land O links

Here are a few links:

• When is the best time to purchase airline tickets? On average, 49 days before your departure for domestic flights, 81 days for international flights.
• What day of the week is the best for purchasing airline tickets? The weekend, according to a paper published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
• When is the optimal time to purchase concert tickets? Usually right before the concert when they may be discounted. This assumes perfect information that is free. After taking the cost of information into account, such as the cost of checking ticket prices every day, I wonder if it’s not really best to wait until the last minute. Plus, waiting to the last minute may lead to other problems, like finding a babysitter at the last minute. Good luck with that.
• American Airlines is toying with the idea of first boarding customers without bags that go into the overhead bins, thus improving efficiency at the expense of irking their elite customers. How far should the airlines go to board the plane a few minutes (seconds) earlier?
• McDonalds is going to reduce its menu of 145 items to reduce complexity and improve service.
• In Berlin, Occupy Germany is taking on Barbie and her dreamhouse:

At the final “Occupy Barbie” meeting Tuesday, Franziska Sedlak, 25, wondered why the Dreamhouse only lets girls act out careers like model and pop star, instead of jobs like engineer and mathematician.

Mattel’s Ms. Cota said the decision was one of logistics and entertainment. “Pretending to be an engineer is a hard concept for a 4- or 6-year-old to play out,” she said. She notes that the Dreamhouse has a space where children can impose their faces on outfits for Barbie’s 135 careers, including astronaut, engineer, doctor and chancellor.

• It’s the time of year for advice for graduates. Here is TIME’s Top 10 commencement addresses ever. For something more recent, here are Jason Gay’s 29 pieces of advice for college graduates. Take the link to Mary Schmich’s Wear Sunscreen column. You’ve likely heard or seen Schmich’s column – Baz Luhrmann turned it into a music video in the late 90s (wait until about 30 seconds into the video for the music to start).