Events

Via Gulliver, a new study of taxes levied on visitors to U.S. cities finds Chicago in the lead: The study provides several different views of travel taxes to help readers make informed choices. The top 50 markets are ranked by overall travel tax burden, including general sales tax and discriminatory travel taxes, and by discriminatory travel tax burden, excluding general sales taxes to count only taxes that target car rentals, hotel stays and meals. Separate data are offered for central city and airport...

NPR's Morning Edition has a story today on a "tea party" rally in Nevada. Listening to the people interviewed, the only thing preventing me from recommending that no one be allowed to protest against the government without having taken a basic civics class is that I have taken a basic civics class. Now, I know many people with center-right leanings who can make coherent arguments in favor of or against various policies. I enjoy those debates immensely. The people who spoke to NPR, though? Each had some...

From reader DK:

Here are the Google Earth tracks of three walks and a riverboat ride I've done in the last two days. That is all.

It's amazing what you can do for £20. You can ride a train that goes 200 km/h non-stop from London's King's Cross to Cambridge in 45 minutes, non-stop. Think: Chicago to Milwaukee in 45 minutes. Vroom. Cambridge was certainly worth the trip. I didn't do the main touristy thing (punting down the Cam) but I did watch others do it: Of course there's King's College, founded 50 years before Columbus reached America and 490 years before my alma mater: Speaking of really impressively old, the place where I had...

I did three touristy things today: first, a stop at Westminster Palace for the official tour, during which I got to stand right in the Government benches in the House of Commons, less than a meter from where the P.M. sits when they're in session. No photographs allowed, I'm afraid; but now the whole setup makes a lot more sense to me. I'm all set for the resumption of Question Time, the comedy half-hour broadcast every Wednesday from the chamber. Second, a direct boat trip down the Thames to Greenwich...

Three hours from the financial accounting mid-term, with images of balance sheets dancing in our heads, we're just about done with the first CCMBA residency. The last 12 days seem like 12 months. Many of us haven't left the hotel since Tuesday, except for dinner or a run near St. Katharine's Docks. Six hours from now, we'll be done with the residency, and thinking about next week. Right now—back to the books.

I learned a valuable lesson yesterday: when you lock your computer to your hotel room desk, and you put the cable-lock key in your pocket, you have to remove the key from your pocket before sending the slacks down to the laundry. This realization crept up on me over a very quiet 90-second period that started when I looked in my room safe for the key and didn't find it there. I won't keep you in suspense: housekeeping found and returned the key this morning. This is good, because I had no idea how I was...

Really cool slide show of alternative mass-transit maps via the Economist's Gulliver blog. One, for example shows North American systems to scale. I know I should be studying financial accounting, but this stuff is distracting.

The U.S. Postal Service finally plans to sell the Old Post Office building in Chicago, which they abandoned more than 10 years ago: One of the biggest real estate auctions in the city’s history is slated for Thursday, when the U.S. Postal Service is to sell the Old Main Post Office. And even though the postal service is planning an "absolute auction" — meaning the building is to be sold regardless of price, with a suggested opening bid of just $300,000 — the question remains who will step up for the...