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USA: The New York Times has proposed abolishing the Electoral College. In the Electoral College, every vote is not equal. Small states like it that way, so I doubt that small state legislatures will vote for the consitutional amendment required to make this change. Presidential candidates would pay more attention to the needs of the larger states like New York and California, at the expense of smaller states like Hawaii and Nevada. Swing states would be a thing of the past. As the Times points out, Yucca Flats is getting more attention than NYC security in this campaign.

Abolishing the Electoral College could encourage more voters to participate in presidential elections, if voters know that their vote directly counts towards the total results, and that votes will be accurately tabulated. I lived in Texas in 2000, so my vote against W was for naught.

USA: What is a 3-year old doing in a movie theater? The family was watching “Alien vs Predator” at the Sunrise Multiplex Cinemas in Long Island. The child choked to death on popcorn. Sad, sad, sad.

USA: The New York Times reports on the latest round of terror alerts. No one could possibly believe that W’s administration would announce a fake alert just 3 days after the opposition party’s convention, but “… a terror threat is much more sobering to those who live in New York and Washington, which includes much of the nation’s political and news media ranks. At the same time some Democrats wondered Sunday whether Americans, after hearing so many of these threats, might begin to disregard them. Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in an interview that the focus on continuing threats, three years after Sept. 11, was evidence that Mr. Bush was highly vulnerable on this issue. “I think this is one of the sleeper issues of this campaign,” Mr. Schumer said. “It’s one where Kerry can show strength and at the same time show that this administration hasn’t really thought through the war on terror.”“

Space: NASA reports that a massive sunspot is now facing the Earth. It’s approximately 20 times larger than Earth, and visible to the naked eye - well, with the proper filters, of course.

If this sunspot starts throwing out flares, communications and satellites will be disrupted or destroyed. W plans to blame al Qaeda, and Halliburton will receive a trillion-dollar contract to block out the sun.

Tech: IBM and Sun thin-client computing again. Thanks to Windows’ massive security holes, thin-clients have a better chance of corproate adoption now. Universities and schools can also save money by using thin-client boxes instead of massive, overpowered and buggy Windows boxes.