Friday Random Ten

Now what did I do with that iPod…oh, here it is.

1. We Live For Love – Pat Benatar
2. The Other Side – Scissor Sisters
3. Evil Woman – E.L.O.
4. Et Maintenant – Aurele Lacombe
5. Between My Legs – Rufus Wainwright
6. All I Want To Know – Nick Heyward
7. Sunset – Kate Bush
8. Witchita Lineman – Glen Campbell
9. We Run This – Missy Elliot
10. No Better – Jonatha Brooke

The Financial Crisis

So what the hell do I know – but maybe, rather than bailing out financial institutions, we take all those tax dollars and give them instead to people who can’t pay their mortgages and who have lost or will lose their jobs because of the economic repercussions of the financial industry meltdown. Let the financial industry chips fall where they may, figure out what regulatory scheme keeps them from being able to pull this crap again, and help people who are getting screwed by it. Don’t put one stupid dime into an industry bail out.

The government is spending these massive amounts of money and I fear that the net result is just digging the country a deeper hole, not pulling us out of one.

Bill Moyers Journal tackled this issue tonight. NYT reporter Gretchen Morgenson said:

The ugly thing about this is privatizing gains and socializing losses. So when things are going well, the managements make out, the shareholders make out, the counterparties are fine. All the private sector people do well. But when something goes wrong, when decisions are made that turn out to be bad decisions, the U.S. taxpayer has to take on the problem. And there’s something very wrong about that.

Read my ‘amen to that’ very emphatically. Go read the interview with Kevin Phillips too.

Friday Random Ten

I almost forgot.

1. Djobi Djoba – Gipsy Kings
2. Ridin’ The Storm Out – REO Speedwagon
3. Digging Your Scene – The Blow Monkeys
4. American Affluenza – Roger Joseph Manning Jr.
5. Want – Rufus Wainwright
6. Hell Is For Children – Pat Benatar
7. Meet Me By The Moonlight – The Stanley Brothers
8. Paralyzer – Finger Eleven
9. Fall Back Down – Mike Viola and The Candy Butchers
10. Heaven’s Gonna Burn Your Eyes – Thievery Corporation

Political Differences

Bill Moyers Journal looks at how the conservative media talks about liberals and the effects of ugly, dehumanizing characterizations of those you oppose (referencing the recent Knoxville church shooting):

RICK KARR: American politics has always been a rough game. But political scientist Jeffrey Feldman, who’s written a book on the effects of angry political rhetoric, says this is different.

JEFFREY FELDMAN: Our system is a deliberative democracy. And that deliberative democracy depends on a certain kind of talk, a certain conversation in order to function well. What right-wing rhetoric does, when it reaches that violent pitch, is it undermines that particular conversation, such that the focus of political debate, becomes increasingly hamstrung by fear, and the ability of citizens to engage in the basic act of civics becomes gummed up. That conversation breaks down.

RICK KARR: Knoxville pastor Chris Buice agrees.

REVEREND CHRIS BUICE: When you blame all your problems on some minority group then everyone else is exonerated. We exonerate ourselves. We don’t have to look at ourselves to see what sort of ways we contribute to the problems of the world. We don’t have to examine ourselves, to see what we are doing that is helping to create the problems that we’re so concerned about.

RICK KARR: In other words, Buice says, angry talk-radio rhetoric simply sets up scapegoats for society’s problems. And ever since Jim David Adkisson walked into his church and opened fire he can’t help but wonder whether that might lead to more violence.

REVEREND CHRIS BUICE:I just think a lot of people are hurling insults from the safety of television studios, the safety of radio studio, the safety of cyberspace, which they would not throw if they had to stand right next to a person and look in their face and say the same thing. And so that’s a void in our community, the chance to be in the same room and to have these exchanges and remember the humanity of the person on the other side.

BILL MOYERS:We may never know what finally triggered the killer’s rage, unless he chooses at his trial or later to tell us. But not for a moment do I think any of the talk show hosts mentioned by the police would have wished it to happen.

