caquelon oder der fondue verschwörung

Reprising an older episode from October 2014, Planet Money helped us get wise to the Swiss cheese cartel (Schweizerische Käseunion) and how the former marketing and trade company—given the powers of a regulatory body, in effect, by the Swiss government, successfully campaigned and unified production to keep the industry safe and solvent while also promoting and popularising fondue and raclette as traditional, national dishes. Chartered in the midst of the First World War, the Käseunion drew up production quotas and a pricing regime to prevent cheese from being too far devalued.

Neutral Switzerland having weathered the war unscathed, it retained its systems of production but no longer had the rest of Europe to export its cheese to. The low demand and high supply was kept under control by the monopoly, who directed production and pared down the thousand varieties formerly produced to just seven authorised kinds and then eventually down to three: the iconic Gruyère, Emmental and Sbrinz. Fondue was not invented in the 1950s and aggressively marketed around the world in the 1960s and beyond as a vehicle for selling more surplus cheese and the characterisation probably is sure to offend but we’re suspecting that that version is not too far off. As attested turophiles, however, we don’t care if the image of bubbling cauldrons (caquelon) of cheese at the ski chalet is a bit of a ploy. Amid scandal and corruption, the Käseunion was officially disbanded in 1999, and while their legacy is still felt, cheesemakers are free to return to producing some of the heirloom varieties.

transit authority

Though this fare strike on routes in Okayama is not the first example of a social picketing without disruption to services, it was certainly a new and novel concept to us.
Bus drivers threw blankets over the ticket machines and refused to accept payments from riders in order to protest their wage situation and rate hikes that leave drivers worried that they might be undercut by competing lines. The first mention of this sort of demonstration dates back to 1944 when streetcar workers in Cleveland, Ohio stopped collecting fares to leverage better wages and working conditions. Generally such strikes have positive outcomes since passengers are not inconvenienced but quite the opposite and the gesture fosters a sense of solidarity. What do you think? I wonder what sort of analogues there are for this type of protest in other sectors.

well you know my name is simon

Via Kottke, we quite enjoyed being introduced Ralph Ammer through his easily digestible and assayable sketching exercises, parsed as gifs rather than video, a format that does not leave much to the imagination and probably not the best mode of instruction. The looping repetition seems to be a really effective way to impart the process and elements of drawing, regardless of one’s aspirations of the moment.

luftbrücke

Preparations are already underway to commemorate the role of Wiesbaden US Army Airfield during the Blockade of Berlin (previously here and here) for the seventieth anniversary of the operation’s successful completion, which resulted after a year of non-stop flights in the Soviets relenting and permitting the UK, France and the US access to their sectors of the city. In one of the traffic round-abouts, they’ve erected a steeple topped with a weather vane that depicts the Luftbrücke (it turns out that the piece was salvaged from a roof of a barracks building that housed the pilots and crew, installed as an earlier commemoration) and as the ceremony approaches, we’ll have a better idea of the schedule of events to mark this occasion.

0.1% pure elation

Having enjoyed his gentle and perseverant comics for quite some time, we were pleased to learn that illustrator and humourist Grant Snider had recently released a collection of his panels as a book called The Shape of Ideas with an abundance of valuable insights on the creative process. There is of course an idiosyncratic aspect to routine and ritual and the only superpower that Nature bestowed on humans was grit, stamina and the ability to stick with what works, and we appreciated the invitation into how Snider begins his day and not being overwhelmed by a day-job and can relate to the struggle and accomplishment of keeping things in perspective. Be sure to check out the whole review from Hyperallergic at the link above and to follow Snider on all the things.