Nerdcore

Ok, gotta get my nerd on.

So first, a shout out to Ephixa for creating a dubstep of some Zelda tunes. Mad mad props brosef. I also really do like the raps he put together, they're pretty awesome, and right on! These songs make my car BUMP!!



Ok, back to the purpose of this post: STAR WARS.
So I have this picture as my desktop background right now:



And I've been looking at it for a few days and I noticed something interesting:



Here it is closer:



Yup, I'm pretty sure that's the Millenium Falcon. Just to legitimize this, the painting can be found here, full painting here. It was done by Yanick Dusseault, the Lead Matte Painter on Star Wars Episode III. He has a very reputable resume btw. So....yeah. Here is another picture by someone else that clearly shows the same thing:



I thought that was pretty cool. Would be fun to find out what the Falcon was doing there, and who might have been the pilot at the time, etc. etc.

Nav can cook, and you can too!

When I was in elementary school, we would hang out in the back of dad's jewelry store and watch episodes of Remington Steele and Yan Can Cook. All I remember is that Pierce Brosnan is a good lookin' man, and "If Yan can cook, can too!!" This engendered in me a desire and natural willingness to try my hand at cooking, and have the confidence to succeed. Ok, no it didn't, but I still try to cook sometimes. And Catherine tries (and fails) to wear a hat like a gangster. She wouldn't listen when I told her the hat had too much tilt.


Here are some recent cooking excursions for your viewing displeasure.



We made a massive delirious omlette. (There's no link to the video of this, but if you watch the movie Paulie with Tony Shalhoub, it'll make sense. Yes, you have to watch the whole movie.) It had eggs, onions, spinach, mushrooms, cheese and cilantro. And it was delirious.



We also made Meatloaf and Potatoes:




Catherine made some cookies, that we subsequently forgot were in the oven when we went to rent a movie.



It was a good movie. I don't remember what it was, but we haven't rented a bad one in a while.

We made Jelly-Fish (not to be confused with jellyfish, cuz you'll die) in honor of Andrew.



We also made an epic massive meatloaf.



That's ground beef, cheese, brats, bacon, onions, bell peppers, and some other stuff. I can't remember, but it was delicious and lasted for about a week.

This week, we ate at Sweet Tomatoes. We go there almost every Saturday, it's something of a tradition now. A delicious tradition.




And finally, we thought this picture was pretty funny.

Unfortunately the catfood was not nearly as delectable as the rest of the fare posted herein.

Until Next Time! If we live that long.

How Masterchef Relates to Politics

Catherine has always been a fan of cooking shows, and her favorite are the Gordon Ramsey shows: Hell's Kitchen, Gordon's Great Escape, Kitchen Nightmares and Masterchef, to name a few. I enjoy watching them with her while playing Civ 5, or anything on my computer really.

Don't be fooled by the nice smiling man in the middle. That's Joe Bastianich, and he's the smartest and cruelest of them all.
That's not a happy how are you smile. That's a smile that says, I'm about to eat you alive, then tell you how disgusting you taste.

In masterchef, a number of cooks compete against each other to create dishes that the judges will like so they don't get kicked off the show, often cooking with limited ingredients and with a time limit. They call it pressure cooking, I say that's an apt name for it. Sometimes, they do an awesome job and you get to hear some not often uttered praise from one of the judges. Usually, the critique is extremely critical and often leaves a contestant in tears. It's brutal really, I've always said, if you want to understand the definition of "scathing", Masterchef can do that for you.

Anyways, on to the point. One episode of Masterchef had the contestants working in teams to make competing dishes for a group of guests. The guests would vote for their favorites and the winning team would get the most votes. Here's where it gets political: it hit me that this was a perfect example of how the Electoral College works.

In this particular episode, the contestants made 3 competing dishes, one appetizer, and entree, and a dessert, in total 300 luxury hors d'oeuvres. The guests voted thusly:

Appetizer: 64% Red Team, 36% Blue Team
Entree: 0% Red Team, 100% Blue Team (First % in show's history for this challenge!)
Dessert: 53% Red Team, 47% Blue Team

When broken down by wins, the Red Team wins by getting the most votes for both Appetizer and Dessert (2 wins, 1 loss). When counted based on actual numbers of votes (100 Votes being the total for each course) the Blue Team wins in a landslide with 183-117 of the popular vote!!

Now, if you imagine that each course is a state, you can see how a political candidate might win the popular vote, but lose the election. Roughly (VERY ROUGHLY!) speaking, the electoral college takes the majority of votes in it's state, and declares that person the winner. If 500 people vote for a Blue Candidate in Oregon, but 150 people vote for a Red Candidate in Montana and 300 vote Red in Utah, Red Wins, because they won more electoral college votes for both Montana and Utah (8 vs. 7), whereas in a popular election, Blue wins because Oregon's 500 population is more than the 450 population of the other 2 states combined. (like I said, that was rough).

Here is a tabled breakdown:

State          Red       Blue
Oregon      100        500     BLUE
Utah          300        100     RED
Montana    150        50      RED

So according to the Electoral College, Red wins, with two votes to one.  HOWEVER, if we judge based on popular votes, the stats look like this:

                  Red       Blue
TOTALS:  550        650
And blue wins.

The electoral college process is much more elaborate than that, but you get the gist of it.  Here is a map of how many Electoral College votes each state gets:

I don't know what's going on with Nebraska and Maine, but I'll figure it out eventually.
That's right you two, I will uncover then truth, and then, then you will pay....

So, yeah, Masterchef and the Electoral College are totally the same. Kinda. But not Really. But sort of. But also not... :)

...updated 9/28/2012...