Independent instances of "souvenir" Asian skulls from the Tampa Bay area

In the summer of 1984, police in Pinellas County, Florida, confiscated six identically colored imported Asian skulls (in a shipping case) from a private citizen. In May 1988, in nearby Hillsborough County, police confiscated a very similar skull from another private citizen, who allegedly had found it in an abandoned house. Aside from slight color differences between the six found in Pinellas County and the one found in Hillsborough County, the skulls are virtually identical in their osteological characteristics and condition and in the vital statistics derived from each. Each skull is as clean and dry as those typically sold by commercial scientific supply outlets in the United States. Each is edentulous (primarily premortem), between approximately 20 and 60 years of age at death, and morphologically Asian. Five of the seven are morphologically male, one is morphologically female, and one is a mosaic with respect to gender-related features. Police, medical examiners, coroners, and forensic anthropologists should be aware of such "souvenir" specimens, in the event that they encounter similar skulls. Discriminant function analyses for race and sex yield considerably conflicting results, which underscores the need for using extreme caution when interpreting forensic science estimates based on such techniques.     

Explaining political sophistication

Debates over the political sophistication of mass publics smolder on. The more fundamental question, however, is why people become as politically sophisticated or unsophisticated as they do. This paper develops a nonlinear simultaneous equation model to weigh explanations of three general sorts: the politicalinformation to which people are exposed, theirability to assimilate and organize such information, and theirmotivation to do so. The estimates suggest that interest and intelligence, representing motivation and ability, have major effects, but that education and media exposure, the big informational variables, do not. I consider the reasons and sketch some implications for the sophistication of mass publics, for the study of sophistication and other variables of extent, and for democratic theory.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 9–11, 1987. The data were made available by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. Douglas Arnold, John Bolland, Thad Brown, Carol Cassel, Philip Converse, George Kateb, Jan Kmenta, Kathleen Knight, James Kuklinski, Kenneth Langton, Melvin Manis, Diana Owen, Thomas Rochon, Marianne Stewart, Paul Sniderman, James Stimson, and Herbert Weisberg have provided feedback and encouragement. James Gibson relayed his results on the intelligence measures, even as they came off the printer. Mary Lee Luskin helped in many ways. If errors remain, they are mine.     

The struggle over retiree medical benefits: who's on top?

Over the past decade, there has been an explosion of litigation addressing an employer's right to unilaterally amend or terminate medical benefits provided to retirees. The sheer volume of these cases and the variety of facts and legal theories have combined to obscure the patterns and trends that actually are emerging from this litigation. This article will describe the context of the struggle over retiree benefits and discuss those leading decisions in which the federal courts of appeals have established their rules for deciding retiree benefits cases.     

Transition from paper to paperless: DOD'S CALS system

When technology is transferred from one context to another, it is an established principle that innovation must take place. Even though a technology is well situated in one context, it must be adoptively redesigned for another. The sharper the difference in contexts, the greater the adaptation. This paper describes a program to transfer technology among a very diverse group of organizations: contractors to the US Department of Defense (DOD). Specifically, it describes how the technology of electronic communication, including electronic- data interchange (EDI), is being pursued by both the DOD and its supporters.