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As more and more candidates drop out of the race for president, it’s becoming easier to pick one, but it’s still not exactly a clear cut choice for most of us. Here are a few more sites that might help:

At Glassbooth, you rank how important various issues relate to you, then you answer some questions on where you stand on those issues, and it will compute which candidate is most inline with your views. You can even share your results with others (checkout my Glassbooth results). Which questions they show you even depends on how heavily you rank each issue. It’s basically a decision matrix on steroids. Unfortunately, they don’t cover ALL the important issues. Conspicuously missing are most Technology issues like net neutrality or the digital divide or Science issues like nuclear power or intelligent design. But still, very illuminating.

TechCrunch completed it’s Tech Primaries and announced its winners from each party. It’s very interesting to see where each candidate stands on the issue now that all the interviews are done. I think I agree with their endorsements.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has created their Science and Technology in the 2008 Presidential Election site. You can read detailed analysis of each candidates positions on science and technology issues.

So far, I’m pretty excited to vote next month.

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I can’t decide if this Amazon press release reflects highly or poorly on the DC area. At first blush, I thought it was great that we were such a romantic area, until I realized that Amazon ranked cities based on the sale of romance, relationship and sex books. So while there have been lots of studies saying that we’re one of the best areas for singles, maybe those singles are having a hard time finding one another. Maybe we’re just the loneliest area?

From the Amazon ‘Top 20 Most Romantic Cities in America’ press release:
(emphasis and formatting added by me)

After compiling sales data of romance novels, relationship and sex books since Jan. 1, 2008, on a per capita basis in cities with over 100,000 residents, the top 20 most romantic lonely cities in the United States are:
1. Alexandria, Va.
2. Cambridge, Mass.
3. Miami, Fla.
4. Irvine, Calif.
5. Ann Arbor, Mich.
6. Orlando, Fla.
7. Berkeley, Calif.
8. Scottsdale, Ariz.
9. Arlington, Va.
10. Atlanta, Ga.
11. Washington, D.C.
12. Pasadena, Calif.
13. Bellevue, Wash.
14. Seattle, Wash
15. San Francisco, Calif.
16. Columbia, S.C.
17. Tallahassee, Fla.
18. Austin, Texas
19. Richmond, Va.
20. Knoxville, Tenn.

In taking a closer look at Amazon.com’s “romantic” data, the company also unveiled that:

• Virginia really is for lovers, with three cities (Alexandria, Arlington and Richmond) ranked amongst the top 20 Most Romantic Lonley Cities.

The Mayor and Taxicab Commission listened to the thousands of public comments they received about the proposed sky high taxi fares! The Mayor announced a new, revised plan that includes:

• Lowering the drop flag fee (aka base fare) from $4 to $3
• Eliminating rush hour surcharges
• Eliminating the non-sensical additional passenger surcharge
• Reducing snow emergency surcharges from 200% to 25% of the fare

But the battle is not yet won - A lone Council Member plans to introduce legislation for hybrid zone meters that may revive the archaic and confusing zone system (with accompanying high fares) at the expense of the public. Also, taxi drivers are planning weekly strikes even when the new fare structure brings them slightly higher fares than NYC cab drivers! Also consider their costs of operating a DC taxi are a tiny fraction of what NYC cab drivers pay!

WTOP Radio reported that some taxi drivers, led by the Taxicab Industry Group, are calling for drivers to strike once a week beginning Feb. 4 to continue protesting the switch to meters. Not only do these strikes reflect poorly on the taxi drivers, they are also dangerous and irresponsible to the thousands of DC residents that depend on the taxi system for their economic, child care and healthcare needs.

Please show the Mayor you support him in standing up to striking taxi drivers by using the pre-written letter at http://www.caleynet.com/taxi to send a message to the City Council and the Mayor.

Remember, new metered taxis arrive on April 6!

We’ve gotten used to our postal service carrier messing up our mail and delivering other peoples’ mail to our mailbox. But apparently the UPS guy has been taking notes.

We recently got this annoying “info notice” from UPS (see image below):

Notice how many checkboxes the delivery guy checked for when he’d deliver the package. So I guess he expected us to wait around from 10:30am until sometime after 5pm. Nooo problem.

But that isn’t even the most frustrating part. For some reason, the UPS guy also decided to play some kind of weird mental joke on us by checking two mutually-exclusive delivery option boxes. The two boxes that are checked are:

• Signature required on delivery (in person)
• You may sign to have package(s) delivered

Reading the back of the notice, we learned that the first checkbox means that “the driver must receive a signature and hand the package(s) to a person” but the second checkbox means that the UPS guy is authorized to leave the package unattended at the delivery location. Um… what?

Luckily for us we have a neighbor who works from home somedays and was able to sign for the package the next day. But wait, how did our upstairs neighbor know the UPS guy was at our door, you ask? Well, because our UPS guy is very friendly and rings BOTH doorbells regardless of who the package is for. So nice of him.

Gotta love the service!

Now that the 2008 presidential election season is officially in full swing, I’ve been trying to get a better picture of where the candidates stand. So to cut through the crap and propaganda, I’ve compiled the following list of sites that have analysis about and personal statements from the candidates.

The analysts and talking heads are already calling this the most important election of our lifetime, so I figured the more we know about the candidates the better. Hope this helps in that regards.

Should be a fun year, if you like politics that is.

• TechCrunch Primaries - see how people ranked the candidates regarding Tech issues and see Mike Arrington’s interviews with each candidate
• News.com 2008 Technology Voters’ Guide - scroll down to see the candidates’ responses on important Tech Issues.
• OnTheIssues.org - Candidates on the Issues - click on each candidate’s picture to see how they’ve actually voted on important issues like foreign policy, the budget, civil rights, drugs, education, energy and the environment.
• NY Times Election Guide 2008 - On the Issues - this site has a handy grid showing where the candidates stand on a handful of issues like health care, abortion, climate change, immigration, Iraq and Iran.  Good for comparing candidates on these selected topics.
• Washingtonpost.com Issue Coverage Tracker - spiffy Flash site that lets you pick the issues and the candidates and see recent related press coverage across the web.