Links About Economics...

As I don't have much time to blog today, I'll just do another link post.

There are a number of different opinions in economics about public policy/research (a point which can be lost in undergraduate level classes). To avoid bias, it is often useful to check what persons of various  persuasions say on a given topic, then weigh each of their arguments yourself. To that end, here's a list of some of the blogs/sites which I've found useful in avoiding groupthink (at least wrt debates in economics).

Note: These categories, as with most labels,  are approximations of truth, and tend to gloss over important differences. For instance, libertarians/austrians get mixed up the with center-right. Should be taken with a large grain of salt.

"Left"
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/
http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/issue/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein

"Center"
http://blogs.ft.com/economistsforum
http://www.economist.com/node/21003975/index.xml
http://www.nber.org/new.html
http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress
http://modeledbehavior.com
http://chrisblattman.com

"Right"
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/
http://marginalrevolution.com
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/

Some Useful Links on China...

One thing I've noticed over the past few years is a dearth of decent reporting in the mainstream press on what is going on in China. As a result, I've tracked down a few useful sources by people "on the ground" (or with some relevant experience) that might come in handy next time you hear something about China on the news.

http://seeingredinchina.com
http://www.thechinabeat.org
http://www.pekingduck.org
http://granitestudio.org
http://chinageeks.org

Downloading Videos off of Youtube Using Linux...

Not so long ago grabbing a copy of a video off of Youtube (when running Linux) was easy. All you had to do was open the /tmp folder, and copy-paste the desired video (after it had finished buffering) wherever you wished. Nowadays Adobe setup its player to delete the temp. file immediately after its creation. However, the player still keeps track of the handle to the file. As a result, the file still exists, but doesn't show up via the traditional commands like ls, find, etc...

Luckily, the command lsof can be used to find the file's location.

Steps to find:

Command 1:

lsof | grep Flash

----------------------------

Having done this, you should get a screen-print that looks as follows;

COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODENAME


Command 2:

cat /proc/[PID]/fd/[FD] > /desired/location/filename.flv

Note: [FD] typically ends with a letter, which should be excluded from the previous command. Additionally, [PID] and [FD] are variables taken from the output of command one, and should be filled in manually, without the square brackets.

Congratulations, you now have a copy of the video. Enjoy...

lorem Ipsum...

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