Economics:

Neil Irwin, There is no fiscal crisis.  And macroeconomics is not a morality play. (The title says it all.  Read the full article for the details.)

Brad DeLong, Department of “Oh Dear!”: Basic Macro Briefing Weblogging:

I have been complaining strongly about the failure of Republican economists to adequately brief their political principals. It looks like it is sauce-for-the-gander time…

If it is indeed the case that Obama does not understand the basics of the economic situation he is trying to manage, how likely is it that he can make good decisions?

Matthew O’Brien, Everything you need to know about the economy in 2012, in 34 charts.  (A very nice compilation.)

Politics:

Bruce Bartlett, How Democrats Became Liberal Republicans

The dirty secret is that Obama simply isn’t very liberal, nor is the Democratic Party any more…

In a little-noticed comment on Spanish-language television on December 14, Obama himself confirmed this typology of today’s political spectrum. Said Obama, “The truth of the matter is that my policies are so mainstream that if I had set the same policies that I had back in the 1980s, I would be considered a moderate Republican.”

Brad Plumer, How to siphon votes away from blue states:

Over the past year, however, a number of Republican lawmakers in blue states have been pushing an alternative system. The states would split their electoral votes between different candidates.

Gun Culture:

Corey Robin, Rimbaud Conservatism

The conservative imagination is supposed to prize longevity and continuity. It is the wisdom of old men…

I reject the notion that there has been some kind of downward trajectory on the American right since [William F.] Buckley (or [Edmund] Burke, for that matter). What we hear from the [Charlotte] Allen’s and [Megan] McArdle’s of today is no different from what we heard from the Buckley’s of yesterday. The right has always been interested in violence and death. It has seldom been a country for old men—except the old men, and apparently women, who dream of the slaughter of young children.

Mark Kleiman, Take-home lessons from Sandy Hook:

…asking how to prevent the next Sandy Hook doesn’t help answer the question how to reduce the rate of gunshot injury, which continues to rise even as improved medical care keeps the homicide rate moving down.

Steve Almond, America’s Addiction To Violence

What I remember of the Canyon [a housing development in the Liberty City area of Miami], as an outsider, was the oppressiveness of the place; people felt bored and powerless most of the time. They experienced acts of violence as a kind of liberation from the prevailing tedium…

For those who remain haunted by the deaths in Newtown, ask yourself this: Why, as a nation, do we continue to consume simulated and real violence as mass entertainment? Why do so many of our movies and television shows and video games and books and sporting events rely on the glorification of extreme violence? Why do our laws crack down on profanity and graphic sexual imagery, and yet continue to treat violence as acceptable and even heroic? What does it say about the integrity of our sympathy that the deaths of Afghani civilians — including school-age children — owing to drone strikes paid for by our tax dollars merit barely a thought?

Wendy Kaminer, Guns, Paranoia, and Newtown:  A Civil Libertarian’s Take

I doubt you could demonstrate a solid empirical link between paranoia, the spread of murderously efficient weaponry, and its indiscriminate use, but logic strongly suggests that one exists…

I’m not maligning gun owners in general. I’m not implying that many of them are stockpiling guns in anticipation of anarchy or its opposite evil — totalitarianism. I’m simply suggesting that vigorously promoting the need to bear arms can have awful, unintended consequences…

Widespread fear generates widespread mistrust and aggression, which facilitate gross violations of individual rights…

We’ve lost fundamental liberties in the past 10 years, partly to our own paranoia. We’ve gained violence. Perhaps that’s not entirely coincidental. A culture that celebrates militarism, high tech weaponry, and super-heroic defenses against otherworldly threats is a culture that feels victimized and under siege. It’s not a culture that encourages people to moderate or mediate their grievances…

Firmin DeBrabander, The Freedom of an Armed Society

…I have always suspected, but found difficult to articulate: an armed society — especially as we prosecute it at the moment in this country — is the opposite of a civil society…

Like it or not, [guns] transform the bearer, and end the conversation in some fundamental way. They announce that the conversation is not completely unbounded, unfettered and free; there is or can be a limit to negotiation and debate — definitively…

I have often suspected… that contrary to holding centralized authority in check, broad individual gun ownership gives the powers-that-be exactly what they want…

As Michel Foucault pointed out in his detailed study of the mechanisms of power, nothing suits power so well as extreme individualism. In fact, he explains, political and corporate interests aim at nothing less than “individualization,” since it is far easier to manipulate a collection of discrete and increasingly independent individuals than a community.  Guns undermine just that — community. Their pervasive, open presence would sow apprehension, suspicion, mistrust and fear, all emotions that are corrosive of community and civic cooperation. To that extent, then, guns give license to autocratic government.

Garry Wills, Our Moloch:

Few crimes are more harshly forbidden in the Old Testament than sacrifice to the god Moloch (for which see Leviticus 18.21, 20.1-5). The sacrifice referred to was of living children consumed in the fires of offering to Moloch… Milton represented Moloch as the first pagan god who joined Satan’s war on humankind:

First Moloch, horrid king, besmear’d with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears,
Though for the noise of Drums and Timbrels loud
Their children’s cries unheard, that pass’d through fire
To his grim idol. (Paradise Lost 1.392-96)

Read again those lines, with recent images seared into our brains—“besmeared with blood” and “parents’ tears.” They give the real meaning of what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School Friday morning. That horror cannot be blamed just on one unhinged person. It was the sacrifice we as a culture made, and continually make, to our demonic god…

The gun is not a mere tool, a bit of technology, a political issue, a point of debate. It is an object of reverence. Devotion to it precludes interruption with the sacrifices it entails. Like most gods, it does what it will, and cannot be questioned.  Its acolytes think it is capable only of good things. It guarantees life and safety and freedom. It even guarantees law. Law grows from it. Then how can law question it?

Miscellaneous:

Sasha Issenberg, Boo-Boos in Paradise:  A reporter investigates the claims David Brooks’ made in Bobos in Paradise.  (Spoiler Alert:  Brooks comes away looking pretty bad.)

Phil Price, Write This Book:

I’ve been preparing a review of a new statistics textbook aimed at students and practitioners in the “physical sciences,” as distinct from the social sciences and also distinct from people who intend to take more statistics courses…

…textbooks (and courses) should eliminate the chapter on hypothesis testing, replacing it with a one-page description of what hypothesis testing is and why it’s less useful than it seems… Once the hypothesis test chapter is gone, it can be replaced by something useful.  One thing that is needed (but usually missing) is a chapter on exploratory data analysis, especially including graphics…

Yet another topic that has come up frequently in my experience is numerical simulation, either to directly determine an answer of interest or to confirm an analytical result. An example is error propagation: I have an output that is a complicated function of several inputs, and the values of the inputs are subject to uncertainty. What is the uncertainty in the outputs? The easiest way to answer this is often to sample from the input distributions and generate the resulting output value; repeat as needed to get a statistical distribution of outputs…