We asked several radio hosts to come on this broadcast and talk about the story; they either declined or didn’t return our calls. The issue of course is not their right to say anything they want on the air. The First Amendment guarantees their free speech as it does mine. Government shouldn’t be the arbiter of what the Bill of Rights leaves to one’s own sense of fair play. Watching that report, however, I was reminded of a story from folk lore about the tribal elder telling his grandson about the battle the old man was waging within himself. He said, “My son it is between two wolves. One is an evil wolf: anger, envy, sorrow, greed, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other is the good wolf: joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.” The boy took this in for a few minutes and then asked, “Which wolf won?” His grandfather answered, “The one I feed.” So, too, America’s public life. The wolf that wins is the wolf we feed. Media provides the fodder.

Conservatives like Limbaugh, O’Reilly and Hannity have built careers spewing vitriol at people who disagree with them, and anyone who listens to their callers or has ventured near a site like Free Republic can see the appalling results of modeling hatefulness as valid political expression. While I don’t think liberals in the media have quite as inflammatory a record overall, they certainly don’t get a pass on this. I’ve heard all kinds of hateful comments about Reagan, Bush, Palin, random other Republicans – some that are virtually indistinguishable from the comments quoted in the Moyers Journal report (except with the intended object a conservative rather than a liberal). The word idiot gets worn out by both sides.

I can understand fierce opposition to an idea or policy position, maybe a little disdain for an opponent who seems uninformed in their opinion…maybe exasperation with someone who ignores the evidence that disproves their claim or refuses to acknowledge that theirs is not the only possible right answer. I can understand strong dislike. But I don’t get the rabid hatred, or complete contempt, or wishing terrible things on someone whose political views you oppose.

When I get close to that edge, something in me just says that’s not nice. It sounds lame and Pollyanna, but I think people should try to be nice.

As Good As It Gets

Nothing makes me crazier than one of my kids being mean to the other. And nothing makes me happier than seeing how much they love each other. However, expressions of love tend to either be completely silly or accompanied by teasing – as demonstrated by this exchange which occurred earlier this afternoon.

Natalie (to Amelia): How much do you love me?

Amelia: I couldn’t live without you! Well…I mean, I could live without you but if you died I would be really sad.

Natalie (delighted, moving toward Amelia): I have to give you a kiss!

Amelia (backing away): Except you can’t kiss me unless I give you permission.

Anti-Abortion Moving Billboards

I’m sure this will be popular with the lunch crowd.

Two delivery trucks displaying 22-by-7 feet images of aborted fetuses will be driving through Austin’s downtown streets today, despite complaints from some residents that the vehicles violate city code and that the images are too graphic.

The vehicles are part of an effort to raise anti-abortion awareness by the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform, a nonprofit group based in Los Angeles.

Initiated in 2001, the “Reproductive Choice Campaign” exhibits the images on the sides of delivery trucks that travel throughout the country to “change the way people perceive abortion,” according to the center’s Web site.

The moving billboards hit Texas for the first time a month ago in Houston and San Antonio. They began making their way around Austin on Monday near the University of Texas.

I think moving billboards are a traffic hazard, regardless of what message they carry. So I oppose them on that basis. Otherwise, anti-abortion groups are, in my opinion, well within the parameters of the First Amendment when they display pictures of aborted fetuses.

However, I believe such displays are rude and inconsiderate. It is entirely possible to get a message across without grossing people out. Whether you are showing dead, bleeding baby seals or dead fetuses, it just isn’t nice to ambush people like that. I also object to the fact that they almost certainly end up forcing the pictures on children who are not yet developmentally capable of understanding the complex issue behind the pictures. At 6 and 8, my kids are not there yet, and I feel pretty sure such pictures would be upsetting to them. I find it ironic that something so inappropriate for children to see is being publicized, where children may see it, by people who claim to love children.

Obama and McCain Health Reform Plans

Health Affairs has posted critiques of each candidate’s health care plan:

The Obama Plan: More Regulation, Unsustainable Spending. ABSTRACT: The health reform plan put forth by Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) focuses on expanding insurance coverage and provides new subsidies to individuals, small businesses, and businesses experiencing catastrophic expenses. It greatly increases the federal regulation of private insurance but does not address the core economic incentives that drive health care spending. This omission along with the very substantial short-term savings claimed raise serious questions about its fiscal sustainability. Heavy regulation coupled with a fallback National Health Plan and a play-or-pay financing choice also raise questions about the future of the employer insurance market.

