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In a podcast this week, the woman who accused Duke University lacrosse players of gang-raping her in 2006 has admitted the she made it all up: “I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn’t, and that was wrong,” she told interviewer Katerena DePasquale on Nov. 13. “And I betrayed the trust of a lot of other people who believed in me and made up a story that wasn’t true because I wanted validation from people and not from God.” “And that was wrong.” The case dominated...

Chicago experienced its warmest October 1st through 4th ever, clocking in at 24.4°C, before a cold front pushed through this morning. Many of my friends, plus another 25,000 runners, look forward to Sunday's Chicago Marathon and its predicted 7°C start temperature going up to a high of 14°C. So, with real autumn temperatures finally upon us, let us chill out: David Frum puts the House Speaker nonsense in the context of a political party unable to deal with reality. Greg Sargent agrees, saying the...

I'm heading to North Carolina this afternoon, so I probably won't post much this weekend. The forecast for Durham looks even better than for Chicago. I had hoped to (finally!) take in a Bulls game tomorrow, but it appears they will be in Gwinnett, Ga., which is a bit of a drive.

The deployment I concluded yesterday that involved recreating production assets in an entirely new Azure subscription turned out much more boring (read: successful) than anticipated. That still didn't stop me from working until 6pm, but by that point everything except some older demo data worked just fine. That left a bit of a backup of stuff to read, which I may try to get through at lunch today: Duke University basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski (aka "Coach K"), the winningest basketball coach in NCAA...

It's hard to believe that I started my MBA program in London 10 years ago. Wow.

CityLab reports that my alma mater has doomed the Durham-Orange Light Rail Transit project in North Carolina: DOLRT has consumed more than $130 million in public money. In 2011 and 2012, voters in Durham and Orange counties approved half-cent sales taxes to fund transportation improvements, including the light rail, to better connect major employers like UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University, N.C. Central University, a VA hospital, and businesses in bustling downtown Durham. Construction of the estimated...

Yesterday around 7am, I made it from where I parked in the main O'Hare parking garage to the concourse past security in 7 minutes. Today, at Raleigh-Durham, I made it from my Lyft to the concourse past security in 4 minutes. If you have the option of traveling to or from a smaller airport on Saturday afternoon, do it. Also, it's gorgeous out, so I not only got a chance to walk around Durham for an hour after brunch, but I also got to play with this cutie in her yard: That's Hazel, my host's 6-month-old...

I'm in Durham for the first time since May 2011, catching up with some people on the Duke campus and off it. Regular posting should resume tomorrow from RDU.

Whiskyfest was Friday evening, so I spent yesterday doing quiet things around the house, including starting some projects for an upcoming staycation. Today will be a little more running around, including possibly a vet visit since Parker has been staying off his right hind leg completely since yesterday evening. He had trouble getting up the stairs after his evening walk, but he doesn't seem to be in any active pain and the leg has full range of motion. I gave him an NSAID; we'll see if that helps. In...

My #2 alma mater Loyola University Chicago's men's basketball team has done something for the first time in my life: This marks the first time since 1963’s NCAA championship team that Loyola has remained alive this deep into the season. Wearing their championship rings, Jerry Harkness and several of his teammates sat in the front row at Philips Arena to cheer for the 2018 team. The program hadn’t been to the NCAA tournament since 1985’s Sweet 16 squad. Now, the Ramblers will face Kansas State, a 61-58...

Crain's reported yesterday on the latest business-school rankings from US News and World Report. University of Chicago tied with Harvard at the top spot and Northwestern landed at #6: The magazine labels its ranking a year in advance, so this is the 2019 list. While it started the rankings in 1990, it has historical data reaching back only to 1994, but it was confident this was the first No. 1 showing for Booth. “The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business tied for No. 1 this year due to its...

Two of my almae matres yesterday advanced in the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament. One of them, Duke, didn't exactly struggle, so I'll just acknowledge them for now. Another of them, Loyola University Chicago, didn't even expect to get to the tournament, so their win yesterday felt really great: Donte Ingram’s 3-pointer just before the final buzzer delivered the 11th-seeded Ramblers’ first NCAA tournament victory in 33 years — a 64-62 upset of No. 6 seed Miami. As the players partied Thursday afternoon...

In the reading queue: DUKE WON. Air Canada and Porter Air are squabbling over Toronto's Billy Bishop Airport. Hard to tell who's winning. A sad tale of how it really is possible to run out of integers in a badly-designed program. What is this new quick-fired pizza thing? My most culinary friend said it's pretty good. Guess I'll have to try it. James Fallows and The Atlantic have published online a story he wrote in 1982 about the dawning age of personal computing. Did I mention that DUKE WON?!

Duke Basketball coach Mike "Coach K" Krzyzweski won his 1,000th Division 1 game yesterday: Mike Krzyzewski earned his 1,000th career win Sunday, making him the first NCAA Division I men's coach to reach the milestone, when No. 5 Duke surged past St. John's in the second half for a 77-68 victory at Madison Square Garden. When the final horn sounded, Blue Devils players engulfed Krzyzewski and he received a bear hug from assistant Jeff Capel. Photographers swarmed the coach on the court, and players were...

The heirs of actor John Wayne, who manage his likeness and other trademarks associated with him, have sued Duke University to resolve a long-running dispute over the name: Duke University has been fighting with the late actor's heirs over "Duke" trademarks (restaurant services, gaming machines, celebrity licensing services, etc.) for nearly a decade, and last year, the school stepped forward after John Wayne's family attempted to register "Duke" for all alcoholic beverages except beer. The school told...

The New York Times on Tuesday lamented the state's decline: In January, after the election of Pat McCrory as governor, Republicans took control of both the executive and legislative branches for the first time since Reconstruction. Since then, state government has become a demolition derby, tearing down years of progress in public education, tax policy, racial equality in the courtroom and access to the ballot. The cruelest decision by lawmakers went into effect last week: ending federal unemployment...

In the last couple of days: The Atlantic Cities blog pointed to a mapping tool that uses census data to show county-level data about the U.S. For instance: where are all the Welsh people? Cranky Flier is happy, as am I, that American Airlines' new management team will look a lot like US Airways' team. Chicago will most likely break its tourism record this year, as we're on track to have more than 46 million visitors this year. Because student loan debt is skyrocketing, hard to refinance, and impossible...

