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...
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...
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