Cost And Coverage Implications Of The McCain Plan To Restructure Health Insurance. ABSTRACT: Senator John McCain’s (R-AZ) health plan would eliminate the current tax exclusion of employer payments for health coverage, replace the exclusion with a refundable tax credit for those who purchase coverage, and encourage Americans to move to a national market for nongroup insurance. Middle-range estimates suggest that initially this change will have little impact on the number of uninsured people, although within five years this number will likely grow as the value of the tax credit falls relative to rising health care costs. Moving toward a relatively unregulated nongroup market will tend to raise costs, reduce the generosity of benefits, and leave people with fewer consumer protections.

As I read them, the critiques indicate a primary focus on insurance coverage and relatively little focus (or impact) on underlying costs of care.

At a reporters briefing on health reform convened this summer by the Alliance for Health Reform and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, three “well known health economists” (Paul Ginsberg, Uwe Reinhardt and Mark McClellan) discussed the candidates’ reform plans and restraining health spending. Consider these comments on cost control and afforability:

• UWE REINHARDT, PH.D. First of all, on the proposals in the candidates’ campaign, I think most policy [wonks] would write them down. And if you sort of looked at them and said would I favor this or not, most of us would favor them. But if you gave us a truth serum, a couple glasses of wine, say, we would probably all come out saying whether it saves dollars per year is not so clear. But it will give us more value for the dollar. That would pretty assure us I think. So these are not to be laughed off, but I do not think that will get us out of the box. [...A]ll of U.S. policy, I observed it very closely for almost forty years, is consciously geared to keep the demand side splintered and weak. The supply side will go along with anything you propose. But the minute you propose really strengthening the demand side of the health care system, the supply side springs into action. And they happen to be the largest shareholders of the United States Congress. And purchase from them systematically protection from a strong demand side. That is how I from a bird’s eye view would describe what we are in and nothing, pay-for-performance, nothing will change that power relationship. [...U]ntil we address the weakness, the deliberate built-in weakness of the demand side of the American health system, we are stuck with these costs.

• PAUL GINSBURG: Even though the interest of the voters is swinging now towards affordability, there is still a lot of interest in coverage but sort of affordability. I think it is much easier to draw a distinction between say, Senator Obama and Senator McCain on coverage than it is on affordability or cost containment. And maybe that is going to be okay. Because even if they cannot draw a distinction that the voters can really get into to the degree that the voters keep speaking this way in the polls, it will actually give somewhat of a mandate to whoever is elected to go do something about affordability in addition to the approach that they advocated as far as expanding coverage. UWE REINHARDT, PH.D.: The words affordability and sustainability are tricky words. Certainly to economists. We have in the U.S. some unwritten law that says the federal government on average cannot raise more than 18 percent of GDP in the form of taxes. That has been constant for about 30 years with some wiggles. That could go to 23. If it went to 23, a lot of the problems would go away. Now if you add state and local taxes on top of that, you get to 26 percent of GDP is taxed in the U.S. And with the lowest, no other mention taxes as little as we do. So in terms of competitive advantage, we could raise taxes. To give you some numbers. I read the Social Security Trust Fund report and they predict that by 2050 10 percent of GDP will go to just fund Medicare. In its current form. Now it is about three, roughly around three. I said 10 percent, but then I thought, let us just draw a pie, see how big it is. And we are now real income per capita is $40,000. It will be close to $80,000 even if growth is only one and a half percent, rather than the two we have had per year growth in GDP. So if you have $80,000 and you take 10 percent away, that is eight. You still have $72,000 non-Medicare stuff. Well, now we have $40,000 minus three percent, that is about $38,000. So you cannot look at god frankly, and say, god, we cannot afford it. God will laugh at you. What you are really saying is we do not want to afford it. We do not want to raise taxes above eight. If you keep federal taxes at 18-percent, lots of bad stuff will happen. We probably cannot even afford the military because everything is just going to bump into it. But if we are going to raise taxes, as one of the very rich nations on earth, a lot of these problems actually go away. I cannot get that ever published as an op-ed piece but that is something people should know. It is not that you could not afford it, it is that for some reason we say we do not want to do that. And I will add one more thing as a caution, the health care sector has been virtually the only sector that has added jobs since 2001 on a net basis. All other sectors have added and taken away. The health sector is the economic locomotive of the American economy. If it had not been for health care growth, the first term of President Bush would have been an economic disaster. Between 2002 and 2003 53-percent of the growth in GDP was health care. This gives you some idea the issue is larger than just Medicare is not sustainable. I am looking you in the eye and say it is sustainable. Even as sloppily as we run it, Wenberg says we could shave 30-percent off it and still treat the elderly well. I believe that. But even if we wanted to be as sloppy as we are now, we could afford it. The question is would the political process sustain it.

