Michael McDaniel’s Dawning Awareness

Thanks to Jana, I spent about an hour playing with Block Party. Looking at our local neighborhood, it appears that democrats have a few more (40) contributors than republicans (29) around here. It’s hard to know whether that’s due to there being only one republican candidate but multiple democrats, or if it’s indicative of the local area.

Generally, I think of the Eastside as being much more conservative than Seattle proper. That’s certainly borne out by a comparison of our old neighborhood on Capitol Hill. There, the democrats out-donated the republicans 86 to 10!

Well, I sent in my absentee ballot yesterday, just as the political ads have taken over the airwaves. On KUOW today, they said they expected 82% (record was 83% in 1992) turnout with a record number of registrations. 50% of the ballots are absentee and about half of them have been returned already.

Finally, my daily Findory email featured this cute article today, about a man who always votes with the winner. He’s cast his ballot already for: John Kerry. So there you go.

You should probably still go vote, though.

Netflix.

Both Blockbuster and Netflix have lowered their monthly fees (in anticipation of Amazon’s entry into the market). Blockbuster’s free in-store coupons just can’t make up for their site slowness and general lack of availability of many titles in their online offering. It’s not enough to have the movie in your catalog—you have to be able to ship it to me in a reasonable amount of time.

Also, even though I’ve cancelled my Blockbuster account, they keep sending me discs. They clearly don’t quite have it together.

Computer security expert Bruce Schneier wrote a great piece called Do Terror Alerts Work? that is a must-read. My favorite excerpts:

There are two reasons government likes terror alerts. Both are self-serving, and neither has anything to do with security. The first is such a common impulse of bureaucratic self-protection that it has achieved a popular acronym in government circles: CYA…. “What did you expect?” they’ll say. “We told you it was Code Orange.”

The second purpose is even more self-serving: Terror threat warnings are a publicity tool. They’re a method of keeping terrorism in people’s minds. Since the September 11th attacks, Republicans have made “tough on terror” the centerpiece of their reelection strategies…. For that strategy to work, people need to be reminded constantly about the terrorist threat and how the current government is keeping them safe.

The Bush administration lost considerable respect when it was revealed that August’s New York/Washington warning was based on three-year-old information. And the more recent warning that terrorists might target cheap prescription drugs from Canada was assumed universally to be politics-as-usual.

By making terrorism the centerpiece of his reelection campaign, President Bush and the Republicans play a very dangerous game. They’re making many people needlessly fearful. They’re attracting the ridicule of others, both domestically and abroad. And they’re distracting themselves from the serious business of actually keeping Americans safe.

Yeah! And check out Bruce’s other entries as well. Very well-written, thoughtful essays.