In 2011, I: took 8,198 photos, including 4,352 in Chicago, 881 in Japan, 588 in Portugal, and 337 in the U.K. (and only 71 of Parker). This is almost as many as I took in 2009 and 2010 combined (9,140), and more than I took in the first 8 years I owned a camera (1983-1991, 7,671). flew 115,845 km but drove less than 4,500 km visited 5 countries (the UK, Spain, Portugal, Canada, Japan) and 8 states (California, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Indiana, North Carolina, Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin)...

Derp. One year ago yesterday I finished my MBA. It doesn't seem like a full year...except when it doesn't seem like only one year.

I'm David Braverman, this is my blog, and Parker is my 5-year-old mutt. I last updated this About... page in February, but some things have changed. In the interest of enlightened laziness I'm starting with the most powerful keystroke combination in the universe: Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V. Twice. Thus, the "point one" in the title. The Daily Parker is about: Parker, my dog, whom I adopted on 1 September 2006. Politics. I'm a moderate-lefty by international standards, which makes me a radical left-winger in today's...

Officially and virtually, I've had this since December 30th. I do like having the hard copy though:

Girlyman played Evanston SPACE last night: Coyote Grace is touring with Girlyman this year; I'll be looking for them again. Also, surprise musical guest The Shadowboxers, who graduated from college Wednesday, led the show with a 4-song set. Again, another band I need to follow. I'll have more photos next week. Tomorrow I'm off to Duke for our graduation ceremony. The school awarded our degrees in January (retroactive to December 30th), but I still want to walk—and see my classmates. Only, with work, a...

Sanjay Saigal, writing on James Fallow's blog today, discusses the dearth of qualified managers in India, and the failure of MBA programs to keep up with demand: Consider, for instance, the following data from a report published last year by an Indian employment company, MeritTrac: Recognized MBA programs produce around 70,000 graduates each year. Approximately 20,000 of them may be considered "employable". The annual demand for MBAs is estimated to be 128,000. To echo Woody Allen in Annie Hall, the...

According to the Duke University registrar, I am a Master of Business Administration: Who knew a screenshot of the registrar's computer system could feel so good?

I've just gotten a reply from the Duke University registrar's office in response to my question: During the CCMBA, our advisers told us that our degrees would be conferred on 30 December 2010. ACES[1], however, still lists us as "active in program." How will we get official notification that we’ve earned our MBAs? The registrar's reply: Thank you for your email. We do not add the degree to your record until the University Trustees meet to officially confer the degrees. They generally meet in mid-January...

About five hours ago I finished everything required to earn my MBA. I still have one (option) follow-up lecture for one class, so I can't mark the whole thing "resolved and closed" in FogBugz yet. Thus the precise language: I'm done with all the requirements. No more Saturday-morning CENTRA sessions. No more papers and exams lurking under the bed. No more residency calendar on my fridge (first attached there 18 months ago). I feel like Robert Redford's character at the end of The Candidate: "What do we...

After 16 months, 16 classes, six countries (including North Carolina, which still seems a bit foreign), and 1435 hours of work, I'm down to my last assignment. It's a group paper, for which I've already done the bulk of my part, though the team has nominated me to assemble the final draft. It's due at 11 am Monday; expect to see something around then. This will all make sense to me in a few weeks. Right now a part of my poor brain insists I have something to do that I'm not doing right now...while the...

I can't quite grasp that I'll finish my MBA sometime before next Tuesday. My Duke to-do list (I actually use FogBugz for school and for work) has had, over the past two years, 573 items on it. Today I've got just 7 active items, including "Confirm CCMBA degree is conferred" which is due on the 30th. One paper left. One PowerPoint dreck. Er, deck. One case to read. Two classes. I have no idea what I'm going to do without all that stress and bother, or with all the time I'll suddenly have. Oh, right: I'll...

With fewer than 21 days until the end of school forever (or at least until I get the loans paid off), I've spent all my non-work time thinking about entrepreneurship management, emerging market strategy, technology strategy, and environmental economics. Between them I have three papers and one pricing project to complete. The first paper is almost done, pending comments from one of my sources. I'd go celebrate but I have the other three assignments, you see. Someday, I'll look back upon this time, laugh...

Not my MBA, which finishes in 73 days. At least we're done with classes; all that remains are my distance classes and three projects. No, more interesting than that is how World War I finally ends on Sunday: The final payment of £59.5 million writes off the crippling debt that was the price for one world war and laid the foundations for another. Germany was forced to pay the reparations at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 as compensation to the war-ravaged nations of Belgium and France and to pay the...

Yeah, it's just not as exciting as previous residencies, but it's seriously more work. Fortunately, I still have time to read gems like this: Terry Jones and the Dove World Outreach Center may be charged $200,000 by the city of Gainesville, Florida, for security costs incurred by the canceled Koran-burning originally planned for September 11. Jones' announcement of "International Burn-A-Koran" day resulted in some violent protests in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and threats against Americans. In response...

Dilbert creator Scott Adams raises an interesting point in his blog today: I'm fascinated by the degree to which brains have evolved to become more powerful than guns. Society's founding geniuses engineered a social system that encourages the young people who have guns to shoot at each other instead of robbing old people. Forgive me for calling that awesome. In other news, my total working hours for August was 275.5, so I'm actually looking forward to the Term 6 residency for a respite. We've only got...

For the first time I can recall—going back more than two years, at least, and probably longer—I don't have a flight booked to anywhere. I started realizing this as I got closer to flying to Boston last weekend. Combine that with the brand-spanking-new passport I just got, and I feel oddly confined. So, possessed of a ton of frequent-flyer miles but with no possibility of making the next level of elite status this year, and also facing a dramatic shift in my work-life balance in just over 110 days, I...

I can scarcely believe I've spent (only!) a year in the CCMBA already. We started last August 14th in London, and we're already almost done with our fifth term. I'd write more, but I've already spent most of today working. About that workload: for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that I'm a nerd, and not most of which is that I've been a consultant for most of my professional life, I've tracked the time spent on this program. So far, including getting to and from the residencies, time in...