This comment is depressing but, I think, accurate:

PAUL GINSBERG: I think in this election cycle, Medicare for all died at the very beginning of the Democratic primary process. When the leading Democratic candidates came out with proposals that looked like Massachusetts because they decided that Medicare for all is not politically feasible. I do not want to run on it. I want to run on something that has a chance that I can compromise with Republicans and actually get it done. And I think that is very much the mindset today. See if you can accomplish something significant. Do not go for your first choice. Settle for your second.

That’s how I feel about Obama’s plan – its settling for less than what we should demand, on a moral basis and a cost basis. I didn’t expect anything more from McCain, since he was nominated by a party that thinks people who don’t have the money for insurance or health care services don’t deserve to have them. But I want more from a Democrat.

Maybe Obama was right in thinking his plan has a better chance of getting passed than something more comprehensive (like Medicare for all). But just because it may pass doesn’t mean it will make that big a difference. Will his plan achieve significant, lasting change in coverage and cost? At least some experts don’t think so.

On a related note, go check out this Frontline interview with Uwe Reinhardt and his wife (also a health policy person) from late last year.

Support Texas Parent To Parent

If you live in Austin, please eat at Mama Fu’s on Friday or Saturday (9/19-20) to support Texas Parent to Parent.

TXP2P is a nonprofit that helps families whose children have disabilities, chronic/complex conditions and other special needs. The organization provides peer support and other services that make a huge difference in the lives of these families and their kids.

Mention TxP2P when ordering walk-in or call-in food all day both days. Mama Fu’s will donate 25% of your ticket total (pre-tax and tip) to Texas Parent to Parent

There are three Mama Fu’s locations: Lakeline Blvd, Southpark (I35 at Slaughter) and Triangle (North Lamar). Hours of operation are 11am to 10pm, with live music 6:30-9:30 pm Friday and Saturday at all three locations. Mama Fu’s sells beer, wine, and sake. Delivery available at the North Lamar location.

Friday Random Ten

Batten down the hatches, Texas.

1. Chains Of Love – Erasure
2. One In Ten – UB40
3. Somewhere In Between – Kate Bush
4. Time Goes By – Air Traffic
5. Radio Song – Jet
6. Zaz Turned Blue – Polly Jean Harvey & Eric Drew Feldman
7. Melt The Guns – English Settlement
8. Jumelles – MC Solaar
9. Shop Around – Captain & Tennille
10. So Much Out The Way – Estelle

And one for Ike.

Crazy Hair Day

Today Amelia’s class is having Crazy Hair Day. Look what I did to my daughter:

I braided pipe cleaners into three sections of her hair then looped them. The loops didn’t stand up as much as I meant for them to, so I connected the loops using two additional pipe cleaners. Then I did a ponytail loop (you don’t bring the ponytail all the way through the band) on each side of her head.

The class will vote on who has the craziest hair. She has some stiff competition from her friend Ellie, who had curlers, a wooden spoon, a toothbrush and a plastic frog in her hair this morning.

What Makes People Vote Republican?

This article and the nine responses to it make for a somewhat long but pretty interesting read.

The most amusing response (and one that contains some interesting points that many Democrats will agree with but that certainly won’t win anyone over), comes from Roger Shank:

The Haidt article is interesting, as are the responses to it, but these pieces are written by intellectuals who live in an environment where reasoned argument is prized. I live in Florida.

When I travel, I live the life of an intellectual. In Florida, I hang out with jocks and retirees. I try not to talk politics with them. When, it happens that I have no choice but to hear what they think about politics I take note of it. Here is what I have heard:

Obama is a Muslim. His pastor hates America. In fact nearly everyone outside of America hates America. If you travel outside of America, go on a cruise, so you won’t have to eat whatever it is one eats in those places. You don’t want to talk to the people either, but that’s not a problem because none of them speak English. And, anyway they all hate us for our freedoms. Obama will put Al Sharpton in the cabinet. Dick Cheney was the greatest Vice President in history. The Jews are running the country anyway.

