Random Thoughts

It is no secret that people in the US drive a lot , and they rely on their personal vehicles for the majority of their transportation needs. Slight increases in the price of gas or concerns about the environment have done little to curb the country's fuel consumption significantly. The three Detroit automakers always seem behind the curve on every technology including fuel efficiency. No wonder they are all on the brink of bankruptcy. Citizens seem uncompromising when it comes to their right to drive cheaply. Is there any way to cut down on fuel consumption by US drivers? Freakonomicists STEPHEN J. DUBNER and STEVEN D. LEVITT suggest introducing disincentives for driving could be effective. What disincentives do they entertain? Congestion pricing which 'penalizes' those who drive in congested areas has been effectively applied in Singapore and London, but has received a lot of resistance in Manhattan. Pay-as-you-drive (PAYD) Insurance - This way, those who driv...

I had previously written about blocking ads using my wireless router's web filter as a way of saving network bandwidth . Apparently Firefox users like myself can block ads much more conveniently using the Flashblock and Adblock addons. Flashblock literally blocks all Macromedia Flash content and indicates the blocked content with a placeholder which may be clicked to view the Flash content. It is a little excessive, but I like it. Adblock blocks ad sources as instructed. I apologize to those that rely on online advertising revenues to put food on the table, but they should find solace in knowing that I don't respond to ads. Trust me, it is for the best.

The Budget Hero gives you an opportunity to do just that. I made some conservative estimates and achieved two of my three goals on my first try while reducing the federal budget deficit to $1.7T by 2018. Even though I think like a democrat, I did end up decreasing the size of government. Try out your luck/smarts. http://marketplace.publicradio.org/features/budget_hero/

There is no other way to describe the policies of the current leadership in Eritrea. Please watch this appalling interview of the Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki with Riz Khan of Aljazeera and come up with your own series of adjectives to describe that incredible exchange. The fact that Eritreans are dying under the oppressive and misguided dictatorship of Isaias Afeworki frightens and saddens me very much. The fact that there is no immediate hope is downright depressing.

I find it unsettling that people are apprehensive of Obama's foreign policy as it pertains to US-Israel relations. Many have declared Obama's willingness to negotiate with Iran as a lack of commitment to Israel. While I can understand Israeli/Jewish people's initial reservation to endorsing a man with a Muslim sounding name, I disagree with the idea that he will be any less of a friend of Israel. Here are my reasons for not fearing diplomacy and Obama. Diplomacy and negotiation rarely hurt. A policy of refusing to negotiate leads to dead ends in a world that desperately needs paths for peaceful resolutions. While Bush's commitment to Israel is very strong, it has appeared very blind and stupid to a fault. Most people would agree that Israel's security is worse off now than it was in 2000 mainly because Bush's Iraq policy has strengthened Iran which poses the greatest threat to Israel. It is ironic that while the Bush administration is busy not talking to...

More Bikes More bike trails particularly in metro areas. Encourage people to ride bicycles, mopeds and motorcycles Government subsidies and/or tax credits for people using bikes as a primary mode of transportation. Add more safety features to motorcycles. Lighter and More Aerodynamic and Less Powerful Cars An average sedan weighs 3000+ lbs. An average person weighs ~160 lbs. An average horse weighs ~1000 lbs. Why do people need a 3000lbs machine to carry their 160lbs bod? It's time to reduce the car:person ratio. It is time for cars to lose some of that weight. Build cars out of lighter material w/o compromising safety. Encourage people to remove unnecessary weight. Build cars with smaller gas tanks. As cars' fuel mileage improves, the need for giant gas tanks should diminish. More two-seaters for the average Joe, not just sports car enthusiasts. More aerodynamic designs. Thinner tires with higher pressure to reduce impact of friction as well as air drag.

I'm sure everyone has seen the Mac vs. PC ads on TV where the Mac appears to be confident while th PC is in denial about its deficiencies. Missing from that picture is Linux which is robust, but seeks no attention because it has no commercial ambitions. This Mac vs. PC vs. Linux model can serve as a analogy for many things/phenomena. I would like to make a list of those analogies here. For example, The New York Times recently characterized Hillary as a PC and Obama as a mac on the basis of the design of their websites. The analogy would also work if you think of Hillary as the status quo much like Windows, and Obama as the new thing with great promise, cachet and appeal like the newly reborn mac. It is not obvious who would play the role of Linux, but my choice would be Ron Paul. He has some bold and independent ideas along with a very loyal following even though he has no chance of winning. PC Mac Linux Candidate Hillary Clinton Barack Obama Ron Paul States Northeast West Co...

Not that I am eligible to vote or anything ... but if I could, I would vote for Barack Obama for the following reasons. He listens to experts . He has assembled a group of smart and practical intellectuals to advise him on all sorts of topics. Hillary has her own agenda and ambition which appears to keep her from entertaining any "elitist" agenda. He is a good manager. The way he hired very intelligent people to run a nearly flawless campaign to beat an established and seemingly unbeatable opponent in Hillary Clinton is commendable. He really knows how to surround himself with a smart group of people who can get things done and that is exactly what this country needs. Hillary hired people on the basis of their loyalty and counted on friends of the Clintons to win her the nomination. Unfortunately, all that influence and political capital could not overcome the grassroots movement Obama initiated. He is not an ideologue . That allows him to make good decisions for this...

