Love The New York Times

I never had much appreciation for The New York Times in the past because I didn't subscribe to their online or printed material. Now that they are providing all their content online for free, I can't say enough about how much I love and respect their work. Their articles are well-written; their content is presented in a clean format without too many ads; their servers work smoothly. The New York Times embodies journalism and presentation at its finest.

I particularly enjoy their op-ed material from full-time columnists like Paul Krugman and Tom Friedman, as well as regulars like economst/journalists like Steve/Stephen Levitt/Dubner, and Austan Goolsbee. My discovery and appreciation for The New York Times is still in its infancy, but it will definitely grow as I stuff myself with all their free and rich content.

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Correlation Between Taxes and Social/Economic Programs

I have always wondered if the taxes people pay correlate with the availability of social and economic programs and safety nets, not to mention the military programs that protect them. This idea comes in light of the notion that Europeans are highly taxed compared to their American counterparts, but they seem to have access to free (or almost free) education and health care while the US provides neither. The Europeans live and work at a more leisurely pace than Americans and they have the comfort of knowing that their government has put safety nets in case a disaster. The Europeans do a lot to ensure that all their citizens have comparable opportunities, and thus you are less likely to see a huge gap between the poor and the rich. Perhaps the lack of incentive to excel has stifled entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe to some extent. In fact, Europe has historically high unemployment rates than the US and the size of government there is significantly larger than that of the US....

2001 Recession Deferred for 2008?

Most people remember the Dot-Com bubble of the 1990s that peaked in 2000 before bursting in 2001-2003. Considering how the NASDAQ composite lost more than 60% of its value by 2001 alone, the country was about to go into a recession. The 9/11 attacks made things worse too. As the impact of 9/11 and Dot-Com bust were about to pull the country into a recession, another bubble came to the rescue. It was the housing bubble that deferred a sure recession and kept the US in an era of faux prosperity. It gave Bush a reason to soldier on with flawed economic policies as the housing bubble gave the impression that the good economic progress of the Clinton years were being sustained through Bush's years. This time though, there does not appear to be another bubble ready to bail the US out of the recession it is in. After suffering through the I.T. and housing bubbles in just a decade, I don't think investors and people in general will be adventurous enough to create another bubbl...

Linux Tips and Solutions

PROBLEM: Audacious on K/Ubuntu Doesn't play my mp3s:: On my kubuntu 8.04.1 audacious is not playing any audiofile. I've tried to run my mp3s with amarok and it works. Also audacity is playing mp3s. SOLUTION: Click on Preferences in Audacious; Select Audio Tab; Set the 'cCurrent output plugin' to 'aRts output plugin'. __________________________________________________________ PROBLEM: File associations in Firefox 3.0 disappear in Kubuntu SOLUTION: Install firefox-3.0-gnome-support . . . more to come

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