Why I love Charlie Pierce: Reason eleventy million

Sorry kids. Didn't plan to disappear for so long. Took the weekend off to drive a few hundred miles to go to a very long and really fun birthday party. Then the storm happened. And of course, our stupid politics never sleep. I'm on information overload, and it took a while to sort it all out.

Being mainly uninterested in internet spats I haven't closely followed the battle between Nate Silver and the very important pundits. I gather our leading media opinion makers are quite unhappy Nate is ruining their rosy scenarios of an exciting race to a photo finish with his tiresome scientific facts and mathematical equations. They're all, "Who the hell does he think he is, fking Harry Potter?" (not really an exact quote)

So what does this have to do with Charlie, you ask? Well, Charlie Pierce wrote about it at some length, but this is the line in his post that inspired the title.

2) I refuse to believe that the enjoyment of anything can be enhanced by the inclusion of math.

As someone who still refuses to accept the absolute value of numbers, those words resonate with me in various and inexplicable ways.

Oh, if you care about the roots of the spat, here's People Who Can't Do Math Are So Mad At Nate Silver. It explains everything.

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