Events

Australian comedy duo John Clarke and Brian Dawe comment on the 1991 Kikri oil spill:

As I'm less than three months from starting an MBA program designed to foster international relationships, I don't know what to make of this: [F]oreign (or, more euphemistically, "international") students are thinking twice about handing over their hard-earned and recession-hit cash for an education at a prestigious Western hall of academe. ... Big private business schools in America, already hit by the much lower valuations of their endowment funds, seem likely to take the biggest hit. The...

There are apparently proposals out there to make beer drinkers sad: In Congress, the Senate Finance Committee has raised the possibility of a 150% increase in the federal tax on beer to help pay for health care reform. And about three dozen states, including Illinois, have called for alcohol tax hikes to offset budget shortfalls. The federal government hasn't raised the beer tax in nearly 20 years, but legislators are considering increasing it to the same level as spirits. An equalization of alcohol...

Here's the KML from yesterday's flight. And here's more art: Contrast with a photo from earlier this year: See? The second photo is from about 100 m south of the first one. Otherwise they both show the Cubs avoiding a major loss.

I took a combination sightseeing/cross-country flight today down to Valparaiso, Ind., 56 nautical miles away. I also stopped at Lansing, Ill., for good measure. (Actually, I stopped so I could get three full-stop landings in, which I try to do every time I fly for (a) practice and (b) convenience. You have to have three full-stop landings every 90 days to keep current at my flight school, and to carry passengers according to the regulations. It's very likely I'll fly again in less than 90 days, but I...

After suffering multiple beatings at the hands of Cubs players, the Gatorade machine in the Cubs' dugout will finally be rescued: The machine, which replaced the decades-old water cooler that dispensed Lake Michigan water to thirsty Cubs players from Joe Pepitone to Mark DeRosa, lasted only two months. It was brought in this season as a way to enhance advertising revenues through a sponsorship with Pepsi, which owns Gatorade. The Pepsi service technician who came out to fix the dispenser twice last week...

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced an investigation of the parking-meter lease: Illinois attorney general Lisa Madigan has opened an investigation into the "transaction and implementation" of Chicago's parking meter privatization deal, according to a Madigan spokesperson. On May 19 the attorney general's office sent subpoenas to Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners, LAZ Parking, and Chicago Parking Meters LLC--the three entities that now control the meters--said Robyn Ziegler, who...

Via my college friend D.M., the New York Mets and Yankees have discovered the Intro to Microeconomics lesson of the effect of higher prices on quantity demanded, a.k.a. "overcharging:" OK, so neither the new Yankee Stadium nor its counterpart in Flushing can handle the capacity of their predecessors. Fine. But where are the 53,070 people who came nightly to the old Yankee Stadium in 2008, and where are the 49,902 who showed up every night in the final season of Shea Stadium? So far, the Yankees are...

Via Andrew Sullivan, "Total Eclipse of the Heart"—the literal version:

Two kinds. First, I have complained previously that the City has not always been terrifically helpful notifying people about street sweeping. Since I can sometimes go a couple of weeks without driving, I've gotten a number of $60 tickets (some with art, because the street sweeping machines have cameras now), even after checking the purported schedule online. Today, I am happy to report, my alderman's office sent an automated notice about street sweeping a week in advance. Color me impressed. I suppose...