Tales out of school

My semester begins this Thursday, but although it will make for rather a juggling act I am hoping this will enliven my blog rather than crowd it out. Fresh material.
Teaching regular classes, though hopefully not too excruciating for the student attendees, is not inherently worth sharing with the world (admttedly a grandiose way of describing my readership). But what I am doing this year for the tenth straight spring, and hopefully into the future, is running a tax policy workshop (called, in approved NYU Law style, the Tax Policy Colloquium) in which speakers come by weekly to present their papers. Or actually, they come by and we present their papers (we being myself and David Bradford, the Princeton economist who also spends some time at NYU). This can be more stimulating than listening to a rehash of the paper because it makes for fuller dialogue. From the standpoint of the blog, it should result in plenty to talk about, mainly substance but without my declining to stoop when necessary to anecdote.
The first paper (mine) is already posted here, and here is the entire schedule:
January 13 - Daniel Shaviro, NYU Law School, "The Approaching Fiscal Train Wreck."
January 20 - Thomas Griffith, USC Law School, "Progressive Taxation and Happiness."
January 27 - Reed Shuldiner, University of Pennsylvania Law School, "Taxation of Risky Investments."
February 3 - Michael Livingston, Rutgers-Camden Law School,[paper on comparative US/Italian/Israeli taxation].
February 10 - Vicki Been, NYU Law School, "Impact Fees and Housing Affordability."
February 17 - Herwig Schlunk, Vanderbilt and NYU Law Schools,"A Minimalist Approach to Corporate Income Taxation."
February 24 - Louis Kaplow, Harvard Law School, excerpt from "Taxation and Redistribution."
March 3 - Larry Zelenak, Duke Law School, "Redesigning the Earned Income Tax Credit as a Family-Size Adjustment to the Minimum Wage."
March 10 - Kyle Logue, University of Michigan Law School, "The New Market in Tax Insurance: Eliminating Uncertainty or Enabling Tax Avoidance?"
March 24 - Steve Bank, UCLA Law School, "A Capital Lock-In Theory of the Corporate Income Tax."
March 31 - David Hasen, University of Michigan Law School, "Theories of Endowment Taxation."
April 7 - Peter Orszag, Brookings Institution, "Reforming Social Security."
April 14 - Sagit Leviner, University of Michigan Law School, "Taxation: The Normative Component."
April 21 - Neil Buchanan, Rutgers-Newark Law School, "Taxing Average Income: A Progressive Alternative to the Annual Income Tax."