In celebration of his show’s first anniversary, Stephen Colbert is auctioning off his highly valuable, extremely realistic portrait that currently hangs above the fireplace on the set of Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report.”

It’s too bad there are some jokers out there that have false bids jacking the price to $100 million. Although, I WOULD like to believe these are real bids. It certainly would be nice for Save the Children.

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I just read a CNN article about the U.S. population hitting 300 million tomorrow and I don’t agree with this statement at all:
“America…will continue to be the world’s premiere economy for at least another 40 years.”

Ask anyone outside of the U.S. and they will completely disagree as well. America needs to wake up and change its economic policies concerning trade deficits, budget deficits, oil consumption, and urban sprawl if it wants to stay competitive. Globalization is a dirty word in the U.S. but it is a fact of life.

The price of gasoline in the US is artificially low compared to the rest of the world as a result of taxes. Read this and quit bitching, America:

Thanks for listening to my political rant and have a nice day. Why not try something different and walk or ride your bike or the bus to work or school today?

Follow up to Nancy Cartwright’s visit to NUI Galway. I found this “awesome detailed map of Sprinfield” on Flickr via Digg. This shows the level of dedication some fans have to the greatest television show in history…

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I’m in the process of working on three research papers this semester, one of which is a collaboration with two fellow economics students on the trade growth of the U.S. and China and it’s implications (topic changed) to what extent the World Trade Organization (WTO) stimulates economic growth in developing nations. Another deals with the economic performance of Irish Counties using census data. Finally, my third paper will focus on the role of the banking sector during the financial crises of Argentina and East Asia.

I have found several great online resources for writing in a connected world. It’s a great time to be a college student…I wish it were this easy 10 years ago.

• Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) is an excellent resource for formatting and style guidelines; also includes discipline-specific guidelines.
• Writely, (recently acquired by our good friends at Google) is an excellent online document collaboration tool; work on a group assignment with ease!
• Renowned Harvard economics professor, Greg Mankiw, has a nice post on his blog aimed at economists writing for a general audience - useful for students of other
• disciplines as well.

Feel free to comment with your suggestions for helpful writing resources.

Well, back to my papers…

Back in the days of TechTV, The Screen Savers used to have Photoshop genius Bert Monroy give a quick demo of the cool tricks you can do in that program. Now, with the help of Revision3’s video podcast distribution model, you can witness this digital artist whip up some magic on his show, “PixelPerfect with Bert Monroy.” Sure the guy has a fancy Wacom tablet and a digital paintbrush to move things along more fluidly, but even as a Photoshop novice, I picked up some great tips from his show.

As you may have read previously, I am a postgraduate in Economics at NUI Galway. Unlike many international students, my wife and I are not ’sponsored’ by a school in the USA. Therefore, we do not have the support, financial or administrative, that most other students here are availing. After six weeks of school, I finally have time to take a minute and reflect on the process of applying for and attending a postgraduate study program abroad.

It all started back in early spring of this year when my wife and I made the decision to apply to NUI Galway. She applied for the Masters in Medieval Studies for 2 years and I applied for a Masters in Economic Science in Policy Evaluation and Planning (say that 5 times fast) in the Cairnes Graduate School. We sent all the necessary materials and awaited their decisions. Meanwhile, we completed the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) as we have always done in the past to obtain Stafford Loan funding for tuition and expenses. The FAFSA is easy enough as government applications go, just make sure you have all income tax information for both you and, if necessary, your parents. The application was a success and we received notice that our Student Aid Report (SAR) was ready and would be forwarded along to NUI Galway electronically. The idea here is once the school receives the SAR, they determine financial eligibility and expected family contribution, then certify the amount of loan monies that are available. This information is sent back to a student loan company such as Sallie Mae for approval. The loan is disbursed and everyone is happy. Easy, no?
So far, so good…or we thought. (more on this later)

The application process for NUI Galway on the surface was deceptively simple on the surface. They have a new process whereby all applications for postgraduate programs must be completed online. Simple enough. You submit your info, send in your letters of recommendation via overnight mail (make sure to get tracking information) and presto, your application is rolling along. The university advises a decision will be made 6 weeks after the closing date (deadline) of your program. Presumably, they wait until all applications are received, then proceed to the decision-making stage.

6 weeks came and went; no decision.

Around the end of this May, my wife received a verbal acceptance from her program director via email about 6 weeks after her program’s closing date and she was ecstatic. We were actually going to go through with our crazy decision to uproot our family (did I mention we have a 3 year old son?) rent or sell our home, and move to Ireland for 2 years. I was still awaiting a decision for my program, however we knew that this was the opportunity of a lifetime and weren’t going to pass it up. We started making all the preparations for our big move by selling our car, finding a tenant or prospective buyer for our home.

Well, that’s all I can bear to write about the subject for now. Stay tuned for the rest of the story…