 17. With that, President Barack Obama announced the result of months of secret negotiations: an official effort to normalize relations between two long-estranged countries. Policy changes will include reopening an embassy in Havana and allowing increased remittances to be sent from the U.S. to Cuban nationals. The State Department will also be reviewing Cuba’s formal designation as a state sponsor of terror. The changes fall short of ending the embargo, which would require an act of Congress. Nor will they completely eliminate the travel ban. Pure tourism by Americans—a stay at one of the…

Info on where and how often American drone strikes happen—not to mention the number and types of casualties they inflict—can be hard to come by. Official statistics are often classified. A few sources of data about drone strikes in Pakistan do exist, however. Here is some of what we know about how the U.S. uses drones to make war abroad. DRONE STRIKES IN PAKISTAN BY YEAR1 Strikes in Pakistan have declined in recent years as the U.S. has turned its attention to other countries, including Syria. 393 TOTAL STRIKES1 2,212 to 3,591 PEOPLE KILLED1 Known militant leaders killed by drone strikes in Pakistan represent just 2% of total deaths.1 1,755 _ 2,950 militants killed1 258 _ 307 civilians killed1 199 _ 334 killed, civilian status unknown1 Reprieve, a human rights…

LAST OCTOBER, Spain’s parliament passed a law, pushed by the country’s big publishers, that revised copyright regulations to require payments for quoting even snippets of writing from media sources online. The law further gives news publishers an “inalienable right” to these payments that cannot be surrendered, even by the publishers themselves. Some observers called it the “Google tax,” as it was obviously designed to try to wring money out of online services that link to media outlets and include short excerpts of text, much like the service Google News provides. Thus, not allowing publishers to refuse the money made a certain sort of sense. If nobody is allowed exemptions, Google can’t include in its news aggregation only those publishers who let them excerpt their stories for free. Google and other…

ON JANUARY 11, as more than a million people marched through the streets of Paris in support of the right to draw cartoons without being murdered, the French Ministry of Culture and Communication declared that “artistic freedom and freedom of expression stand firm and unflinching at the heart of our common European values.” It added that “France and her allies in the EU safeguard these values and promote them in the world.” In the wake of the massacre at the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, perpetrated by men who saw death as a fitting punishment for the crime of insulting Islam, these were stirring words. If only they were true. Sadly, France and other European countries continue to legitimize the grievances underlying the barbaric attack on Charlie Hebdo by endorsing…

A new generation of alcohol delivery services is offering lazy lushes a chance to order wine, beer, and liquor directly from their smartphones or Web browsers. At reason’s D.C. office in January, we tested a few. The best of the Uber-but-forbooze bunch is Klink, a slick app-based delivery service that whisked a nice selection of beers to the office in a neat 25 minutes. One disappointment: Klink’s logo is a parachute, and at least one reason staffer thought we’d be getting our draughts by drone. No such luck—at least not until the Federal Aviation Administration gets around to clarifying the rules about the commercial use of unmanned aerial vehicles. For now, drivers pick up booze from a local (licensed) liquorstore partner and drop it off in less than an hour…

Few American elections were as pivotal as the one in 1844. When James K. Polk beat Martin Van Buren for the Democratic nomination, the party’s libertarian-leaning anti-slavery wing had to take a back seat to the slaveholders and expansionists. (Four years later, Van Buren’s faction would walk out altogether, forming the nucleus of the new Free Soil Party.) And when Polk defeated Henry Clay in November, the country was set on the road to seizing the Southwest—and to some key disputes in the lead-up to the Civil War. John Bicknell’s America 1844 (Chicago Review) is the riveting story of an eventful year, covering not just an election but nativist riots, pioneer journeys, and religious frenzies. Two spiritual movements play major roles: the Millerites, who expected Christ to return before the…

The TV series Orphan Black, starring Tatiana Maslaney as grifter Sarah Manning and her various “genetic identicals” (some of them are touchy about the c-word), returns to BBC America for a third season April 18. The tale of a group of clones becoming aware of their roles in a decades-long genetic experiment and forming bonds of sisterhood, Orphan Black explores a wide range of biotech issues, from ethics in science to intellectual property, from reproductive rights to government-created cartels. Maslaney plays nine clones, four of whom appear regularly. The show avoids cliché sci-fi McGuffins and tells rich stories in which such issues come up naturally. (“This situation isn’t your usual identity crisis,” Sarah explains to a trans-clone who has just found his sisters.) This thoughtful and compelling show suffers no…

WHEN STATE police raided Wally Kowalski’s southwest Michigan farm in September, they took a bunch of Kowalski’s stuff. But they didn’t take Kowalski, putting him in the odd position of wishing he had been arrested. Kowalski, a licensed grower of medicinal marijuana, first drew police attention when cops spotted his plants during a flyover. They contended that he had broken the rules by growing out in the open, even though his garden is enclosed by a fence. During the raid on Kowalski’s property, cops destroyed his marijuana plants and seized his power generator. They left his shovels behind, however. He told a local free market think tank, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, that the authorities only seemed interested in taking items that would fetch a good price at auction.…

AT THE end of 2014, subscribers to the major U.K. Internet services were interrupted by a government-mandated request asking whether network-level filtering of smutty content should be turned on. This happened if they were attempting to access any website, no matter how anodyne. The idea, British Prime Minister David Cameron explained, was to present citizens with an “unavoidable choice” about whether to accept a top-level porn filter or not. The messages made the government’s position on the matter clear. They informed users that the state hoped to encourage a “family friendly environment on the Web,” one “free from pornography, gambling, extreme violence and other content inappropriate for children.” Cameron has accused online smut of “corroding childhood.” The nation’s largest Internet provider, BT, indicated that users would be blocked from further…

