Penguin-Toppling Claims Studied. Pilots are ridiculed for the claim that, when they fly over penguin colonies, the “curious birds topple over like dominoes as they stare up at the aircraft.” Now British Antarctic Survey researchers plan to spend a month studying the veracity of the phenomenon. Washington Post

Salon interviews Denis Dutton, founder of the Arts and Letters Daily website, and now starting up the online publishing house

Cybereditions, offering up out-of-print “worthwhile scholarly books” as etexts, HTML downloads and print-on-demand paperbacks.

In contrast to the plurality system of voting used in most American elections, Instant Runoff Voting, an election reform rapidly gaining attention throughout the US, allows all voters to vote for their favorite candidate

without fear of helping elect their least favorite candidate, and it

ensures that the winner enjoys true support from a majority of the

voters. Center for Voting and Democracy

Judges have power to overturn elections. “Under a 1998 court ruling, Florida judges have broad authority to invalidate

elections or order new elections in cases in which fraud, or even unintentional error,

results in flawed outcome.” Tampa Tribune

Buchanan Says Disputed Florida Votes Are Gore’s

Alexander Cockburn on Gridlock: . “So it all came out right in the end: gridlock

on the Hill and Nader blamed for sabotaging

Al Gore.

First a word about gridlock. We like it. No

bold initiatives, like privatizing Social Security

or shoving through vouchers. No

ultra-right-wingers making it onto the

Supreme Court. Ah, you protest, but what

about the bold plans that a

Democratic-controlled Congress and Gore

would have pushed through? Relax. There

were no such plans. These days gridlock is the

best we can hope for.” And Cockburn continues with a good summary of the reasons Greens voted Green rather than “sneaking back to the Gore column.” CounterPunch