Hugh's Worthless Blog

A new semester started this Monday on the Danforth Campus of Washington University in St. Louis , but along with the new faces within our building there was also new construction outside our building. A brand new sidewalk now connects the sidewalk between our building (Scott Rudolph Hall) and Physics (Crow/Compton) and the northern door of Brookings Hall. There is also now a large mulched area just west of the sidewalk, just east of Cupples I (Math), which I am hoping will eventually be filled with some lovely plants of some sort and maybe even some benches or statues (who knows?) This is the first time the northern door to North Brookings has been open since the week after commencement, as well as the stairway into the northeast corner of the quadrangle. Now I am just waiting for them to open the southern door near my office in Rudolph Hall. Since the undergraduates have returned I have now seen multiple students staring at their cell phones walk straight through the first set...

No Exit! Just try leaving our building! We are lucky that most of the students, faculty and staff at Washington University in St. Louis are very bright, motivated individuals. Otherwise they would never be able to navigate around the east end of campus this summer to get where they need to go. This summer the east end is truly a mess with both ends of Brookings Hall being closed off, as well as the area just north of the Brown School of Social Work as well of the area south of our building, Scott Rudolph Hall , which just a few weeks ago was still a lovely landscaped area. Just last week I heard a terrible noise outside my window and saw an earth moving construction vehicle ripping up the concrete sidewalks next to our building. Scene from Rudolph Hall, May 25, 2018 - One Week after Commencement So now we only have one fully available entrance/exit to our building, the door to the west leading to Compton and Crow ( Physics ) so we must plan our trips across campus carefu...

Next month our church, Samuel United Church of Christ in Clayton, is doing something incredible. We are converting a large quantity of corned beef, lamb stew, sides and desserts into a portion of an affordable home for a low income family in St. Louis. That is right, we are hosting our annual St. Patrick's Day lunch and dinner at our church to help fund a home through Habitat for Humanity here in St. Louis. All the meat and sides are being donated by the Kern Meat Company who is also preparing the delicious feast. Beverages and scrumptious homemade desserts are being provided by the members and friends of Samuel UCC, as well as the labor to serve everybody. That means 100% of the proceeds are going to Habitat to provide funding for the future home of a needy St. Louis family. Our church is not earning a dime, and neither is Kern Meat Company. Better yet, any tickets purchased in advance before March 1 will be matched 100% by a donor to increase the funding to Habitat eve...

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 ...