Events

No, really. I am not making this up. They won their fourth in a row today, and St. Louis dropped their last two, so the Cubs are a half-game up. Too bad the National Weather Service doesn't report from hell. That would be interesting today... Update: It turns out, they do, but it doesn't seem to be snowing there. Hmmm.

Wasn't yesterday Sarah Palin's last day as a public nuisance official? Did anyone outside Alaska even notice?

Via The Daily Dish: Ok, I really must do some work now.

Pilots will tell you they'd rather be down here wishing they were up there than up there wishing they were down here. (See also, "All takeoffs are optional; all landings are mandatory.") Most of the time it's an easy choice for private pilots whether to go for a flight, especially in Chicago where the weather, not to put too fine a point on it, often sucks. Today, I had scheduled a flight, but I decided to stay on the ground after thinking really hard about it. Right now Chicago Executive reports...

Parker and I had a great two-hour walk this afternoon, punctuated by essays on Botswana and economic institutions (Duke reading). We stopped to admire the view at North Avenue, though I think Parker was more interested in the speedboat than the skyline: Here's the rest of the view:

Apparently the Duchy of Lancaster, which is essentially the property of the British Royal Family, has suffered a bit of a decline: The Duchy of Lancaster - a portfolio of land, property and assets held in trust for the Sovereign - saw a drop of £75m to £322m in the 2008-9 financial year. But the income the Monarchy received from the Duchy, used to fund her public and private activities, increased by 5.4% from £12.6m to £13.3m. During the last financial year, the total cost to the taxpayer of keeping the...

Lots to do for the next, oh, 17 months, so I thought I'd get started. My first Duke box arrived today, containing 6 kg of books, course packets, handouts, and more books, all of which have to be read by August 15th. Fortunately I have a few extra hours each day to do all this (I use them to sleep right now, so they're kind of wasted). Just a couple news stories of note today: President Obama gave an hour-long press conference yesterday in which he spent 50 minutes discussing the single most important...