Is road out of poverty down the aisle? - chicagotribune.com

Is road out of poverty down the aisle? - chicagotribune.com

This article highlights what is wrong when researchers overplay their results, or, worse yet, when politicians or the media get hold of results and start pontificating. Reports of associations or relationships (correlations) are not reports of cause. But often they are reported as such. In this article, for example, the association between poverty and not being married was interpreted as: If we can get these people to marry, they will no longer be in poverty. There was a relationship, that is all. We can go on all day and try to explain it, but that would only be subjective surmising. We'd have to conduct further research to see what is going on.

I like the author's explanation: "People tend not to marry if they are financially unstable. They tend to break up due to poor relationship skills. Work on both these factors, and we might just see our poverty rate move in the right direction." But we'd have to research it.

This is really weird...

While I know that I am, by far, not the least Internet savvy person around (some I work with can hardly email, much less use a Wiki or post on a forum), I am not an Internet guru...or geek. Therefore, it is posts like this (which came up on my Google Alerts) that perplex me: Link

Wordcraft and Epea Pteroenta are listed as well.

Very Strange.

We're getting out the word

We seem to be getting out the word about epicaricacy. They are quoting "Kalleh," and yet the links don't go anywhere. Have you ever heard of that Love to Share Blog?

Similarly, it was used in the comments section of the Huffington Post: Link.

I am thinking it should be the word of the year for 2010!

So clueless

Ah, some Web sites can be so clueless.

Interestingly, my google alerts for "epicaricacy" are becoming much less frequent these days. Is there anything we can do about this? How about a word of the year designation?!

Not much of a change

We need some news about "epicaricacy!" Can't Obama or Palin or someone use it in a speech? Not much has changed, though I did find that it's included in that wonderful Urban Dictionary. Maybe it had been, and I've just forgotten.

Sorry. Not much more than that to report...and I did promise not to talk politics for awhile.

Shellacking

Yep. The Republicans are dancing and feeling epicaricactic (we really do need an adjective for that concept. Neither "epicaricacy" or "Schadenfreude" have one.)

I will give up politics now for awhile. The other side won, but the tide will turn back again. No worries on that.

So...where did the word "shellacking" come from? Interestingly, when looking it up in the OED, it is chiefly U.S. Don't they use it in England? In the OED it was first cited as meaning a "beating" in 1931. I wonder if eventually this citation of "shellacking" will be included in the OED.

Voting day in the U.S.

Today is the big day. There will be epicaricacy from one side...I hope it's not mine!