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A photo of my favorite sports writer Bill Simmons circa 1985 from this recent New York Times profile on "the voice of the citizenry of sports nation."
That hat is bananas.
This chart is extremely accurate.
Click image to enlarge.
What you're looking at above is the master guide at the headquarters of Delta Airlines of all the systems that would need to be integrated between Delta and Northwest in their merger. It was devised by Delta’s chief information officer, Theresa Wise who also has a doctorate in applied mathematics.
They immediately began planning for what turned out to be an 18-month sprint to integrate 1,200 systems across the two airlines — everything from customer loyalty programs to aircraft operations, all without interrupting service. Managers built this master guide to break down when these systems would need to start working together. Each note represents a project that could involve thousands of tasks.
The accompanying article has some fascinating tidbits as well where no detail in the merger was too small that had to be resolved:
- Delta pours soda into a cup. Northwest hands over the can.
- Delta pilots used to ring the cabin bell four times on final approach. Northwest pilots rang it twice.
- Delta cut its limes in 10 slices. Northwest cut them 16 ways.
The Endings of 10 Famous Novels You Always Meant to Read but Never Got Around To.
- She dies.
- He falls out of love with her.
- He dies.
- He kills it and then he dies.
- Everyone dies.
- A fire destroys everything.
- He wins.
- They're rescued.
- They find it.
- Snape kills Dumbledore.
Photo by Jay Parkinson.
The dissident artist Ai Weiwei was allowed a visit from his wife on Sunday, the first time he has been seen or heard from since being detained by authorities 43 days ago and held incommunicado in a secret Beijing-area location.
The latest issue of New York Magazine has a cover story written by Wesley Yang that is apparently about issues of identity for Asians Americans (I say apparently because I haven't read it yet, but 89 percent of my Asian friends have forwarded the article to me and it's what I gleaned from the cover and the water cooler buzz. Okay, I'm exaggerating: 88 percent of my friends sent it to me). I'll get around to reading it right after I find out where the Dramatic Kitten Crash Test falls on the magazine's Approval Matrix. Anyway, this latest issue's cover features CLOSE UP BIG ASIAN EYES. I studied and wrote countless papers on "Important Issues Pertaining to Minority Identities" back in my college and grad school days. Yet my first reaction upon seeing the cover was to do this:
Hahaha. LOOK AT MY ASIAN EYES!!!*
*That's kind of the unsubtle point of the cover, right? So racially meta, which is what I find 90 percent annoying about contemporary racial and ethic discourse nowadays.
When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me-it still sometimes happens-and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don't ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous-not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance. . . . That pure chance could be so generous and so kind. . . . That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time. . . . That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful. . . . The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don't think I'll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.
- Ann Druyan, the late Carl Sagan's wife and partner
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Sign in Bonners Ferry, Idaho.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkyjJSI6RIE] This will be used in a dance sequence in STEP UP 4D.
To paraphrase a tweet of mine from yesterday, I've noticed that in the bin Laden news coverage, Abbottabad, the town he was hiding in, has beautiful scenery: lush green trees, rollings hills surrounded by mountains, and all under pleasant clear skies. The above photo that accompanies the Wikipedia entry on the town is breathtaking.
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