The first day or so back is always hectic and exhausting. I still marvel that the 11½-hour time change from India was easier than the 9-hour change from St. Petersburg (or, come to think of it, the 8-hour change from Dubai.) I'm still getting back into my life, so I'll end here, but for this non-sequitur: I have t oget these cookies.

The monument to the heroes of the seige of Leningrad: Like this guy, a hero from a different era, Alexander Pushkin: Finally, a propos of none of the above, one more photo of the hotel. This is just before dawn at 4 am:

Ah, the quandry. Quandries, in fact: there are two. The biggest is that it's 4:30am in St. Petersburg but only 7:30pm in Chicago. I need to be back on Chicago time by Tuesday morning. Thus, I'm staying up very late in order to remain conscious at work in three days. I hope it works. The other is that I took some photos of my classmates at the end-of-term party tonight, but I haven't secured permission for general publication yet. On Facebook, only Dukies and my family can see the Duke photos (if I've...

The Culture Dash took me back to Kazan Cathedral today, only this time, I went inside:

Back in February, some of us got the opportunity to tour Indira Gandhi Airport Terminal 3, then under construction. It opened this week: The new terminal—Terminal 3—was "inaugurated" on July 3rd (Saturday) with India's great and good in attendance, and flights will start from July 14th. Mumbai’s airport is also getting a new terminal, but I don’t think it’s nearly as far along as Delhi’s, which needed completing before the Commonwealth Games this October. There is much excitement in the Indian media...

Only a couple blocks from the hotel:

Unavoidable, I suppose. And looking increasingly like an real option after nearly a week of British-inspired Russian cooking:

The good: Spain beating Germany last night. The bad: The sound of "¡Olé olé olé olé!" ricocheting around my aching head this morning. The ugly: Receving a (hopefully-mail-merged) message from the program reminding me of the importance of attending class after I missed for the second time in my MBA program.

I've got KML files of the boat tour and walk from which I took some of the photos posted already in the blog. Of course, as GPS receivers are illegal in Russia, I spent a lot of time meticulously figuring out the coordinate pairs in these files, including the zig-zag lines that perfectly simulate the distorted readings someone would get walking in a heavily-urbanized area.

I took a walk yesterday around 9pm, down Nevsky Prospekt to the Hermitage (about 8 km round-trip). Like today, yesterday it was about 30°C outside. And like today, the sun never quite set. This is from half past midnight: Earlier in the walk, before the Netherlands-Uruguay game, the Fontanka River: The Hermitage Museum (Winter Palace), south face: And (last one today) the west face, as seen on many postcards: Today's fun included six hours of classes so far, then a reception followed by another football...

I didn't come to Russia for the food. This is fortunate. The lunch buffet yesterday had pork filets, penne with cream sauce, white rice, salmon roulades, roasted carrots with butter. Then the dinner buffet had pork roulades, spaghetti with cream sauce, black and white rice, salmon filets, roasted carrots with butter. Same Sunday, same Saturday, though there was a minor stir when we found out the Halal meal was lamb chops, which the Muslim students eagerly devoured leaving none for the rest of us. A...

They started us off beautifully this term, with one class yesterday followed by four hours of free time and a tour of the city. Then they gave us the morning off today. I wish all the residencies had started so easily. This gave me a chance to get some photos processed, starting with the train ride from Helsinki. This is near Vyborg: Findlandski Station in St Petersburg, with very-Russian looking trains: And from the boat tour: More coming, of course. Even with a morning off from classes it turns out...

I love that for €54 and an hour and a half (round-trip, both numbers), you can take a boat from Finaland across the Baltic Sea and be in Estonia. The abandoned immigration and customs counters look a little forlorn to me, but have got to look completely eerie to anyone who made the trip before 2008, when Estonia entered the Schengen area. The ferry terminal on the Estonian side is a ghastly pile of Soviet concrete too horrible for me even to photograph. To give you an example, this is directly across...

Helsinki Cathedral: And the Esplanden:

I just got in to Helsinki. I wrote the following on the flight: 29 June 2010, 18:33 EDT, 10,500 m over the Maine-New Hampshire border Finnair’s A330 business class is the most comfortable experience I’ve ever had on an airplane[1]. First off, the plane is brand-new. It’s quiet, clean, and (not surprisingly) very European-looking. But this isn’t your grandfather’s Airbus. Dig it: Finnair has introduced new seats in business class. The left side alternate 2-1-2, the middle are all paired, and the right...

This morning I finally opened up the pre-reading packets for Term 5, and discovered that going to Boston on August 21st may have been the better choice academically. Final exams are due August 30th, not September 6th as I'd originally thought, so taking 36 hours out of the weekend of August 28th would have been colossally stupid. The flipside of that, however, is I actually get a long weekend for Labor Day. So it works out.

Three things encourage me to resume the 30-Park Geas this season. First, I haven't seen a baseball game in almost a year; second, three weeks from now I'll be done with all the CCMBA travel; and third, American Airlines is running a triple-miles promotion this summer from Chicago to New York and Boston. So: my options are Boston on August 21st or New York on August 28th. Boston would cost $40 more for the airfare; New York would cost about that much more for a hotel room. (And no, I wouldn't stay in...

From Matthew Yglesias, information about coffee consumption worldwide, which apparently peaks in Finland: The Swedes are actually a bit less coffee-mad than the Finns, Norwegians, Danes, or Icelanders but as you can see here all the Nordic peoples drink a ton of coffee, in the Swedish case a bit less than twice as much per capita as Americans do. The Södermalm area of Stockholm where Mikael Blonkvist and Lisbeth Salander live and Millenium and Milton Security are headquartered is just littered with...

I mentioned a few days ago that I'm swamped. I didn't realize at the time how swamped, sadly. It turns out I'm more swamped than Florida. I'm so swamped, the Rs.O.U.S.[1] are drowning. So, though it's redundant, I'll reiterate I'm not dead. I am, however, slowing to the worst ratio of blog entries per month since October 2007. Part of this comes from how much work and school are challenging me right now. This is good, actually. I have only a finite amount of creativity, but I'm using it all. And...

