Emacs and Latex...

Recently a friend asked me if I could send him some links on Emacs and Latex. After sending it to him, thought it might prove useful to others, so I'm reposting it here.


Preliminaries:

http://kieranhealy.org/emacs-starter-kit.html (Setting up Emacs and
latex in Windows, Mac, or Linux)
http://www.kieranhealy.org/files/misc/workflow-apps.pdf (overview of
what's in the kit, and why you might want to use it - targeted at graduate students in the social sciences, but still fairly general)


Emacs (Note: After setting up, use the built in tutorial first):

http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/index.html
(Reference manual - is built into the editor as well)
http://home.uchicago.edu/gan/file/emacs.pdf (cheat sheet)

Latex:

http://www.techscribe.co.uk/ta/latex-introduction.pdf ( One page overview)
http://ctan.tug.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/english/lshort.pdf (main reference)
http://www.andy-roberts.net/misc/latex/ (tutorials for various levels)
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX (Wikipedia's unfinished book on latex)

Bypass SOPA/PIPA Blackout on Wikipedia

SOPA and PIPA are both horrid bills whose passage leads to the Internet being broken. To try and prevent their passage, Wikipedia (and many other organisations/businesses) have blacked-out their websites (or placed anti-SOPA banners) so as to raise awareness. Given the importance of stopping these bills, you should stop reading this tutorial and fill out one of the various petitions or contact your congress-critter.

Done that? Good, now here's how to bypass Wikipedia's blackout:

On Firefox: Open your options/preference menu (should be under edit or tools, depending on your operating system) and disable javascript. Congratulations, you've now bypassed the blackout. (Alternatively, you could install the add-on NoScript)

On Safari or IE: Open your options/preference/settings menu (should be under edit or tools, depending on your operating system/browser) Congratulations, you've now bypassed the blackout.

Note that you cannot edit pages, however you can still view them.

Stanford's Online Game Theory Class...

If anyone else was interested in taking game theory next semester but couldn't due to a conflict with 36-402, you might be interested in registering for this online class that Stanford has going.

http://www.game-theory-class.org/

It's free (and isn't worth any credit), but if you're interested in the material, this may be useful.

H/T to ckt

Shameless Self Promotion...

A slide from a group presentation/project I'm a member of appeared on the professor's blog.
http://bactra.org/weblog/843.html

The presentation was on our group's attempt to use a markov chain model to construct pseudo-Conrad text using the Heart Of Darkness as training text (i.e. the corpus).

If anyone's interested in seeing the code, here's a link to the project:
https://github.com/jasontc2/MarkovLanguage

The project is part of 36-350 (Statisitcal Computing) at CMU.
http://www.stat.cmu.edu/~cshalizi/statcomp/

Air Quality in China

In case you were wondering what it would have been like to live during the 19th century, present day China has been holding a live demo.

More details:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/12/chinese-smog-disaster-rouses-chinese-media/249533/

Larger version of photo:
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/jamesfallows/assets_c/2011/12/ChinaDailySMog-71227.php

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