I also question why section II mentioned only the positive effects of California’s policy choices and not the negative ones. Certainly it has had to spend more to enforce stricter standards. It likely has deterred some businesses from expanding or forming, at the margin. Fewer job opportunities might also predict a decline in state population, a decline happening today (although whether or not there is causality is a separate question). Certainly these issues deserve at least some analysis in determining the overall effect of these policy choices, don’t they?

Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections.

The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes–that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

The National Popular Vote bill has passed 29 state legislative chambers, in small, medium-small, medium, and large states, including one house in Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Oregon, and both houses in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington. The bill has been enacted by Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, and Washington. These five states possess 61 electoral votes — 23% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.

See http://www.NationalPopularVote.com

“More recently, computers have become the undisputed champions in other arenas of the parlor—including Othello, Scrabble, backgammon, and bridge.”

I was surprised to hear this of Scrabble, because I follow the scene fairly closely and play intermediate-level tournament Scrabble myself. While the best programs out there (Maven, Quackle) are quite good, on par with the best human players at somewhere in the 40-60% success range (I don’t remember what number I last heard for human successes), they are not currently “undisputed champions”. (Of course, the inherent randomness in Scrabble means that it’s difficult to generalize from anything but extremely large numbers of games, because luck of the draw plays such a notable role in determining who wins the games.) I was curious where the author found his information; the citation for this sentence is this article from The Economist:

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=8585017

Reading through, the only mention of Scrabble is in this sentence (which also happens to fit in the excerpt at the above URL):

“[Computers] are the undisputed champions in draughts and Othello. They are generally stronger in backgammon. They are steadily gaining ground in Scrabble, poker and bridge.”

The article thus misstates its source’s information. It is correct that computers are the undisputed champions of backgammon (draughts) and Othello, but it is incorrect to say or imply the same for Scrabble and bridge, where they are merely steadily gaining (although in the case of Scrabble, I believe this is more a matter of computers increasing in power than of any breakthroughs in Scrabble-game playing by the programs).