Not the Ides of April

Today I heard a story by Soundprint on WAMU called "After the Shot" about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, which took place 143 years ago today. At almost a half hour, it's a really interesting report. One thing it informed me of is that while we all know that the Ides of March is March 15, the Ides of April is April 13. Booth planned on assassinating Lincoln on that day for symbolic reasons, but Lincoln had a bad headache and did not go out as planned. And we all know the rest, until you hear this story.

This brings me to what each year feels like my own demise: income taxes. I still do them with the help of Turbotax, and each year it becomes more complicated and more of an emotional drain. A few weeks ago, V asked me if I had done them, and I just sort of snapped at him. He asked me once, "You don't have an accountant?" and I said no, the economist in me refuses to give in. Even though I'm due a huge refund (because of the move) I still haven't done them. Soon soon.

Here and There (Bilocation)

In this virtual environment, it's easy to go to the old home. Back in DC, I listened to NPR at WAMU on the radio; it's real easy to listen to All Things Considered or Marketplace here on my Real player. What is a little weird is listening to the evening news at 8 in the morning.

Of course, I read washingtonpost.com to catch up on DC and US news. It's not like reading the paper - especially the comics - but it works.

Here my print news sources are the Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Financial Review; for television, it's SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) and ABC news (that's Australian Broadcasting Corporation). Both are state-funded. SBS is very interesting, as its mission as a network is "to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians and, in doing so, reflect Australia's multicultural society". They also report in English.

For the papers, I buy them maybe two or three times a week. Newspapers here are more expensive in the United States. The Sydney Morning Herald is $1.30 (about US$1.21) and the Financial Review is $2.70 (about US$2.51); I haven't yet checked to see if they provide discounts for daily delivery.

The Australian perspective is rather refreshing, and more comprehensive in its international coverage. The financial news follows the U.S. business environment since the United States makes up such a large share of world business news (plus it's making a lot of news right now, with the deepening recession and subprime mess).

What is so amazing aboout our internet age is that I can have my feet in both the U.S. world and the Australian world at the same time.