Friday, May 07, 2010

Parliament well hung?

Not that I was paying much attention to the UK elections (because I wasn't), but of course that was a big deal to lots of the people I know around here. A colleague of mine just walked by the door and said the result was interesting, so I decided to look it up---the BBC is apparently predicting a hung parliament.

Last night, I was talking about this a bit with a friend and a colleague (I'm referring to 2 separate people), although I headed off to do my own thing when dinner was winding down and the discussion got a bit more "technical" [not necessarily the best term, but it seems good enough]. They were mentioning about watching it no matter how painful the results were. Naturally, this made me compare it to watching the Dodgers year after year no matter how much they keep breaking my heart, though they didn't see it as the same thing. :) I do understand that, but when one lives in a bubble the way I do, it sure seems that way.

There were two main things I followed with respect to the election: (1) I was pretty glad that my article in a fancy journal got delayed a week to the 14th because otherwise there'd basically be no chance of getting any UK publicity. It's not quite like when the PS 3 was announced right when my PNAS paper came out (I think it was the PS 3 and not some other system...), but it still conflicted with my self-interest; (2) I saw a survey, with results divided primarily by self-identified party affiliation, regarding statistics for people not wanting people like me immigrating into the UK.

Interesting times, I suppose. Now when will they give me the data so that I can write a paper on it... ;)

Oh, and the article includes the awesome sentence beginning "Education secretary Ed Balls hung on in Morley and Outwood..."

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