Now that Barack Obama has been elected to the White House, I can breathe a giant sigh of relief. I feel true optimism and hope for this country, and our children.

For me, it's literally "back to work". On election day, I was offered a position with Havard University's Initiative for Innovative Computing. My job is to work with the people of IIC to provide web systems for scientific collaboration. I'll be a web developer by title, but I think a more descriptive term for my work will be "Imagineer".

Speaking of elections and work, one of the neat things I saw today ties into the IIC because it's about illustrating information in meaningful ways -- and that is one project I'll be supporting. You've no doubt seen all kinds of red/blue election maps. Right away these maps are confusing because the geographic boundaries (land area) of the United States do not equal it's voting population nor it's electoral college body. For a more "natural" visualization of how our country voted, take a look at these maps .