JR Podcast #01 - The Formula for Life

A slice-of-life podcast documenting the long-distance relationship between two college friends.The episode where Jason and Ryan discuss Jason’s one-year trip around the world, Ryan’s upcoming wedding plans, the evolution of friendships, quarter and mid-life crises, the Electronic Daisy Carnival, the art of making podcasts, and more.

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Introduction to Medical Misconduct

This is part of the “Medical Misconduct” series in collaboration with Frank Chen in which we explore the Professional Medical Conduct Board Actions data set on health.data.ny.gov. The Professional Medical Conduct Board Actions data consist of all public actions taken against physicians, physician assistants, specialist assistants, and medical professional corporations pursuant to Section 230 of the New York State Public Health Law and Section 6530 of the New York State Education Law.

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Turn Legislation into BeautifulSoup

So let’s say you want to dig up information on a city ordinance or track some other piece of legislation introduced by your City Council. How would you go about doing this? If your city happens to have some web developers handy, you might find your answer on a site like this:http://legistar.council.nyc.gov/

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Sublime Text 3: Pandoc: pdflatex not found

Running on Mac OSX Mavericks 10.9.3, I encountered a problem with the pandoc package in Sublime Text 3 in which I could not export markdown files into pdf format. Upon execution, Sublime Text 3 would return the following error:

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On Purpose

What is your purpose in life?

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On Existential Crises

I believe there is a fierce and eternal struggle within all of us that becomes more and more apparent whenever we have the chance to remove ourselves from the daily grind. I often find it easiest to describe this struggle to others using a simple analogy:

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On Negativity

If there is one group dynamic we need to break free from to improve the quality of our social life, it is our default inclination to bond with others over the negatives.

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On Friendships

My conception of friendship has changed quite a bit over the years. Friends have come and gone, memories fade, but the lessons learned are never forgotten. As a means of tracking my understanding of friendship, I will describe some of the valuable and unfavorable qualities of friendships as I currently see it, one year after graduating from college.

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On the Millennial Generation

Older generations dismissing the younger generation as self-involved is nothing new. Boomers did it to Generation X and now, as shown in the  Timecover article by Joel Stein, Generation X to the Millennial. Therefore, the more interesting question is this: why are Millennials perceived as the “Me Me Me” generation this time around? This is my response to the aforementioned article.

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On Public Transportation & People

I’ve been taking a real liking to public transportation lately. I realize it is one of those things that very few people enjoy - the smell, the crowdedness, and the unreliable schedules don’t really do much to help the cause. But looking past these things, I have come to believe that there is no better place to observe the human condition than packed car of commuters from all walks of life. If you ever see me staring at you on public transportation, I promise I am not trying to be creepy. I’m really just lost in thought!

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