Microsoft does have its good moments. If you are like me and you don't own you own server, you have probably come across file hosting problems. If you have an MSN/Hotmail/Live account, you can use MSN SkyDrive to host and/or share files. Unlike Yahoo! Briefcase, it allows people to share files to the open public without a premium/fee. Despite my Google account having 9GB capacity, I have yet to learn if it can be used to host random files. P.S. Don't try embedding a piece of code linking to a file stored on SkyDrive in Blogger. You will lose you ability to edit your post in Blogger.

... Disaster has struck and the post I had spent a whole day on has vanished because of some incompatibility between Blogger and Microsoft SkyDrive embedding. I will try to recap the contents of that post briefly anyways. The original gcard style sheet is intended for making a small greeting card that gets folded twice, as shown in my previous post . I would like to modify the style sheet to produce a card that gets folded only once. It will have some content on the outside as well as inside. In addition, I want to add features like background image and other figures to make the cards more appealing. Going from a double fold to a single fold That requires that you make the following changes in the file gcard.sty. 1) Double the panel height. %\setlength{\panelheight}{(\paperheight-2\gctopmargin-2\gcbottommargin)/2} \setlength{\panelheight}{(\paperheight-2\gctopmargin-2\gcbottommargin)} 2) Push the inside pages to their respective location next page. %\begin{textblock*}{\panelwidth...

That's how I am going to feel if/when McCain wins the presidency. Cherie Blair, the wife of former British PM Tony Blair wrote that in her autobiography, Speaking for Myself . Surprisingly enough, Tony Blair went on to become George Bush's main international ally as they committed too many foreign policy disasters and weakened the US while destabilizing the whole world. Anyway, that's all history. Here is hoping the American people would not make the mistake of choosing McCain to lead this country to ____. Considering the same people voted an incompetent Bush to two terms, I would not put it past them.

Yeah, I found one on the internet. Economics is so amenable to jokes that it was only a matter of time before someone exploited the stand-up potential of such a rich [comic] field. Kudos to Yoram Bauman, Ph.D., the world's first and only stand-up economist for takes like these: ...and ... http://www.youtube.com/v/VVp8UGjECt4 I think almost every field out there has stand-up potential. May be social science jokes are a little easier for non-scientists to understand, and thus will have a greater appeal. You know what they say about jokes you have to explain? There are plenty of inside jokes within every field and it would not be impossible to filter out those that need much explaining, leaving those that are simple enough for the average Joe. Would there be a market for such humor? I think there would be. Perhaps one can't do a show 5 times a week, but once a week, traveling from one city to another to gather up enough crowds. The US has some 2600 institutions of higher ...

I love reading Paul Krugman's The New York Times blog . His attempts to make sense of the world using hard economic data appeals to the "numbers guy" and "amateur economist" in me. While almost everything Prof. Krugman posts is noteworthy, I will share his comments on public transportation today. Paul Krugman: A tale of three cities By Paul Krugman Published: May 11, 2008 In case you’re wondering, I didn’t write about public transit for tomorrow. But I did some homework on the thought that I might, and might as well put it here. So here’s Exhibit A for the proposition that even in a nation with low overall population density, where the antelope roam and the skies are not [...] It is amazing how little most US cities have done to make public transportation a more feasible option. I think one of the major ways the US can minimize its dependence on oil is to invest more in urban public transportation infrastructure. The 2000 US Census shows that 58% of the...

No, no, not that kind of latex. You are pretty sick for thinking that. I am talking about LaTeX, the typesetting program. Back to greeting cards. Anybody else hate greeting cards? The type that you buy at the store, sign and deliver even though the message is very impersonal and superficial? Yeah, those kind. I hate them very much. Not only do I hate spending time trying to find something that's mildly personal, but I hate paying for them too. $3-5 on that garbage is a travesty. Jerry Seinfeld captures my feelings towards Hallmark cards perfectly in this clip: or this one http://www.youtube.com/v/7tq-RE_6yVo This problem has become significant enough for me to start working on solutions. I am going to make my own cards using LaTeX. So, I googled "LaTeX greeting cards" and came across the the gcards package. It requires that you also install the textpos and graphicx packages, if you don't have them installed already. I am working with a Linux system ...

I have been anticipating the release of a stable version of KDE 4 with my distro of choice which happens to be Kubuntu. Kubuntu 8.04 provided just that. Just to be on the safe side, I installed Kubuntu 8.04 with KDE 3.5.9 as a base and added KDE 4 later. Here are my first impressions of KDE 4: It has a lot of eye candy and look of sophistication. If you like style (over substance), you will be very impressed. It is nowhere as customizable as KDE 3.x!! Some of the options you select don't get used either. What I have always loved most about KDE over GNOME and other desktop environments is the fact that it has so many configuration options that make it possible for users to customize their desktop well. KDE 4 provided very few customization options. My hunch is that later versions will incorporate more control knobs because KDE without its many configuration options will note succeed. KDE 4 didn't appear to be a memory/resource hog despite its sophisticated look. All in a...