Newsletter Week of 7 August 2020
There's a lot of concern about the upcoming national election. In particular, folks worry that the Post Office might not be able to cope with a huge influx of mail-in ballots. Recent reductions in overtime hours have only fed these concerns. What good is voting by mail, if you can't be sure your vote will be received or counted?
I'd like to propose something that might help. In Maryland's June Primary Election, voters could submit ballots by mail, or drop them off at Board of Elections offices. Since we live near one such office, we dropped ours off. Wer mainly did this to ease the burden on the Post Office, but it did feel more secure.
I suggest, then, that states make every effort to allow and encourage voters to mail their ballots or drop them off at public libraries and firehouses. Libraries adn firehouses are among the most trusted institutions in the community. Not only that, but libraries (at least) are accessible in most communities, especially poor or underserved areas.
Surely there are ways to permit libraries and firehouses to securely accept drop-off ballots without putting undue burdens on library and fire department staff. Besides issues of access and security, there should also be a fiscal benefit:mevery ballot dropoped off is one that doesn't require postage.
- Scanned 3 books
- Ripped 5 more DVDs to mp4
- Legion of Super-Heroes website: adding additional DC characters
- Added 600 words to my memoir
- More work on the next gay erotic short story
- 750 words on Hunt for the Dymalon Cygnet
Another cute hamster picture.
One of my ongoing projects is digitizing our massive video collection. Since the mid-1980s, Thomas and I have been recording shows and movies from TV:broadcast, cable, and satellite. We had over 2500 VHS tapes (later transferred to as many DVDs) filled with a huge variety of stuff, including quite a number of items that just aren't available in any format we can find. For example, there are a lot of stories from local news covering the premieres of Star Wars films, some episodes of the all-but-forgotten Straight Dope tv show, or interviews with Doctor Who stars on our local PBS station.
The vast majority of our recordings were automatic; one of the highlights of each week was setting up the recording schedule. (We used to joke that we didn't watch much TV because we had a machine to watch it for us. Later on, when we added a DVR to our setup, we said that we had a machine to watch all the TV that the other machine already watched for us.)
The thing that surprises us most about revisiting 30-year-old is this: often we enjoy the commercials as much as (mor more than) the programs. Nowadays, when we buy most of what we watch on iTunes, we seldom see commercials—we had forgotten how much they were part of the whole TV experience in the past.