IN DECEMBER, Attorney General Eric Holder gave a speech at a church in Atlanta declaring that the Department of Justice would be introducing new policies to “help end racial profiling once and for all.” The reality turned out to be less grandiose. The department did introduce new policies regarding racial profiling. But they were significantly less ambitious than Holder claimed. The new guidelines prohibit FBI agents from considering national origin, sex, sexual orientation, or religion when opening a case, adding those to existing prohibitions against considering race and ethnicity. Similar prohibitions were implemented for domestic activities by federal law enforcement officers. But the new policies will not affect state and local law enforcement agencies, only the feds. Furthermore, the Transportation Security Administration and those who handle inspections at ports or…

THE JUSTICE Department and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) have been exploiting a secretive federal anti-fraud initiative to deter banks from doing business with disfavored industries, such as payday lending, a December report from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found. The program, called Operation Choke Point, was supposed to be targeted at reducing banking fraud. But internal documents showed regulators taking advantage of a lack of due process to squelch a variety of legitimate transactions by legal but potentially unsavory businesses. One of the most striking documents released by the committee was this comment in an email from the head of the FDIC in Atlanta: “I literally can not stand payday lending. They are abusive, fundamentally wrong, hurt people, and do not in any way deserve…

The signs in North Hempstead, New York, say the fine for not picking up your dog’s poop is $250. That was an error: The actual fine is just $25. Rather than correct all of the signs, local officials are working on increasing the fine. The British Advertising Standards Authority has ordered Urban Outfitters to remove an ad for women’s polka dot mesh briefs from its website. According to the agency, the model’s “thigh gap” indicates that she’s too thin, so the photo could fuel anorexia and body image problems. In Beloit, Wisconsin, the police chief is asking residents to volunteer to let his officers search their homes for guns. He says they should think of gun violence as an infectious disease and home inspections as a vaccine. Burmese police have…

OREGON SEAMSTRESS and mother Denelle Philemon makes reusable cloth menstrual pads. Her company, Mother-MoonPads, takes pride in “making things that will last” with high-quality, natural materials. But her business almost didn’t survive 2014, after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it would step up enforcement of regulations that treat reusable pads as “medical devices.” The pads, which are simply pieces of sewn-together cloth worn in women’s underwear, have officially been classified as medical devices since 1996. As a result, the FDA can force pad manufacturers to register and pay an annual fee. For 2015, it was $3,646—more than $1,000 higher than for 2013. The FDA’s cut will rise again in 2016, to $3,872. “I need to make the decision whether to…give up on this portion of my dream…

THE FUTURE IS here. Driverless vehicles, drones, machine learning, and other emerging technologies offer programmable assistants able to handle mundane tasks and critical life-saving interventions alike. But not everyone is pleased. The digital Arcadia that awaits us is being fettered by the rise of the robophobes. Robophobia exists on a continuum. At the extreme end are reactionaries who indiscriminately look to stifle all that goes beep in the night. They call for swift and pre-emptive regulations to address any imagined safety or privacy concerns, however unlikely. To the extent that they can enact their ideas, their mind-set is guaranteed to slow the pace of innovation, resulting in countless lost opportunities for economic and social progress—and, yes, even consumer safety and privacy. You’d almost suspect that this is their unstated goal.…

HER JOINTS ARE “a bit tight and creaky.” Her head circumference is smaller than expected, and there’s “a slight chemical smell again.” But “Mr-Smith” is mostly proud to introduce Page to other members of the message boards at DollForum.com. And they are happy to meet her, too: “Glad to see such an awesome lady of mystery!” one responds. “Have a fantastic honeymoon,” types another. “Congratulations, she is a beauty,” posts a third. “When you get around to completely introducing yourself to her, you will find that her softness will blow your mind.” Page is what’s known as a “love doll” or “sex doll.” She is “anatomically correct”—that is, built so people can penetrate her—but she doesn’t move on her own or speak. There are at least a dozen highend doll…

Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, by Martin Ford, Basic Books, 352 pages, $28.99 MARTIN FORD, author of Rise of the Robots, doesn’t like the recent increase in U.S. wage inequality. So he wants to tax the rich more, to fund a basic income guarantee for the poor. (But only the U.S. poor. Other poor don’t seem to concern him.) Maybe you think you’ve heard this story before. But Ford, a software engineer and businessman, doesn’t argue that inequality is unethical or that it will destroy democracy. He instead argues that inequality will soon get much worse, so bad that most adults won’t be able to find jobs. So bad the economy will descend into “catastrophe.” And all because of robots. Now, Ford wants…

THE TITLE character of the 1987 movie RoboCop was “part man,” “part machine,” and “all cop.” The concept was popular enough to spawn two sequels, a TV series, and a 2014 reboot film that promised, “Crime has a new enemy.” As this 1924 image of a hypothetical “Radio Police Automaton” attests, the dream of a perfectly impervious and unemotional peacekeeping force is an old one. “Such a machine would seem to be exceedingly valuable to disperse mobs,” enthused Hugo Gernsback in Science and Invention magazine. “The arms are provided with rotating discs which carry lead balls on flexible leads. These act as police clubs in action.…Bullets do not affect them and if equipped with a twenty to forty H.P. engine, they will be well nigh irresistible.” In the wake of…