I've got about three hours left on the 8-hour clock for my finance midterm, which is good because I think it will take me only about four hours to finish the last bits. I'm pleased we're learning all the skills required to perform detailed financial analysis at someone else's direction, rather than the skills to direct someone else to do it and to figure out what it means, because it provides a nice break from all that stuff in all our other courses. After today, we have hardly any work left this term...

So, with a project running somewhere around 105%, an old and patient client that predates my current employment waiting for some updates, Global Financial Management requiring that I figure out the combined beta of two companies about to merge, Foundations of Strategy expecting a transaction cost analysis Saturday morning, and an overwhelming anticipation of seeing Diane and Parker tomorrow after almost two weeks, I find myself completely out of creativity. Heaven bless my winter office (probably, now...

Before going to Shanghai, I picked up James Fallows's Postcards from Tomorrow Square, a collection of his essays from living there 2006-2009. (Yes, he lived in the building that houses the hotel where our CCMBA cohort stayed.) First, I'd like to call attention to page 76: The easier America makes it for talented foreigners to work and study there, the richer, more powerful, and more respected America will be. America's ability to absorb the world's talent is the crucial advantage no other culture can...

Via one of my classmates, an graphic depiction of the differences between Germany and China by graphic designer Yang Liu. For example, the evolution of transport over the last 40 years:

For some reason, the Cultural Disconnect I just wrote for the Shanghai residency was the hardest. I don't know if that's good or bad. Full text follows: Cultural connect? I reviewed my ICE profile and the regional Cultural Dimensions the week before arriving in China. What interactions should I worry about? Where would the disconnections come from? China has high in-group collectivism, high power distance, and relatively low uncertainty avoidance, contra the U.S. My ICE profile spells out a hybrid...

I haven't had a lot of time to go through all the Shanghai photos. These two caught my eye, though. First, the Urban Planning Museum in People's Square: And, just because I thought it looked cool, Terminal 2 at Pudong International Airport:

The video doesn't do the experience justice. I have to say, moving on land at 430 km/h on a public conveyance was a lot of fun. That's better than twice the cruising speed of the Cessna airplanes I fly (195 km/h). More photos later today.

The Internet experience at Pudong International Airport differs markedly from the experience at our hotel. I've noticed a pattern, whereby unencrypted data, like The Daily Parker, seems to move about an order of magnitude faster than encrypted data, like the HTTPS connection I've got going with my mail server. The interesting part is that both sites are going through the same router back in Chicago. So, either the Web terminal I'm using has a particularly hard time with secure websites, or something is...

One of my teammates has Extra Special Super-Duper status with Marriott Hotels, giving him access to the ESSD Lounge atop the building. Two flights up from that the hotel has an observation deck. I have a camera. The result: I should mention the reason we're on the 59th floor: we've got a paper due tomorrow afternoon. So, the last night of the residency, we're surrounding ourselves with top-floor views, free booze, and Foundations of Strategy binders. Yes, we're that exciting.

Given the option of touring a corporate office building or going to a culturally-significant place to run around and talk to real people, of course I would put on a tie and head straight for the PowerPoint deck. Right. I'm actually 1-for-4 with corporate tours now, the one being Indira Gandhi Airport. That tour was cool. Today's cultural tour took us to Zhouzhuang, a lake village about 72 km west of Shànghăi. Before I run to a lecture on the financial crisis, here are two photos from the place; more...

This is the point in the residency when I see how much work I have to do by Saturday afternoon and wonder if I should have taken the bar exam instead. And as much as I love Chinese and Indian food, I'm ready for a Whole Foods salad about now. Before resuming my Strategy reading, I'd like to draw the reader's attention to this front-page story in the Shanghai Daily News: Dense fog affected Shanghai yesterday, blocking dozens of ships and ferry boats and delaying at least 150 flights. At least 400 ships...

I mean, literally. Sunday afternoon: This morning: Shanghai has been hazy since we arrived, so some of the fog is man-made. It isn't approaching the level of London in December 1952, but it isn't exactly the fresh spring fog of an Appalachian valley, either. (I'll have more to say about China's economic development in a bit.)

Due to an unexpected attrition of Flip cameras[1], several teams (including mine) set off on the Shanghai Culture Dash without them. This turned out to be liberating: between the six of us, we had four video-capable cameras, so we got more than 80 minutes of video. I'm especially pleased that we got two 10-minute interviews with multiple cameras. That will make the final product a lot more watchable—and audible, I think. We actually dashed over much of the same ground I explored Thursday and Friday...

Really, it's the food. We're all going to double our waist sizes here. This afternoon they took us on a teambuilding exercise in which we made lemon chicken and pork fried rice. Much fun, many calories. Our team won best preparation but, owing to a lack of salt (we think), only came in second overall. Our presentation: One of my teammates copied down on his iPhone the entire procedure as the chef demonstrated it. Once he's able to send me the note, I'll repost it. It involved only one ingredient whose...

I'm still digesting Shànghăi, possibly because it's all about the food. Take, for example, the family dinner my classmate Kyle invited me to. Including me, there were five of us. This is what Kyle's mother and wife prepared: That doesn't show the rice, by the way. All of it was delicious. I admit, I didn't try the green jellied duck eggs, but Kyle smoothed that out with his folks. Earlier yesterday he took me to Qībăo, a tiny oasis of old Shànghăi about 15 km southwest of the city center. More food...

Obligatory Pŭdōng skyline shot: And completely surprising shot of the kids that mobbed me to practice their English:

Best view yet: Much better than Dubai.

It's 5:20 in the morning here, and I don't know what day it is. This, believe it or not, I expected, which explains why I got here a day early. Just one major complaint: The Great Firewall apparently blocks Facebook[1]. Those of you waiting for me to play Scrabble, I'm sorry. (The Great Firewall sometimes changes its mind, so I'll keep trying.) I won't bore you with details about my messed-up circadian rhythm when I could do it with something else, so here, à propos of nothing, is a photo of Tokyo...

I discovered this joke from the head of Duke's CCMBA IT department: An accountant is having a hard time sleeping and goes to see his doctor. "Doctor, I just can't get to sleep at night." "Have you tried counting sheep?" "That's the problem - I make a mistake and then spend three hours trying to find it." And 24 hours from now, I'll be somewhere over Minnesota on my way to Shanghai...