I am not making this up. This is not a caricature. I wish I carried a tape recorder.

Why do these people vote Republican?

It is common to make the assumption that people are thinking when they vote and they are making reasoned choices. I harbor no such illusion. No argument I have ever gotten into with these people, (despite avoiding talking to them, I sometimes can’t resist saying something true) has ever convinced anyone of anything. They are not reasoning, nor do they want to try. They simply believe what they believe. What do they believe?

1. They don’t like blacks. Forget the rest. It isn’t that they are racists. They will be polite if a black person ever appears. (This doesn’t happen much, although I am sure they must live here too.) They just don’t like them. They have no reason. If you ask them today, as a result of recent remarks by Michelle Obama and their pastor, they will say that blacks hate America. This is not the reason, but they sound more reasoned in their own minds if they say it that way.
2. They don’t like wussies. The Democrats are always nominating wussies,—men who are not men. Obama looks like his wife runs the show at home. Kerry? Gore? Dukakis. Wussies. Not real men. Bad people are trying to kill us. We need to kill them first. Those guys wouldn’t pull the trigger. (I am not making this up. I wish I were.)
3. They worry about money. Who wants to take their money away? Liberals of course. They want to give it to the blacks.

Where I live is not redneck country. There is a lot of church going but no talk about abortion or of being born again. There is a just a distaste and distrust for people not like us (which I am sure includes me.)

It is all very nice to come up with complex analyses of what is going on. As is often the case, the real answer is quite simple. Most people can’t think very well. They were taught not to think by religion and by a school system that teaches that knowledge of state capitals and quadratic equations is what education is all about and that well reasoned argument and original ideas will not help on a multiple choice test.

We don’t try to get the average child to think in this society so why, as adults would we expect that they actually would be thinking? They think about how the Yankees are doing, and who will win some reality show contest, and what restaurant to eat it, but they are not equipped to think about politics and, in my mind, they are not equipped to vote. The fact that we let them vote while failing to encourage them to think for themselves is a real problem for our society.

The scientific question here is how belief systems are acquired and changed. I worked on this problem with both Ken Colby and Bob Abelson for many years. Colby was a psychiatrist who modeled paranoid behavior on computers. The basis of his work was research on how neurotic thinking depends upon the attempt to make inconsistent beliefs work together when the core beliefs cannot change.

Abelson worked on modeling political belief systems. He built a very convincing model of Barry Goldwater that showed that once you adopted some simple beliefs about the cold war, every other position Goldwater took could be derived (and asserted by a computer) from those core beliefs. The idea of a set of unchanging core beliefs is not true of only politicians or psychiatric patients of course. Everyday average Joes behave the same way. Adult belief systems rest on childhood beliefs instilled by parents mostly and by assorted other authorities.

Republicans do not try to change voter’s beliefs. They go with them. Democrats appeal to reason. Big mistake.

Lots of food for thought in these pages. Check them out when you have some time.

The Disney World Report

Short version: It was awesome!

We just returned from a week at Disney World. My feet still hurt. I’m tired. But wow, was it worth it. What a great trip!

The Kids. The girls were at a really good age for it. At 6 and 8, they were old enough to handle all the walking, the long days and late nights, but young enough to enjoy the characters and get excited by the magic of the place. We had remarkably few episodes of fighting, pouting or annoying behavior.

The Weather. Despite my fears that we would get rained on the entire week, the weather was really nice. We only got rain on our next to last morning there. Most of it was on-and-off light misting rain, with an hour or less of actual get-you-really-wet rain. Our ponchos kept everything dry but our feet, and we spent most of that 45 minutes to an hour on the monorail then a bus going from one park to another. ADDED: While I can’t complain, since it didn’t rain, it was very humid. My hair felt all wrong the whole week and was really frizzed out.

