Meg Whitman In, Gavin Newsom Out -- and Our Halloween Monster Mash-Up

About two hours after you heard Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman talking with me [in what I gather is a rare radio interview for her], there came the news that Democratic gov candidate Gavin Newsom is dropping out of the race, pretty much leaving that side of the field to former governor and current attorney general Jerry Brown.

I'm trying to imagine what Antonio Villaraigosa is thinking right now -- he decided not to run for gov in part because of the Newsom challenge, which is now ... pffft.

Anyway, Meg Whitman talked a great deal about applying her CEO skills to the governor's job, much as Arnold Schwarzenegger touted his own approach to the position. She talked about cutting another 20% of state jobs, and about her very spotty voting record, as well as positions like pro-abortion rights that run in line with general election voters but are not likely to endear her to hard-core Republican primary voters.

Carla Marinucci, the swell San Francisco Chronicle writer, pointed out that the Republicans haven't yet nominated a woman for governor or Senate. the one GOP woman's name who came to Carla's mind is Ivy Baker Priest, who was state treasurer in the 1960s and '70s, after she served as U.S. treasurer under Eisenhower [the U.S. treasurer signs the paper money, although I expect those with her signature have pretty much worn out or been taken out of circulation by now.]

She was also the mother of Pat Priest, who played Marilyn Munster on ''The Munsters,'' which is a perfect transition to tell you about the ''monster hour.'' In the second hour of the program we heard from the woman at the National Academy of Sciences whose job is to help TV and film creators get it right when Hollywood puts science on screen, from robots to DNA.

Dr. Robert Smith? [his name is indeed spelled with a question mark] gave us the skinny on zombies and epidemiology. Instead of tracking how disease spreads by using a real disorder, like the H1N1 virus, he and his co-author jazzed it up a bit by using zombies -- how they spread zombieism [and it ain't by sneezing] and how that model is useful to those studying how actual diseases behave. B-R-A-A-A-I-N-S!

And just for the heck of it, we invited in three investigators of the paranormal; one was inspired to this pursuit after he was working at an amusement park and said he saw an apparition, a little girl who had died because of one of the park rides. Another paranormalist detailed her work at Alcatraz, and at an empty house in Nevada, where pebbles dropped out of nowhere as she asked questions of whatever might have been there.

Pasadena Paranormal's therapist and case manager, Jason Carrasco, says he is careful to sort out people who may have some mental disorder or psychiatric problem from among those who report paranormal phenomena, the better to discern what may be happening. James Underdown of the Center for Inquiry-West and the Independent Investigators Group brought his scientific take to bear -- and had never turned up anything to substantiate paranormal activity. Still, 68% of Americans told Pew pollsters they believe in angels and demons, and perhaps other things that go bump in the night.

Next time, Vietnam veteran and former senator Max Cleland, who lost his reelection after opponents characterized the triple amputee as unpatriotic, and Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio, who makes inmates wear pink and charges women prisoners as much as $600 for transportation to get abortions; he's not running, as he has said, a taxicab service.

-- Patt Morrison