I think I can get used to having an association with a national champion team of some kind, which in my life hasn't happened since 1998: The Duke Blue Devils officially were the last team standing Monday night, the only team on the podium with the championship trophy in hand. Duke claimed its fourth NCAA championship but the first for any of its current players with a 61-59 victory over hometown favorite Butler in front of 70,000-plus fans at Lucas Oil Stadium. More: The Blue Devils won with defense....

Yesterday I expressed more relief than dread after finishing my Term 3 finals. Dread just won: Subject: FedEx Shipment Notification [Redacted] of Duke Fuqua School of Business sent David Braverman 1 FedEx Express Saver package(s). This shipment is scheduled to be sent on 03/29/2010. Oh. Joy. The Term 4 books are coming. Sigh.

I've just finished my final exams for Duke CCMBA Term 3. Total time: 10.8 hours on statistics, 8.2 hours for marketing, 4.9 hours sobbing quietly at my desk about not having studied more. As the program has six terms, in a sane universe this would mean I'm half-way done with my MBA. Sadly, I'm not even done with Term 3 yet. And anyway the end of Term 3, officially April 7th, isn't really the half-way point. First, I have the Delhi Culture Dash video to produce. My team has succeeded mightily with a...

I mentioned that the traffic and chaos in Delhi just seems to work most of the time. Sometimes, however—as when 60 bicycle rickshaws try to make a right turn through traffic at the same time—it doesn't: I'm curious what everyone is saying...though I can guess.

First one from Windsor Place at Janpath, opposite Le Meridien hotel: Second from a bicycle rickshaw going throw Chandni Chowk: More as time and bandwidth permit.

Also as promised, I've finally gotten around to converting and uploading video from Delhi. I'll have more later this week; here's the first:

I am pooped. The third residency is over, and I've got a 7am flight out of Delhi tomorrow. This being Delhi, that means I have to get up around 3:45am to meet one of my classmates at 4:30—and that might be cutting it close. That means I'll leave the hotel around 10pm London time and arrive there around 9am, and somehow I'll have to stay awake for the rest of the day. I don't usually sleep on airplanes, but tomorrow morning I think I'll make an exception, whether I want to or not. I almost forgot: Nandan...

Apparently, Chandni Chowk (चाँदनी चौक) is closed Fridays in observance of the Islamic Sabbath. The formal shopping center, anyway. I'm willing to bet the actual street and neighborhood of the same name remained open this afternoon, but I could not convince my auto-rickshaw driver to take me there. I couldn't seem to break the language and cultural barriers separating him from an understanding that I just wanted to walk around without actually going in anywhere. In fact, I spent a lot of time this...

Our team scored a coup, which I'll keep under wraps for now. In the meantime, I'm going to make my own way over to Chandni Chowk. I just have to see it again. More, with photos, later today.

We're about to go out on our culture dash exercise, back to Chodni Chowk and other places in Delhi. I expect to have the photos shortly after we get back. We don't have the volume of work tonight that we've had the last few nights, so I'll have the time. I would like to give you this marvelous quote from our statistics class today: "A model I can understand is a model I can sleep with at night." Imagine this with the professor's Italian accent and it's even better.

I have about another hour to complete a statistics quiz, which requires reading the materials for it, but I did promise photos of the Indira Gandhi International Airport Terminal 3 construction site. Here they are: The departure/retail area between the domestic and international arms: The arrivals concourse: More later.

A group of us went on a tour of Indira Gandhi International Airport today, including the unfinished Terminal 3 building. Sadly, the art and description will have to wait for a bit. My work has piled up (as happens mid-residency) and I have two items due tonight. One thought, though: if the sun hasn't peeked through the clouds all day in Punxsutawney, how is it possible Phil saw his shadow? I think they're putting words in the groundhog's mouth over there.

Only day 3? Yikes. Of note today were the 6 hours of classes, the guest speaker, and the six power failures that seemed only to affect the lights and not any of the other electrical gear. In the next five hours or so I have about four hours of class prep to do, plus reviewing the team project due tomorrow. Somewhere in there I hope to eat and breathe. There may be a beer or two as well. More photos from Saturday's trip to the Red Fort. First, Chandni Chowk: After a short distance past that, we...

Hypotheticals in class can lead to cognitive dissonance if you think too hard on them. Today, for example, Ian invented the cell phone and admitted taking bribes, Ryan paid a high price for his seat in class, Elena punched Bob for trying to steal hers, and Nathan's wife spoke through him. All this after Bob and Kacie counted M&Ms for us. Best not to dwell. Instead, here are two more photos from yesterday's trip to the Red Fort: Inside: Much Stats homework tonight; more photos tomorrow.

They loaded us up on buses and drove us to the Red Fort and Old Delhi this afternoon. First stop, the Red Fort: Within the Red Fort grounds are a number of buildings, including the Diwan-i-Am, or audience chamber: Also the Khas Mahal: We then snagged about three dozen of the now-happiest rickshaw drivers in the city, and went to the Jama Masijd mosque. (I mostly took short videos on this trip, which I hope to upload to YouTube when I return to the U.S.) Then there was the bus ride back to the hotel...

After waking up at 4:30 for two mornings in a row, I really would like my body to figure out what time zone it's in. Maybe the problem is the Indian half-hour (it's 11½ hours ahead of Chicago, not 11, not 12), or possibly it was the two overnight flights in a row? Maybe I should just be glad I've had a relatively easy time getting to a point where I go to sleep at night (last night around 9:30pm) and wake up in the morning, instead of the reverse. Meanwhile, back in Raleigh, it looks like they have some...

Armed with two cameras and a Garmin Edge 305, I set off towards Connaught Place around 1pm and, eventually, found it. (There was this roundabout, see...and I didn't count correctly.) Total trip, 6.1 km, 1 hour 22 minutes, 15 auto-rickshaw drivers asking me where I wanted to go, 4 random people asking about the camera, no injuries. (Google Earth file) Oh, and about half a million stray dogs, like this one who I didn't see until I almost stepped on her: Living in New York and Chicago my entire life turned...

