California voted overwhelmingly Democratic, but it was really just a few coastal cities that did it. Outside of LA, the Democrat and Republican candidates for governor were dead even. San Francisco voted 66% for Davis (D), with the Green Party getting 16% and outscoring the Republican.

Update: John sends this link on the low Calif turnout. Gov. Davis got 1.7M fewer votes than he got last time.

It is well-known that native American cultures suffered from disease after Columbus, but it now turns out that native American health had a pre-Columbian decline. From last week's NY Times:

What had not been clearly recognized until now, though, is that the general health of Native Americans had apparently been deteriorating for centuries before 1492.
That is the conclusion of a team of anthropologists, economists and paleopathologists who have completed a wide-ranging study of the health of people living in the Western Hemisphere in the last 7,000 years.
... The researchers used standardized criteria to rate the incidence and degree of these health factors by time and geography. Some trends leapt out from the resulting geography. Some trends leapt out from the resulting index. The healthiest sites for Native Americans were typically the oldest sites, predating Columbus by more than 1,000 years. Then came a marked decline.
"Our research shows that health was on a downward trajectory long before Columbus arrived," Dr. Richard H. Steckel and Dr. Jerome C. Rose, study leaders, wrote in "The Backbone of History: Health and Nutrition in the Western Hemisphere," a book they edited. It was published in August.

Someone asked about vaccine exemption law. In Europe and Japan, vaccination is voluntary, for the most part. In all US states, vaccines are required for school, unless exempted for medical or religious/philosophical reasons. 15 states have philosophical exemptions available. 2 states do not even allow religious exemptions.
In Arkansas, religious exemptions were available by statute in the past; a judge recently denied a Catholic kid an exemption because she is Catholic; litigation is still pending. Other states have religious exemptions.

The Texas religious exemption law says:

A signed affidavit must be presented by the child's parent or guardian stating that the immunization conflicts with the tenets and practices of a recognized religious organization of which the applicant is an adherent or member. This exemption does not apply in times of emergency or outbreak declared by the commissioner of health or local health authority.

New York: Here is a NY court decision allowing one kid to have an exemption, and denying it to another.

Andy predicts:

I'd say Rehnquist resigns in June, with Bush probably appointing conservative Edith Jones and confirming easily.

Either Stevens or O'Connor probably resigns before the 2004 elections, with the Senate still in Republican hands. Filling that vacancy gives 5 votes to reverse some pro-abortion decisions.

When the other resigns during Bush's second term, and maybe Ginsburg resigns also, Roe v. Wade is toast.

Stanford has a funny idea about who should be a mentor for its law students. Next week it will be Lynne F. Stewart, who is an indicted terrorist and supporter of commie repression. See Volokh for the story.

Update: Volokh reports that Stanford has rescinded the invitation because "Ms. Stewart has expressed sympathy for and tacit endorsement of the use of directed violence to achieve social change".

Randy Johnson just won his 5th Cy Young award at age 39. His won his first at age 32. Usually strikeout pitchers peak at a much earlier age.

At Halloween, you can dress up as a devil, a witch, Saddam Hussein, a vampire, the Grim Reaper, etc. But some Univ. of Tennessee fraternity boys dressed up as the Jackson Five and Louis Armstrong, and they are being punished because they had white skin. Racially sensitive, the administration says. I think that the administration needs some lessons in free speech.

Here is somebody's list of politicians who push net-unfriendly laws.

Andy reports that the US Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal of a St. Louis dentist who was ordered to be forcibly drugged in order to stand trial for overbilling Medicare. For more info, see the Eagle Forum brief for Sell. The SC docket announces:

Petition GRANTED. The motion of petitioner for leave to proceed in forma pauperis is granted. The motion of Law Office of Julie Ruiz- Sierra for leave to file a brief as amicus curiae is granted. The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted limited to the following question: Whether the Court of Appeals erred in rejecting petitioner's argument that allowing the government to administer antipsychotic medication against his will solely to render him competent to stand trial for non-violent offenses would violate his rights under the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments.

Did the defense lawyer write this? I would have said psychotropic drugs instead of "antipsychotic medication". The proposed drugs do not have a proven medicinal or antipsychotic effect. I also would have mentioned the 4A "right of the people to be secure in their persons" and 8A "nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted". The feds will say that the drugging is not punishment, but it seems clear to me that the motive for the drugging is punishment from a vindictive cruel judge.

This is good news for Sell and those who opposed forced psychiatric drugging. I doubt that the SC would hear it, unless it was willing to reverse the case. My impression from reading the judge's opinion is that he was acting out of petty vindictiveness. It is a real scandal that a judge would be drugging someone he doesn't like.

