Upset

I spent the night at work (yes, Dr. Wu, paid employment; I'll get back to this research thing real soon). Well, a good chunk of the night, anyway. I'm packing it in at 11PM, which is actually earlier than I had expected.

Since it was off hours, I didn't feel bad about having FiveThiryEight's running commentary on the Alabama election going at the same time. The fact that Alabama just elected a democrat to the United States Senate is more than a little mind bending. It was the perfect storm for the GOP. Just goes to show that heavy-tailed distributions do exist.

While I'm certainly no fan of Moore, I actually find this whole episode rather sad. Of course Moore should have lost. Even without the whole child molestation thing, he's shown a complete disregard for the limits of power throughout his career as a judge. If anybody should be aware of those limits, it would be a judge. But, this is really unfair to the people of Alabama.

Jones doesn't speak for them. He speaks for a small and vocal minority. He will vote opposite of what the vast majority of the state wants. Whether or not you agree with what Alabama wants, this is not how democracy is supposed to work. Then again, very little of this past year has had much to do with how democracy is supposed to work.

It has occurred to me that, this whole data science doctoral thing could make me somewhat valuable to political campaigns. I don't know if I want to go that route or not. On the one hand, I really do believe in democracy and wouldn't mind helping a candidate with whom I agreed. On the other hand, the whole process is just so broken right now, I might get super depressed.

I suppose I should get back to my research before stressing about it.