The Timing. We picked a good week to go. I had read that crowds really fall off after Labor Day as kids head back to school, and that turned out to be the case for us. The heaviest crowds we experienced were on the evening of Sunday, August 31 (the day we arrived) in the Magic Kingdom and the evening of Tuesday, September 2 at Disney Hollywood Studios. Both of those times, I would still say the crowds were only moderate, not heavy. The rest of the time, regardless of what park we visited, crowds were very light. We rarely had to stand in line for a ride for more than 5-10 minutes, and literally walked on with no wait to many rides. It was great. I can’t imagine going at a time when it is more crowded now that I’ve experienced it this way.

The Resort. We stayed at Wilderness Lodge. It is modeled after Old Faithful Lodge in Yellowstone National Park (a fact which automatically makes people like me, who watched Yogi Bear in my youth, think of it as being in Jellystone). Check out this photo tour – the rooms are pretty standard but the architecture, the lobby and the grounds are pretty amazing. One cool thing about this resort is that they offer boat service across the lake to and from Magic Kingdom.

The World. Despite having seen the map and knowing that the place was big, I was not prepared for how huge Disney World is (apparently, the equivalent of 40 square miles, or twice the size of Manhattan island). Even during a relatively slow time, it took us half an hour or more to get from our resort (which is near the Magic Kingdom) via bus to Animal Kingdom. This was due in part to stopping at two other resorts first. But even taking the bus directly from Animal Kingdom to the Ticket and Transportation Center took a solid 15-20 minutes, and we still had to ride the monorail for another several minutes to get to the Magic Kingdom. I think the bus from our resort direct to Epcot was 20+ minutes.

The Parks. I can’t decide which park is my favorite.

I loved Magic Kingdom, and I think that was probably the overall family favorite. I particularly love the look of Tomorrowland and Fantasyland. The size of the park is pretty manageable, and despite the number of rides and shows, if it isn’t too crowded you can realistically cover everything in a couple of days. This is the park we spent the most time in, so I was glad our resort was nearby. The final night we were there was the first night of Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. We had to purchase special tickets, and I was told they only sell tickets up to one-third the capacity of the park. They stay open til midnight, decorate the place for Halloween, set up trick-or-treat stations around the park, and do a Halloween-themed parade and fireworks. They also do a show in front of the castle starring some major Disney villains (Maleficent, Cruella de Ville, the Queen from Alice in Wonderland, Captain Hook, etc).

I wish we had had more time to linger in Epcot. We spent the equivalent of a full day there but didn’t get to everything. I wanted more time to browse through World Showcase and Innoventions. We went through two of the four Innoventions pavilions, which are sort of hands-on science museums. Lots to do and look at, I think if you have kids you could spend most of a day just in those four buildings. Plus there are the other Future World pavilions. We did everything in the Land Pavilion (Soarin’ is a great attraction!) but didn’t have time to explore everything available in the Seas Pavilion, or the pavilions with Test Track and Mission Space. We didn’t even go into the energy-themed pavilion. The girls really loved Spaceship Earth and wanted to do it again but we just couldn’t get to it. I was pretty underwhelmed with their evening fireworks/water extravaganza IllumiNations, but otherwise I really enjoyed the park. The Japan pavilion included an exhibit of tin toys which was very cool, I’ll post photos at some point.

Animal Kingdom is another one that really calls for a slower pace and time to explore. The Tree of Life alone is worth lingering over for awhile, just to check out the massiveness of it and try to identify the animals carved into it. It is such a contrast with the other three parks, with the focus on nature, the vegetation and animals. There are some good rides – Expedition Everest might be my favorite rollercoaster in all of Disney World – but you really have to approach Animal Kingdom as a zoo more than a theme park.

Disney Hollywood Studios is okay, but with a couple of exceptions, it didn’t do much for me. It is small, which is good since you don’t have to walk as much to see everything but bad because it takes fewer people for it to get crowded than in the other parks. We didn’t see any of the stunt shows or do the backlot tour since we spent less time here than in the other parks. The highlights are the two major rides (Rock-n-Rollercoaster and Tower of Terror) and Fantasmic, a water and lights extravaganza that was the best show we saw the entire week. I also enjoyed “One Man’s Dream”, a walk-through tour highlighting the life and work of Walt Disney. They had what appeared to be reproductions of vintage Disney posters throughout the exhibit – very cool, I took pictures and will post them at some point.

