Infinite State

I like  science fiction just as much as every other purple-blooded American boy born in the 1960′s, though I wouldn’t call myself a fanatic. I was definitely influenced by Star Trek growing up, though I stopped watching TV a number of years ago and so I haven’t really kept up with the various TV sci-fi shows of the 90′s and on. I did, however, catch a few Farscape episodes and got pulled in for the ideas, production qualities and characters…enough to watch most of the first season on DVD. I haven’t thought about it for awhile until it just popped into my head as I was waking from a Sunday afternoon nap — that Farscape echoes Guardians of the Galaxy in a lot of ways…

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Check out http://www.electoral-vote.com, which is a data-driven analysis of the coming election on a state-by-state basis. Information about the site is tucked away but it comes off as the clearest and simplest message about the progress of the campaigns and the leanings of the states yet. Thanks to my friend Jeff for pointing it out.

Updated

And my friend Derrick writes with another fantastic site:

know it, but this is the one you want: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

Wow, there is great stuff out there now. I wonder whether there is a window in which this kind of information aggregation and presentation can be freely effective before it becomes factored into the “market” of electoral behavior and loses its predictive qualities.

The farm share is down to the last of the greens as we head into just the root vegetables of the late Fall. I can’t tell you what’s in the mix, they’re just called “braising greens” but sauteed with some olive oil and garlic and salt they are delicious over a quick rice pilaf. For the rice, I mixed:

• A small onion, chopped
• A few cashews, in pieces
• Some golden raisins from far away, a bit old
• A little Berbere spicing (pretty potent stuff)
• A touch of veggie bullion in the water

And a pad of paper and pen. I didn’t get much written but the food was delicious.

I have been studying the Processing graphics/visualization library (and enjoying it). I’ve also been hungry for new combinations of ingredients and rice. After a recent trip to Zabar’s I had a small container of smoked mussels on hand, so…

It all came together over lunch in a great way. I sauteed the following:

• Onions
• Garlic
• Celery
• Last of the farm share tomatoes
• Leftover chickpeas
• Carrots

And then I threw in the mussels to warm them through, and topped with chopped cilantro and lime. Mmm, that was good over sushi rice. Something about eating this bowl of steaming hot colorful food while reading in sunlight felt like a kind of heaven. My kids keep telling me I should open a restaurant but they don’t get it — I’m not really interested in cooking for people I don’t know.

I have finally moved off Dreamhost for mail and on to Lux Scientiae. After years of frustration and disappointment with DH’s performance and support, I finally lost it over some disappearing emails and their complete failure to respond to requests for assistance in a timely or helpful manner. I had been using LuxSci for spam filtering and was very happy with them, so I decided to try them out for IMAP…and they have been fantastic. Their support is fast, knowledgeable, and genuinely helpful. Their pricing was a bit more than DH for pure email, but the value is many times greater through their combination of power web UIs, great webmail client, and better quality services (filtering, serving, options). It’s only been a short time, so I’ll hold off on raves more than this, but it’s really nice to move to a more professional group that really delivers better quality service. If only they had a logo graphic I could link to…