I'm still digesting Delhi, and in just a few minutes I'm about to walk to Connaught Place, to give me more to digest. Quickly, though, some notes from the cab ride from the airport to the hotel yesterday: Kudos to Lonely Planet, directing me to (a) the money-changing booth at the airport and (b) the pre-paid taxi booth. The Thomas Cook just outside baggage claim charged no commission on the exchange--except they kept a few rupees as a "fee". (The calculation was pretty straightforward: I bought Rs...

Apparently it gets foggy in Delhi. My four-hour connection at Heathrow unexpectedly turned into a 13-hour connection, so I took my sleep-deprived self out of the airport for a while. Yep, definitely not Delhi: And when in London, why not have a traditional breakfast? It was as good as it looked. Only one problem: my coat was in my checked bag, somewhere in the bowels of the airport. No problem: I now own a passably warm Reebok starter jacket, bought on sale for £22. It's 3pm now, and my flight is...

I'm once again at O'Hare, with about 90 minutes to kill before boarding. I think this counts as Day -3, but it could be Day -2 as it's already 3am Wednesday morning in Delhi, and classes start Saturday morning. If both airlines perform as expected, I should be in Delhi on Thursday morning—about 19 hours from now. Someday after that I might even adjust to the Indian time zone, 11½ hours ahead of Chicago. I also have figured out how to pack, having gotten my bags down to 6 kg and 17 kg. In part I...

I travel a lot, both in the U.S. and overseas. Last year I flew about 93,000 km, including three trips to the U.K., one to Ukraine, one to Dubai, and another dozen in the U.S. So I'm pretty sanguine about travel in general, and thanks to the American A'Advantage program, I get a few perks along the way that make it even easier. Tomorrow, though, I'm going to India for the first time. This has given me a kind of pre-travel jitters I don't ordinarily experience. First, most obviously, it's the farthest...

Randomness: Parker and I did, in fact, walk today (8 km), and it is, in fact, sunny and 16°C. Roger Ebert responds to Rush Limbaugh Via Greening Your Library, a quick and informative explanation of single-stream recycling. My books for next term only weigh 4 kg this time. I appreciate that. The 6 kg I carried to London was not fun. (This is a joke. Ha, ha.) Speaking of: "The cause of the floor's collapse remains under investigation." (I believe this is the source link.) Really. January.

The Duke CCMBA has a five-term course called "Culture, Civilization, and Leadership" that gives us structures to help us understand—wait for it—cultures and civilizations. At the end of each term, each team produces a paper analyzing the place in which we started the term. This term, I drew the short straw volunteered to write the first draft. We just submitted the final paper, after a few days of revisions. If you're interested, here it is. We didn't put it in the paper, but throughout the process, I...

Would you take more free stuff, or more stuff you pay for? Probably the latter, according to Duke University professor Dan Ariely: DAN ARIELY: ... [T]here's some interesting exceptions [to cheaper prices being better]. And the most interesting one is the price of free. Imagine that one of your co-workers comes to the office with home-baked cookies, and she's offering you the cookies for a very cheap price. Let's say 5 cents per cookie. And she has 100 cookies on the tray, and there are 20 people in the...

Silly me for forgetting that U.S. citizens need visas to visit India. (I'm usually more up on those things.) So yesterday I got mine, for the CCMBA Delhi residency. Color me impressed. Travisa, the company that the Indian government employs to handle their visa processing, had me in and out in 15 minutes to drop off my application, then sent me a text the same afternoon letting me know my passport had come back, then had me in and out in 90 seconds in the afternoon. Total time spent getting the visa...

Two more photos, one of London and one of Dubai. Guess which is which:

The Duke CCMBA has a novel structure that includes two courses that spread out across five of the six terms. One of these, "Cultures, Civilization, and Leadership," aims to give us the context and a set of tools to deal with the myriad cultures we encounter during the program and after. The class requires us to compose a "cultural disconnect" essay each term, which the rest of the class, rather than the professors, evaluates. Here's mine for Dubai. (The essay refers to some diagnostic and cultural tools...

Remember how I mentioned packing for two out of the three climates I expected to encounter on this trip? I should note that I expected London to be warmer than Chicago. I also expected that I would only be outside in Chicago traveling from the O'Hare tram to my car, and my car to my apartment. I'm debating finding a wollens store and buying a good, heavy, Scottish sweater. Our next residency lets me do the same thing only moreso, when I get to go from Chicago to Delhi, India, at the end of January. At...

I've stopped in London for a day and a half to get my bearings and ease the transition back to real life. Also because it was less expensive than changing my return flight to the U.S. or staying one more night in Dubai. Some observations: This isn't your granddad's British Airways. The flight from Dubai landed early, and the flight's bags got to the carousel before the passengers. Yes, you say, because British immigration takes forever. No! I say, because from the plane stopping at the gate (in their...

The second CCMBA residency ended officially about an hour ago, so all that remains is the drinking. And the packing. And the flying to London and thence Chicago, and not having a functioning laptop for either flight. One last photo for today, then on to other (if not better) things. I mentioned the Burj Dubai earlier, with factual comparisons to other tall buildings. I neglected to mention that it simply doesn't seem that tall, because it tapers to such a thin profile. Last night, on the way to the...

The good news: our professor extended the deadline for our Cultural Disconnect paper until tomorrow. The bad news: tomorrow at 6am. This is almost a distinction without difference, some of us muttered, and it means that I will probably submit the paper at 12:05 instead of 11:55. While I'm doing that, you can see more photos. First, our hotel and its sister building: Another photo of the Dubai Creek: And the view out my hotel window, of the Dubai International Finance Center (also known as "the Gate")...

Mostly photos today, because I have an economics assignment due before I can get some desperately-needed sleep. Today we did our Culture Dash (see the entry about the deliverable) through some of the same Dubai streets I walked just yesterday. Some highlights: first, Dubai Creek, with an abra (commuter flatboat) in the foreground and an Airbus 330 taking off in the background: The textile souk in the old Bur Dubai neighborhood: And last one tonight, a minaret during the evening call to prayer: More...

After a two-hour walk in the 34°C heat, I actually feel much better. (People who know me can feel free to express surprise and alarm.) As I mentioned yesterday, spending too much time in a hotel depresses the life out of me. When will I ever again visit Dubai? Probably never. Since the hotel has gone to great lengths to make itself indistinguishable from any other similar hotel in the world, I fled the official corporate tours and hopped the Dubai Metro for Deira, the old part of the city. Sadly for my...

