Working at Disney

I was expecting this to be better than it turned out to be, but it is I think still worth posting these (pretty tame) "confessions" of a Disney cast member.

British election

I am watching the British election on Skynews. The final results are not in yet but it is clear that all the excitement about the "liberal democrats" (imagine separating out the subset of the US democrats with degrees in sociology or political science and giving them their own party) is not playing out at the ballot box.

Other bits: the CURE party has not won any seats but has gotten non-trivial numbers of votes in some places - ahead of many of the serious minor parties. This party illustrates something that we generally miss in the US due to (appallingly) restrictive ballot access laws. Looking up the CURE website reminded me of the OWL party in Washington State, which put enormously funny bits into Washington's voter's guide when I was in high school. What we generally miss are humorous parties designed to have a bit of fun at the expense of overly serious politicians.

The way they do the counting of votes in the UK is that each district counts its votes and then announces the total, and the nice Skynews people seem to have reporters at nearly all of them, and to broadcast many of them. This has a certain charm, as it means one gets to watch the local luminaries who do the announcing as well as even watching shots of the counting of the votes. Watching the luminaries read out the votes for the CURE party while maintaining a straight face is particularly good fun.

Also, the media do a better job of matching colors to parties in the UK. The labor party is red and the tories are blue.

Saving labor costs in Germany

The new kid on the business block in Germany is self-service bakeries. Unlike traditional bakeries, where a staff person assembles the desired baked goods for each customer, here the customer simply picks out the desired baked goods and then takes them to a cashier. The result, lower prices, 30 to 40 percent lower according to the one company, due to a smaller staff. Of course, there the cost is that some customers may misbehave and handle the food not with the tongs provided but with their hands. The main chains operate with a franchise model; here are the (English language) websites for two of them: back factory and backWERK (which roughly translates as "bakery factory" as well).

Should I note that labor costs are pretty high in Germany?

Hat tip: Michael Lechner

Further evidence on the coolness of UM

Who knew that Michigan has a computer and video game archive?

Centipede anyone?

Overactive customs agents in Switzerland

The sad story of a Stradivarius, on loan from the Austrian central bank to a noted young violinist, seized at the Swiss border by over-zealous customs agents.

The rest of the story, for which I could not find an English language link, is that the violinist was not ever able to bring the violin into Switzerland for use in a planned concert. Instead, an official from the Austrian central bank ultimately went to the border and retrieved the violin.

Hat tip: Herr Prof. Dr. Michael Lechner

Mysteries of air travel

Why does Delta serve "dinner" at 11 PM on its flight to Amsterdam that departs at 9:50 PM from Detroit? Why not just assume that people probably had (a better) dinner at, you know, dinnertime and let them get to sleep?

Just a thought.

Only sheep need a shepherd

In honor of President Obama's speaking (maybe even as I type) at Michigan's soggy graduation ceremony in the Big House, a link to the excerpt from Gene Healy's book The Cult of the Presidency published in Reason magazine a couple of years ago.

A teaser:

The chief executive of the United States is no longer a mere constitutional officer charged with faithful execution of the laws. He is a soul nourisher, a hope giver, a living American talisman against hurricanes, terrorism, economic downturns, and spiritual malaise. He—or she—is the one who answers the phone at 3 a.m. to keep our children safe from harm. The modern president is America’s shrink, a social worker, our very own national talk show host. He’s also the Supreme Warlord of the Earth.

And another:

Today Americans expect their president to pound Teddy Roosevelt’s “bully pulpit,” whipping the electorate into a frenzy to harness power against perceived threats. But the Framers viewed that sort of behavior as fundamentally illegitimate. In fact, the president wasn’t even supposed to be a popular leader. As presidential scholar Jeffrey K. Tulis has pointed out, in the Federalist the term leader is nearly always used pejoratively; the essays by Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay in defense of the Constitution begin and end with warnings about the perils of populist leadership. The first Federalist warns of “men who have overturned the liberties of republics” by “paying obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants,” and the last Federalist raises the specter of a “military despotism” orchestrated by “a victorious demagogue.”

The president, regardless of political flavor, is really just the greatest among bureaucratic functionaries but still only that.