Economics as right-wing ideology, iteration #5,678,183 in a series of aleph-null.

Why, at this late date, would anyone think that the New Republic _wants_ to advance liberal goals? (Which is Andrew's point, I think, when one unwraps all the nested ironies.)

This is one of the few convincing deconstructions I have ever seen.  (Andrew would not of course call it "deconstruction".)

Somebody (hopefully not me) really needs to write a book about vampirical hypotheses testing.

But, but, but, Pandora was never _in_ the box!  ETA: Andy was making a joke which went over my head.

Bwahahahaha!

"for a model to be believed, it must, except in the simplest of cases, be accompanied by similar models that either give similar results or, if they differ, do so in a way that can be understood." --- I'm not sure I go along with this, though it certainly rationalizes much of what happens in physics.

In which Andy gets baffled by what people in the wider world mean by "Bayes". (To be clear, the utter_stupidity tag does not refer to Andy.)

Andrew Gelman et al.'s forthcoming book about American voting habits.

I realize Andy is joking (April Fool's), but he's almost perfectly managed to channel how I feel on the other 364 (or 365, depending) days of the year. (Except that I do keep up with what the Bayesians are doing, thank you.)

My initial reaction is one of skepticism, despite my respect for Andy. To work through.

I love this phrase.

Andy Gelman reviews Brooks & Manza's interesting-sound book on this subject. Gentle but firm corrections re causal inference.

"the 'culture war' between red and blue states, is really something happening at the higher range of incomes."

Maybe the best applied textbook on regression and hierarchical modeling available. Good as an introduction to statistical modeling more generally.

Provided, Gelman explains, you care about what happens to other people.

I'd say: you can say "utility" if you (1) use _all_ the von Neumann/Morgenstern axioms and (2) show they hold. Otherwise, it's spurious precision.