Some people might enjoy a week in a five-star hotel where the weather is warm and the beaches are only 10 minutes away. I might, too, if I had time to leave the hotel. Each residency, we have to write a "cultural disconnect" blog post describing an incident within the local culture that resulted from a disconnect between the cultures. For example, in London a student wrote about making a joke in an elevator that caused his American classmates to laugh out loud but the English people nearby to flee. He...

Dubai has tall buildings. Many of them. Like our hotel, the Jumeirah Emirates Towers: The 51-story hotel is 309 m tall, about the height of the Chrysler Building. But that's not the tallest building here. No, from my hotel window I can see this: That's the Burj Dubai, which at 818 m is almost double the height of Sears Willis Tower back home. Here's a comparison (from Wikipedia): I'm working on an essay (not explicitly for the CCMBA) about Dubai's growth, including its monumental projects like the Burj...

Now that I have a functioning monitor once again, I can post a few photos. Despite American's mess-up with my seat assignments, a lovely British Airways flight attendant found an empty upper-deck window seat, so I did, in fact, get to have a total aviation-nerd-heaven trip: P.O.V. shot: A couple of things: first, the text on the screen is in Arabic, which makes sense if you're flying to Dubai. Second, the screen shows the plane has just gone over Italy's big toe. We had great views of the Alps and the...

When they ask why I missed a guest speaker and an alumni panel discussion, I will tell them about the lovely donation I'm making on Sunday. What donation? Why, a brand-new 50 cm widescreen monitor I bought this afternoon at the Dubai Mall: And why did I buy this monitor for AED 449? Because the one built into my laptop looked like this: No, you're not going blind, and that distortion isn't a compression effect or camera artifcat. That's real. And that's why Duke will get the monitor when I'm done with...

My laptop monitor has horked. On the way over to Dubai, while hanging out at Logan, the monitor went from normal to slightly magenta and missing every fourth column of pixels. This did not make me happy. Finally today I had the opportunity to connect the laptop to an overhead projector, which showed it has a fully-functioning video chip. This means that the problem is either in the LCD monitor itself or its connection to the motherboard, neither of which I can fix. So, the Duke IT folks have gone after...

Yes, the 7-hour layover at Heathrow did me in. The total trip took 28 hours and 48 minutes, during which I slept a couple of times but not well. Another thing I learned: it's hard to fix a laopto when they don't let you have tools in your carry-on bag. It appears that the connection between my laptop's monitor and its video chip has come loose. The screen appears to be missing half of its pixels, but otherwise it still works. A loose cable is the best case, anyway; the worst case—the monitor itself has...

Having a six-hour layover in between two seven-hour flights really, really sucks. I know I'm at Heathrow, in Terminal 5, but I'm not entirely clear on what day or time it is. I do know that somewhere in my future, probably in about 9 hours, there's a bed....

I generally love American Airlines, to the extent that I fly oneworld carriers unless there simply isn't another way to get there. But today, in an effort to be helpful, an AA ticket agent actually made an error that may have dashed a dream I've carried since I was six. I'm on my way to Dubai for school, and to get there I'm going through London. (Faithful readers may recall I tried going through Amman, but that didn't quite work.) Going through London means British Airways, which doesn't let you choose...

I pack in the morning, which means, five hours before my flight takes off, I have yet to dig my bags out of the closet. Everything to be packed is either on my desk or hanging in my closet; Parker's food is already in the car; and I have nothing else to do but get out of town. One little niggle: why does British Airways not allow people to pick their seats more than 24 hours ahead unless they have the equivalent of American Airlines Platinum status? Not that I had any difficulties, as the flight doesn't...

The CCMBA Dubai residency starts in just over 3 days, and I'm leaving in 53 hours. I hope I've learned from the mistakes I made in the London residency, so I can make all new mistakes. Some observations so far: I do not need the one-kilo power converter; I only need a couple of UK-US adapters. This is because, as I realized in London, everything I have with a plug accepts all international power characteristics. (The U.S. is 110 volts, 60 Hertz; the U.K. and U.A.E. both use 220 volts, 50 Hertz, with...

Here's the Culture Dash video mentioned in the previous entry. I held off publishing it until I confirmed that the school had published all of the videos to the class. I have also cut two interviews out, as I mentioned before, as the subjects clearly did not want them broadcast. One even told us he didn't want the interview "ending up on YouTube." Unfortunately, he was the bulk of the video's entire first section, so it won't take Roger Ebert to detect that something is missing. Here, then, is (about...

I spent 12 hours this week editing video[1] into a 5-minute class project, which I think turned out all right, but which taught me a few lessons I hope help other people. Shooting video looks easy. You point the camera, you push "record" to start, and you push "stop" when done. Voilà, you've got video! If only. Shooting video you have to edit together into a cohesive, 5-minute package actually requires serious planning and attention. As a camera operator, you do not want your editor to curse you out...

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...

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...

A number of confusing changes occurred to the world while I slept: President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. I love the man; I voted for him; I gave lots of money[1] to two of his campaigns. I'm still confused. It might offend some of my fellow progressives to say, but possibly the prize means nothing more than "thank you for not being like the last guy, and keep up the good work." The President is, in fact, the second person who is not George W. Bush to win the Prize in the last four years. For...

Duke will release our financial accounting exam on the 8th, and we'll have 24 hours from the time we download it to finish and hand it in. Our professor, when asked this morning for general guidance about the exam, seemed confident that someone who didn't need to look anything up (e.g., an accounting professor) could finish it in "four to five hours." In other words, until October 8th, I will likely post link lists, like this one. Sorry. The Economist's Gulliver blog highlighted the differences between...

Continuing from Saturday, here are the actual values of the items in the post. How did you do? Did you get 9 of 10, indicating you have a good handle on your ability to estimate? Fact Units Actual GE total revenues (2003) $ bn $134 bn Michael Eisner's salary (2003) $ $1m Microsoft employees worldwide (2004) thousands 57k Starbuck's stores worldwide (2004) stores 6228 McKinsey Group annual revenue per consultant (2001) $ $500k United Auto Workers total membership, non retired (2004) thousands 710k...

