Quite good: Victoria Hannan’s portraits of London cab drivers, with stories. My favorite: Ray (pictured above). “Ray’s been driving cabs for 16 years. He thinks it’s the best working class job there is and that there aren’t many others that let you work every day of your life if you want to.”

A job that lets you work every day of your life = best job. :(

(Another favorite woke up at 4 a.m. everyday for three years to study The Knowledge, “a test which has been described as a bit like having a mental atlas of London in your head.”)

Early last spring, my friends told me to call my car insurance company and negotiate a discount when my rates shot up by 85 percent. I thought about calling some customer service department and asking for that, or worse: shopping around, getting multiple quotes, really optimizing my deal. Instead, I sold my car.

I’m not suggesting everyone sell their Buick for a bus pass, or that buses are a far superior way of traveling. But once upon a time, I had to sell my car to pay off some traffic tickets and ended up having to rely on Kansas City's public transportation system to get around.

Sometimes we leave town, and it costs a lot of money. Other times we leave town, and it costs less money. But it almost always costs money.

Authorities in Dubai are trying to make their roads safer by offering drivers prizes and points for avoiding traffic violations for extended periods of time, including the ability to use their points to negate any "black points" accrued on their record, and the chance to win a new car.

I was terrified the entire time.