Events

Via Wired, the U.S.S.R. built a fail-safe device à la Dr. Strangelove—not to deter us, but to deter themselves: The point of the system...was to guarantee an automatic Soviet response to an American nuclear strike. Even if the US crippled the USSR with a surprise attack, the Soviets could still hit back. It wouldn't matter if the US blew up the Kremlin, took out the defense ministry, severed the communications network, and killed everyone with stars on their shoulders. Ground-based sensors would detect...

With 15 days and 9 hours to go until the CCMBA Dubai residency, the box of pre-reading materials just thumped onto my desk. The first term box weighed four tons and had to come up my apartment stairs by forklift and winch. This one only weighs 4 kg: It doesn't look so bad open, either. Nor does it look like I'll have too much to carry this time: Seriously, after the first-term box, I've dreaded receiving this one. So what do we have? Three textbooks (two paperback), two very thin course packets, three...

Via Andrew Sullivan, the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta graphs underemployment:

Finished in London, on the tube, on the Kindle

So what news story should I focus on today? The Cubs using the bankruptcy code to speed up their sale to the Ricketts family? General Motors ramping up production by 45% to see if we'll bail them out a second time? Former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling's appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court? No, I want to point people toward the Night of the Stripping Dead event at the Admiral Theater tomorrow night: Exotic dancers and zombies, the two grand pillars of American subculture, have finally joined forces -- thus...

Because sometimes they go off all by themselves: An arbitrator has ruled the US Airways pilot whose government-issue gun accidentally went off in flight can have his job back. Jim Langenhahn was fired after the 2008 incident and his union is welcoming the arbitration decision. ... Langenhahn's pistol shot a hole through the aircraft's fuselage, but the Department of Homeland Security helped his case when it faulted the design of the captain's holster. However, the Transportation Security Adminstration...

A quorum: After 8.3 hours of work, I finished my accounting final. I've no idea how well I did, but I'm already planning to ask the professor for a meeting when I'm next in Durham. We had our first freeze today, about three weeks earlier than usual. We missed the record low (-3°C, set in 1996), but after two weeks of below-normal temperatures, it was a fitting reminder of this year's El Niño. We also had the Chicago Marathon today, with a start temperature of 1°C. The cold start helped; Sammy Wanjiru...

This may actually be funny. My CCMBA class includes students from 30 countries, in every part of the world. Consequently, Duke has created a Flash-based Web portal, through which we take exams, submit assignments, attend classes, and keep in touch. The thing has worked more or less as advertised since we arrived in London two months ago. By tomorrow at 23:59 EDT, we must hand in our Accounting and Management exams. We have 24 hours from download to complete the former, and 90 minutes to complete the...

After Parker and I get back from the walk we're about to take, I'll have two final exams and, immediately after, some Scotch. Since one of the exams might take me 24 hours to complete, you can imagine the quantity of Scotch waiting at the end of it. In the meantime, via Andrew Sullivan, I leave you with this Spanish car advertisement that I can't quite wrap my head around:

I've had only one difficulty with the Duke CCMBA (aside from the material—talk to me Sunday night after I hand in my accounting final, for example): travel optimization. Our next residency starts October 30th in Dubai. Getting from Chicago to Dubai has inherent difficulties, particular with the (self-imposed) constraint of flying only oneworld carriers. I initially tried to go through Amman, and take a couple of days after the residency to visit Jordan and Israel. That fell through when Royal Jordanian...