...and Statistics

• BooMan at Booman Tribune on the New York Times' David Leonhardt's use of the three-letter word for dishonest narrative:
  

  It’s refreshing to see a New York Times opinion writer state things so frankly, but it’s also a disturbing sign of the times we’re living through. No one seems to know quite what to do when the country is being run by people who will lie so brazenly and unapologetically that there seems to almost no agreed facts upon which you can have a conversation.

• On Narratology:

  Rather than suggesting he's clairvoyant, anyhow, I think we ought to say his sources were good enough that he knew in advance what was going to happen—the dealing of Page and Sechin, the stolen Democratic campaign documents laundered by passing from Russian agents through WikiLeaks and others, the startling insistence of the Trumpians on altering Republicans' Ukraine policy (which was originally very McCain-style belligerent, criticizing Obama for not being tough enough on the Russians), and the documents starting to appear online right after the Republican convention and then the Rosneft, as if somebody were saying, OK, you, Page and Gordon and Sessions with Ambassador Kislyak, have done your part, now we do ours.
  
  What Schiff was doing there, it struck me, was very carefully putting together the things Comey won't say but at the same time won't dispute, the framework Comey won't provide in which the answers he gives make a coherent sense.

  (Yastreblyansky, The Rectification of Names)
  

• The reason this is so important is that the simple and ethical view in Smith (and many other classical economists if we were to read them) that it was wrong to let the poor starve because of manipulated grain prices, was replaced by a more mechanical view of society that denied human intelligence except as calculators of self interest. This is a return to the Hobbesian world leading to a destructive society: climate, inequality, corruption. Today, the poor are hemmed in by so many regulations and procedures (real estate, education, police) that people are now starved. Not having no food, but having bad food, which along with all the new forms of privation add up to a seriously starved life, is not perceived by a blinded society to be suffering. Economics in its current form — most economics papers and college courses — do not touch the third rail of class, or such pain.

  Douglass Carmichael, guest-cross-posting at naked capitalism on Adam Smith, with Yves Smith suggesting that Prof. Carmichael is mistaken.  Oh.  Mostly, therefore, linked as a thought exercise.
  
• Professor Chaos posts videos of bands covering Chuck Berry songs.  (A long time ago, I had to do a bit of research because I only remembered Chuck Berry songs from childhood radio listening.  He was a singer/songwriter before almost anyone--it's what Dylan admired.)