Links and Minifeatures 10 05 Friday

Just because you don't understand yet doesn't mean it's useless: Scientists: Appendix Protects Good Germs

The appendix "acts as a good safe house for bacteria," said Duke surgery professor Bill Parker, a study co-author. Its location - just below the normal one-way flow of food and germs in the large intestine in a sort of gut cul-de-sac - helps support the theory, he said.

Fascinating!

California effort to alter '08 race stalls

California's Presidential Election Reform Act was supposed to end the state's winner-take-all jackpot (55 electoral votes) for presidential candidates.

Because the proposed ballot initiative was likely to provide an unusual windfall for Republicans - perhaps as many as a third of the state's electoral votes - it sent Democrats into paroxysms when it was announced in August.

Early polls showed the measure had a respectable chance of success, with 47 percent supporting the idea and 35 percent opposing it, according to a California Field Poll taken in mid-August.

But before signature-gatherers hit the streets, the California Democratic Party took out TV, radio, and print ads against the proposal, which was unusual since it hadn't been vetted by voters. The state party sent out 800,000 e-mails to solicit an eventual army of 800 volunteers who went to petition sites and talked people out of signing.

Let's all remember that the next time they start bleating about "the will of the people." I'd like to see this become the way every state awards their electoral votes. It would force the candidates to campaign everywhere, as opposed to they win one or two big cities and the entire state (or more than one state in some instances) comes along with all of it's electoral votes. But because it would cause a distribution of electoral votes in greater correspondence with the popular vote, the Democratic party isn't interested. They've got a monopoly on California's 55 electoral votes (or so they think) and they're not giving it up!

Suppose Rudy Giuliani becomes the first Republican Candidate to win California since Ronald Reagan? (he might - consider Arnold, a very similar politician) Suppose he wins it by some trivial margin? A few hundred votes? That would be poetic justice: 55 electoral votes to the R column over 500 votes, because the Donkeys were worried about losing 20, when they would have gotten at least 20 of those.

But I don't think anyone would seriously argue it's a good way to design an election.

The Republicans can win without California. They've done it in 1988, 2000, and 2004. As it currently sits, the Democrats can't. Giuliani, Romney, and Thompson all have the ability to put California in serious play (even if Hillary picks Barbara Boxer or Dianne Feinstein for the Veep choice - which would lose her a lot of votes in the rest of the nation. I'm pretty sure Hillary is going to need a man for the bottom half of her ticket, electorally, preferably one with some national stature. Al Gore would be the perfect choice, if she can get him to accept. Cruz Bustamante or Willie Brown, among others, won't cut it)

That about wraps it up for reform hopes in Burma: Monks flee crackdown in Burma.

Young monks who led the marches that brought huge crowds of citizens into the streets are now fleeing the repression, and a few have now reached the Thai border town of Mae Sot. Three Buddhist monks interviewed Thursday offer a rare glimpse of the events leading up to the crackdown.

Back in Rangoon, several monasteries now appear to be abandoned, say diplomats there. At least 1,000 forcibly disrobed monks are reportedly being detained in Army and police camps and in converted school buildings. "Only the old monks are left, all the young monks have left Yangon [Rangoon]," says one of the monks who escaped.

Pardon me while I go somewhere to say some curse-words.

Ex-Myanmar prisoners describe torture

Myanmar seeks alleged monk 'ringleaders'

I'm sure all this is going to cause the Burmese to just love the Chinese government behind the Burmese junta.

As if that's going to make it all better department: Suu Kyi appears on state TV as under-fire Myanmar frees monks

The junta also said it had freed hundreds of detained monks, and it restored Internet access after a week, steps that appeared aimed at appeasing world opinion as the generals came under strong attack at the United Nations over their crackdown on pro-democracy protestors.

Culture Minister Khin Aung Myint, a regime spokesman, had replied that the protests were "not in a democratic way," that the protesters were only detained for investigation, and that "there are no political prisoners in Myanmar."

1) Dead people aren't prisoners.

2) Ministry of Truth in action

Department of the blazingly obvious: Giuliani blames spending for '06 losses

When all you've got to differentiate yourself from the Democrats is sponsorship of a war that is unpopular even if it is necessary...

Tiny 'tin whiskers' imperil electronics

Now some electronics makers worry the destruction will be more widespread, and the dollar amounts more draining, as the European Union and governments around the world enact laws to eliminate the best-known defense - lead - from electronic devices.

I think I've found those missing village idiots.