The Food. We got a great deal on Disney’s deluxe dining package. They ran a special, offering the basic dining plan for free to people staying in a Disney resort for three or more nights between certain dates. But the basic plan is a pain – you get one table service meal, one counter service meal and one snack per day per person. I didn’t want to have to keep up with table service versus counter service meals. So I got the deluxe plan, which is three meals (whether table or counter service) and two snacks per day per person. Because of the special they were running, I only had to pay the difference between the basic and the deluxe plans. I think it amounted to about $80 per day for all four of us. So the price was definitely right. We arrived after lunchtime on our first day, and departed before lunch on our final day, so we had meals we didn’t use even after accounting for a character breakfast and a dinner that each counted for two meals per person. I think we had 10 meals and 22 snacks that we didn’t use. Still, feeding all of us for about $80 a day on vacation was a huge bargain.

The food at Disney World is okay, not great but not bad, although some places we ate were surprisingly good. The Hollywood Brown Derby at Disney Studios (which counted for two meals per person) was quite good – their mascarpone polenta, which I had with slices of duck breast and venison sausage, was yummy. Les Chefs de France in Epcot was pretty good too. The lunch buffet at the Crystal Palace in Magic Kingdom had really good prime rib, pulled pork and a couple of hot pasta dishes that were better than your average midrange buffet fare. Mike thought the fish and chips at the Rose and Crown at Epcot’s England pavilion was really good, but I thought it was just so-so. I was surprised that I liked the Mickey-shaped waffles so much (we had them both at Chef Mickey’s breakfast buffet at the Contemporary resort as well as in the Wilderness Lodge’s Whispering Canyon Cafe). I was also surprised that the oatmeal in our lodge’s Roaring Fork counter service restaurant was so good. My favorite snack was the pineapple Dole Whip (soft serve ice cream) at Aloha in Adventureland (in Magic Kingdom). ADDED: I did not expect so many relatively healthy choices, both for adults and on the kids’ menus. The choices for kids are limited and do include standards like mac-n-cheese and chicken strips, but they also have such items as raw carrots and celery sticks, garden salad, chicken noodle soup, steamed broccoli and fresh fruit. Most counter service places seemed to have fresh fruit available as a snack choice. You can avoid junk food if you really want to.

The Attractions. There are a few thrill rides throughout the four parks that are fun – I liked Space Mountain and Expedition Everest the best. Rock N’ Roller Coaster is also pretty darned fun (although visually a bit lame), as is the Twilight Zone-themed Tower of Terror. But what Disney does best is tell a story. Some of my favorite rides are the ones where you coast slowly along (in a boat or on a track) and look at things or watch a story unfold. I love Its A Small World (I even like the song), Haunted Mansion, Splash Mountain (which does have a big drop toward the end but is mostly a slow float) and Peter Pan’s Flight. Spaceship Earth is fantastic. The shows are also alot of fun. Of all the ones we saw, the only complete disappointment was Journey Into Narnia: Prince Caspian at Disney Studios, which was nothing more than a commercial for the movie (and they make you stand the entire time). I was also a bit disappointed with the Hall Of Presidents in Magic Kingdom, mostly because it isn’t what I remember from seeing it as a kid, and only two of the animatronic presidents talk – Lincoln and George W Bush. (Although I was amused by my 6 year old, who kept asking whether George W Bush was a bad guy.) Festival Of The Lion King and Its Tough To Be A Bug at Animal Kingdom were both excellent, as was Monsters Inc Laugh Floor in Magic Kingdom.

The Planning. I highly recommend the annually-updated The Unofficial Guide To Disney World. It was invaluable in planning our trip. I even spent an extra $7.95 to access the additional touring plans on their website. Since the crowds were so light, we didn’t have to stick to the touring plans so religiously, but just knowing some of the rationale behind their touring strategies was helpful in deciding what to do when. The reviews of the attractions were helpful, and if I hadn’t learned about the need to reserve table-service and character meals far in advance, our dining experience would have been alot less interesting. There is lots of good online information about Disney World, but this book was by far the best resource I found.

The End. Disney World is great fun, but to maximize it – wait til your kids are early to mid elementary school, read The Unofficial Guide before you make plans, go for several days during an off-peak time when they offer a meal plan deal. Personally, I think staying at a Disney resort enhances the experience. It also allows you to use the free Magical Express shuttle service to and from the airport, which means you don’t have to rent a car.

ADDED: Photos are here and here.