Hugh's Worthless Blog

Well, they did it and we have a new tax bill signed and ready to go for our 2018 taxes. They had promised to try to simplify things, but as things often happen, the final result is not very simple at all. I have modified my online income tax deduction calculator to try to figure out the differences between the current 2017 tax structure and how it changes for 2018. The bottom line is even less households will be itemizing and most households (and corporations) will see a federal tax decrease in 2018. How the federal government will survive with such an increased deficit is another story, but most people are more concerned on how it will effect their own taxes. With the new expanded standard deduction, one thing I have noticed is that donor advised funds can be used very effectively to take advantage of the new rules. We have an account with the Schwab Charitable Fund , and we realized our best practice was to contribute a large chunk of highly appreciated equities this year to use...

Yesterday I received a phone call from a fellow Washington University employee who worked at West Campus asking what was the best way to watch next Monday's eclipse since he was coming in to work that day. The university is actually sponsoring an Eclipse watch event on our campus (with ice cream), but unfortunately none of our campus is within the range for totality so it would only be a partial eclipse party. Our campus further west is extremely close to the edge of totality so the West Campus employee was asking if he could just walk across the street and down the block to see the full total eclipse. I told him he could, but he would likely only experience a few fleeting instances of totality and it would be better for him if he could get further south and possibly further west for a better experience. However, since West Campus is located very close to the Forsyth Metrolink station and all employees can receive a free Metro U-Pass, I realized the easy solution. Hop on th...

Danforth Campus West Campus Shuttle stops - August 2017 For the past several months, one of the most favorite pasttimes here on the Danforth Campus of Washington University has been grumbling about parking and all the construction on campus. One of the solutions the "powers that be" came up with was the new ParkSmart option where a bunch of people park over at West Campus and then take the Metrolink or the new West Campus shuttle to get between their cars and their work on the Danforth campus. Many of the people who had their parking displaced when the lots in front of Brookings closed were the people who work on the east end of campus, namely in Sam Fox , the Brown School , Engineering , Brookings, and those of us in Earth and Planetary Sciences and Physics too. So to appease us "Easterners" they placed a stop on the east end of campus, first on the northeast corner of Forsyth and Hoyt. They had a test run in April, and I tried it out and it actually wor...

We have known for a long time that the construction was going to begin here on the east end of the Washington University campus, but it is still sad to see all the tall, huge trees along Brookings Drive disappear.  Starting on Tuesday they have been cutting them down and the canopy of green in front of Brookings Hall is quickly disappearing. Here is a time lapsed animated GIF taken from a camera we set up in our building . Refresh the page or click on the image to see the time loop again: With the east construction and east parking lots gone, everyone from our building is now parking in the Millbrook lots and walking to our building from there. Unfortunately, the construction in the middle of campus is blocking the pathway in front of chemistry (Louderman) so the best route is to walk along Throop and take the detour north of Throop that heads down near Forest Park Parkway, and then follow Throop to our building (taking the pathway between Urbauer and Compton ...

Permit pricing pulled from the Town Hall presentation Many exciting things have been happening in the world lately, but in the small bubble that is Washington University in St. Louis , one of the biggest topics of discussion lately is extremely mundane - parking ! This May after graduation, the parking lots on the east of Danforth Campus are going to be closed and ripped up to make way for an underground garage and some new buildings . What that means is that parking on-campus will be at a premium so it was time for a new parking strategy on campus. There is a lot of new information online but one thing that they had not presented (until yesterday) was the actual pricing for permits next fiscal year. The numbers were finally revealed in a Town Hall meeting and their online summary is deeply hidden on their site, so I will summarize here in an easy to find location! One thing some of us noticed was a slide saying that "most" permit prices were only increasing 6%-12% so ...

Median Household Income of Selected Colleges and Universities I was pretty intrigued when a new study appeared last week which highlighted Washington University in a not so great light, but I was a bit surprised how local journalists analyzed the results. An article in the New York Times first reported on the new study which puts Wash U at the very top of colleges where the top 1% (in terms of income) outrepresent the bottom 60% in household income. The numbers are based on some older data, but in the article 21.7% of Wash U students come from the top 1% ($630K+ income) compared to only 6.1% from the bottom 60% (<$65K.) The Wash U administration uses these numbers to pat themselves on the back and boast how in just four years they are projected to more than double that 6.1% number to 13% (still a pretty paltry figure.) But what both recent Post Dispatch and Student Life articles tend to do is focus too much at the top and bottom of the socioeconomic data, and skip the much ...