Latest anti-Napster propaganda. The Mercury News reports:

A comScore Media Metrix study reveals that while traditional retail music sales are off 6 percent for the first half of the year -- online sales fell 20 percent over the same period. ... The Recording Industry Association of America, the labels' Washington, D.C., trade group, said the study reaffirms what it has been saying all along -- that piracy undermines the marketplace for legitimate, online music.

This is misleading because the "online sales" figure just includes online CD sales. Going online to have a CD shipped is going obsolete because it is being replaced with direct downloads of music. The market for online music is booming, even as the big music labels try to stifle it. The real complaint is that the big labels don't control the online music market the way they control the retail CD market.

Andy writes:

Roger writes, "Only the feds have access to all the info, have competent personnel, and can do a multi-state investigation. I say, let the feds finish the investigation, and then let VA or whoever else prosecute."

Only the feds "have competent personnel"??? Most high-profile investigations and prosecutions by the feds have been mishandled and/or politically distorted. Unlike state prosecutions, there has been no elected federal official to hold accountable for the mishandling, which guarantees perpetuation of the problem.

It's long overdue to hold politicians who appoint federal prosecutors and judges accountable for their conduct. Sununu should have been held accountable for Souter; US Senators should be held accountable for their selection of US Attorneys.

Television soundbites, which have dominated elections for 40 years, do not permit such accountability. But the internet does. Good information disseminated on the internet should increasingly influence close elections.

Roger writes, "If Human Events (HE) is not conservative enough for you, what are you going to read instead?"

Newspapers and magazines are nothing more than news filters of information readily available on the internet. They are only useful if the reader has confidence in the objectivity of the filter. HE is losing that. For example, it wouldn't surprise me if Sununu's team has been using HE to discredit Bob Smith, and that angers me.

The choice is not HE or another news filter. It's HE versus spending time getting news directly from the source -- the internet and emailed news.

Here is a site protesting H1B visas.

This Science News article explains how no election system can be perfect, and they all lead to paradoxes. Here is a Discover article (2000) that also discusses election paradoxes. This page explains Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.

The problem with the Science News article is that it goes on to say that other voting systems are superior to the US system. But it is not clear in what sense they are superior, except in the subjective opinion of certain advocates. The other systems also have paradoxes and defects. If there were an objectively superior system, then it would be worth considering. But the supposed experts cannot agree on what system is best. That is a clue that it is just a matter of opinion.

Some folks were charged with the crime of using the internet too much. I think that it would have been more more appropriate for the ISP to just cut off service, if the customer was using more bandwidth than the contract allows. Or just bill the customer for the usage.

It is funny to see the SlashDot crowd complain about LaGrande/Palladium. One guy thinks that it will keep Africans from using Linux!

New Mexico is about to vote on whether idiots and insane people can vote. Last time they voted to keep the idiots from voting.

A Yugoslav survived a parachute failure.

The DC federal judge has rubber-stamped the proposed Microsoft settlement. No surprise. I had to figure that this judge was incompetent to critically analyze the settlement when it has taken her an entire year to review it.

It is amazing that Msft's legal strategy has paid off. Its plan:

• Use confidentiality agreements to conceal illegal business practices.
  
• Rely on completely silly legal arguments, such as claiming that copyright law makes Msft exempt from antitrust law.
  
• Rely on completely silly technical arguments, such as claiming that the browser was integrated into the OS.
  
• Deny every adverse allegation, no matter how obvious or substantiated.
  
• Hope that the feds won't be able to cope with the burden of proof.
  
• Submit faked evidence. When it is exposed, claim that it was all a mistake.
  
• Coach all witnesses to play dumb in depositions.
  
• Prolong and delay at every opportunity, so that any remedy is obsolete by the time it is ordered.
  
• Assume the judges will never understand any technical issues, even if the issues are at an 8th-grade level.
  
• Baldly say that changing technology necessitates their behavior.
  
• Repeat meaningless slogans like "freedom to innovate".
  
• If the judge catches on, launch a character assassination on the judge.
  

Liza writes:

Roger says, "One reason educated women don't have any kids is that they become the 2nd wife to some more successful man who doesn't want any more kids."

What a generalization! On what data does Roger basis his sweeping statement that educated women are likely to become second wives and have no kids?

It is true that more-educated women tend to have fewer children than less-educated women, but I doubt that the majority of them are second wives to men who don't want more children.

I agree with this NY Times op-ed that confessions to police should be videotaped. We should have a rule of evidence that confession are only admissable if the whole interrogation and confession are videotaped. But his main example is the NY Central Park jogger case where a women was raped and beaten to death by a gang, and several youths confessed and were convicted. Now the convicted want out because of a DNA mismatch. But the convicts who confessed may still be completely guilty. It was known all along that some of the gang got away. Apparently the DNA matches one of those that got away. But those in the gang who participated in the murder are still guilty. They were convicted by a jury that realized that the worst perp might have gotten away.