My plan seemed so simple: Book my flights from Chicago to Dubai and, on the way back, spend a couple of days in Jordan and Israel, two countries I'm not likely to see for a long time. Royal Jordanian airlines, however, made this sufficiently difficult to encourage me to look elsewhere. The parameters were simple: Fly only Oneworld carriers, because this trip bumps me to the next elite level. Arrive in Dubai in time for the October 31st start of classes having had enough rest to make it through the day...

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...

Will someone please tell me what this means, and whether the pelican survived? More photos from London to follow later this week.

We got our official team MBTI profile back this morning. It turns out, I was wrong on one person's Sensing-iNtuitive axis; we're really ESTJ ESTJ ESTJ ESTP ENTP INTP. The balance of Ps and Js is good; the unanimity of Ts is not; and we're acutely aware of the issues surrounding the 5:1 E:I ratio. But that's all for tonight, when we work out our "team charter," the list of expectations and guidelines for how we'll work together from now until April, when Duke recomposes all the teams. Now, half of the...

We go in and out of classrooms all day, every day, and along the way have watched the Thames' noticable tides. We're just a couple days past the New Moon, meaning it's spring tide. Today the BBC weather centre predicted a 7-meter (22-foot) spread at London Bridge, just upriver from our hotel. Here's low tide, around 10 this morning, from the hotel: Now high tide, about 4 this afternoon: Here are side-by-side comparisons of Butler's Wharf: This happens because this far downriver the Thames is actually an...

I walked across the Thames for dinner tonight—my first time out of the hotel in almost two days—and had a lovely risotto al fresco. On the way back I snapped a photo of the hotel where we've been imprisoned stayed for the past week: For good measure I also took another gratuitous photo of Tower Bridge: Because, really, you can't have too many photos of something that cool, right?

It's 1:10 am London time, meaning I will enjoy no more than six hours of sleep tonight (including thirty minutes drooling on the breakfast table). Because I'm running on fumes, and therefore no longer playing with a full deck on the top floor, I have decided to post the assignment that kept me up so late. (The essay that follows refers to the InterCultural Edge, an experimental tool for evaluating cross-cultural interactions out of Duke's business school. Otherwise I hope it stands on its own. Also...

They put this out for us every single day: And this is what happens when it's 29°C in Trafalgar Square: And, finally, my temporary Summer Office, the Dickens Inn at St. Katharine's Wharf: All right. Back to work.

I haven't known the day of the week for a few days now, and after today I'm even less sure. My laptop tells me Tuesday. Since I have about an hour of reading yet, then a class at 8:00 (it's 23:15 now), I will simply post this photo and write about building a raft and climbing a wall sometime later.

The results are in, and for the fifth or sixth time in 15 years I've gotten the same result on a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. As expected, this result had some movement at the edges—I'm closer to the center on both Introversion-Extraversion and Thinking-Feeling than on my last test—but my overall type hasn't changed. Notice, however, that I'm in business school. Business schools in general are overwhelmingly Extraverted. I am not. This, believe it or not, is one of the reasons I'm here. The title of...

School has started. Even though we had an easy day today, I'm knackered, and I still have to revise for tomorrow morning's classes. We did our first team project today, a scavenger hunt of sorts for our Global Markets class that had us wandering the neighborhood around the hotel looking for the prices and origins of a few consumer products. We'll repeat the exercise in each of the next four cities. It turns out you can buy a toothbrush at Tesco's for 54p, a 100-gram Cadbury's bar for £1.30, and an "I...

More from yesterday. First, The Bridge Inn, where I had lunch and and after-hike pint: Second, you may wonder what a stile is. It's a fence with a board sticking through it that humans can get over easily and cows cannot. Of course, any determined bovine can simply knock through it, but most aren't that determined. Here's an example: Finally, a house in the village of Amberley. Yes, people actually live in houses like this in England: I will now, in 15 minutes, start the CCMBA. Wish me luck.

Yesterday, the temperature in London got up to 25°C under sunny skies. Londoners panicked and fled into the streets. After getting my Oyster Card sorted, I joined the terrified masses and walked from Piccadilly Circus back to the Tower Bridge, 7 km according to Google Maps. Start: Finish: Today I'm going to flee the city (the weather forecast is for more of the same) and head into Sussex, to the site of the infamous Cow Attack of 1992, to see if this bridge is still there: Full report later today.

I've arrived in London after an enjoyable flight and a remarkably speedy trip through baggage and customs. I've also had a shower and a kip, and I'm about to leave the hotel and actually enjoy the city for a bit. Even though in the Land of Uk "one mustn't grumble," one can certainly make ill-tempered observations: Carrying a heavy bag down stairs is a much different proposition than carrying it up. And the Tube stop at Tower Hill has about 50 steps up and no escalators. As the difference between taking...

I need to buy a smaller bag. I learned this checking in at O'Hare a few minutes ago. It turns out, American Airlines has a 32-kilo limit on each checked bag. However, if your bag wieghs more than 22.7 kg, they charge you $50 for the overweight. My bag weighed 33 kg until I removed my one-kilo Financial Accounting binder—just the binder, not the textbook, workbook, or CD—and rearranged my other two bags to distribute the weight better. The final score: Checked bag, 31.7 kg on the nose; carry-on bag, 7.7...

I've packed, my house is in order, the forklift (needed to get my bag, and its half-ton of books, down to the curb) has arrived. But my flight doesn't leave for more than four hours. So, do I kill time at O'Hare, or at home? O'Hare, I think. That, at least, removes some of the uncertainty from the trip. Next report from London.

First, on the 45th anniversary of President Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act into law, Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Second, John Hughes died this afternoon. He was 59. Third, Britain has had unusually squishy summer, which only matters because I'm spending the entire last half of August there. Oh, it also matters to anyone trying to fly out of the U.K.

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...

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...

That's how Douglas Adams described the effect of a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. I feel like I've just drunk two, after a phone call I recevied an hour ago from North Carolina. Long-time readers of this blog who know me personally have noticed I actually maintain a certain sense of reserve in my public writings. The actual word is "privacy," but so few people remember what that word means in the context of the Internet that I avoid using it. These long-suffering people (called "friends" and "family")...