It seems to me that they shouldn't even say that - they should just stick to mentioning the correlation.

I agree. The word "may" covers their ass, but only just.

GOP congressional officials said Speaker Dennis Hastert will recommend that Rep. David Dreier of California step into the duties relinquished by DeLay.

Rumor has it that Dreier was picked because Delay expects to get the Majority Leader post back and Dreier would be an easier person to wrest it back from than other candidates.

If A and B have a positive correlation, that says nothing about whether A causes B, B causes A, or if one or more factors not A or B causes them both.

Right. Even a 1:1 correlation isn't causation -- you'd need a really well-designed experimental study, controlled for everything under the sun, to get causation, and even then someone in the world would think up a way that your study did not measure what you thought it was measuring.

"May be risk-factors for" would be better language for a serious study. Risk-factors are basically the attributes or conditions that have a high correlation with the outcome, with no judgement as to whether that attribute is causal of the outcome.

Ugh. I made a doctor's appointment for this afternoon. And then I get to come back to work. Here's hoping the VCR actually tapes Alias and Lost.

Hey, wait. I thought Alias was supposed to be back today? Yet it's not on the schedule.

Edit: except that it is, on Thursday. Huh.

Rumor has it that Dreier was picked because Delay expects to get the Majority Leader post back

Yeah. Because people who lose their posts in disgrace frequently get them back.

t makes hand-wavy gestures in the direction of Marion Barry

If A and B have a positive correlation, that says nothing about whether A causes B, B causes A, or if one or more factors not A or B causes them both.

Yeah, this study does not provide evidence to justify any conclusion other than the fact that there is an association. I would guess that the causation goes the other way: education, prosperity and social stability cause a reduction in traditional conservative religious beliefs. But this study provides no more evidence for my view than for the other view.

While it is formally true that you can't conclude causation from correlation, there are correlations where the possibility of reverse causation or causation by a third variable has been so thoroughly investigated that we have very high confidence in one interpretation of the correlation. There seems to be only one reasonable explanation for the association between smoking and lung cancer, for instance. It's clear that lung cancer in your 40's does not cause you to smoke at age 16, and all of the third variables proposed by the tobacco industry's slimy scientist-whores has been investigated and found to be untrue.

Wow, it sounds like more than just the press smells blood in the water with the current political Reichregime post-Katrina. I would so love to get a new senator for Tennessee.

A link for DX and Billytea: [link]

So Love Among the Ruins.

Question: If a job listing says the salary is $X/year at .75 FTE, they're saying they'll pay you $X for 30 hours/week, not that they'll pay you 0.75*X, right?

correct -- and that overtiem won't happen