March 2012
1 post
I’m about to walk out of my office at the...
February 2012
1 post
2 tags
January 2012
1 post
1 tag
From bicycles to Buicks
The first three S’s could probably be found in MBA textbooks and company brochures in many countries and many languages. But the fourth S was highly unusual, especially in China.
4. Shanghai GM. The fourth S was the name of the 50-50 joint venture company itself. Point number four was far and away the most important S. This S said that every employee of the joint venture should put Shanghai GM...
November 2011
2 posts
Surprisingly, this is not a story about Albert...
“It is a sport in which the contestants sometimes lie down in the middle of the field, unmotivated and bemused.”
October 2011
3 posts
Hitting a little close to home there, don't you...
Working at the museum greenhouse recently, I saw a pair of birdwing butterflies engaged in a courtship dance. The male, with his shimmering green wings, flies up and under the female repeatedly until she submits. This male looked exhausted; he had spent so much time seeking her attention that his wings had become tattered and faded.
That evening a large group of children were in the museum...
Randomness, narrative and the Red Sox collapse
I update this blog so much that I decided I needed another venue for my thoughts to avoid clogging this one up. So I started a baseball blog that will focus primarily on the Cleveland Indians. Nine months ago. I just wrote my first post for it yesterday. And it’s about the Boston Red Sox, not the Indians. Thank God this Internet thing is a fad, or I might not be cut out for a professional...
September 2011
2 posts
2 tags
Adulting: Step 50: Lay out your outfit the night... →
Kelly’s website is really fun, and I would recommend a perusal to anyone with a few free minutes. However, I do have an addendum to her tip about laying out your outfit the night before: Don’t do it if you have a cat.
I did this a few months ago for a wedding — I laid out my best suit, a crisp white shirt, tie, boxers, socks and shoes and went to sleep with sweet dreams of suave...
The Persiliad, Book 18
As the men fought on like a blazing fire raging,
swift-footed Jeremy Ebert came to Dan Persa
with his news. He found Persa by his head set,
sensing in himself what had already happened,
speaking with a troubled mind to his own great heart:
“Why are purple-helmeted Wildcats once again
retreating to their locker room, being beaten back
across the plain in terror? I hope the gods
have not done...
August 2011
1 post
July 2011
1 post
WatchThey Might Be Giants and a bunch of AV Club interns cover Tubthumping. I nominate this to be Rebecca Black’s successor in welcoming us to the weekend.
June 2011
4 posts
May 2011
4 posts
Hiroshima, October 1945
I ran across this in a letter my grandfather wrote to his parents when he was in the Navy in 1945.
It is about 15 miles from Kure to Hiroshima, but after about 7 miles you begin to notice that all the buildings are leaning a little in your direction. People here don’t seem as cheerful as in Kure or Hiro. A little further there aren’t any roofs or windows and some of the houses are...
“New York has always been a great crowd for you guys. But, truthfully, what is...”
– Davey Pierce, of Montreal, speaking the truth.
Not getting the whole no comment thing ...
Emerson Spartz, 24, the defendant in the case, declined to comment on the ownership issue directly because of the pending litigation.
(snip)
“Mr. Deck has hardly lifted a finger throughout most of the growth of OMG Facts, but people have been telling him he’s a genius for so long now that he’s starting to believe it,” Spartz...
April 2011
2 posts
March 2011
5 posts
Over/Under
There’s a nifty little ESPN post on the over-under lines for each team, and whether the experts think the teams will go, well, over or under that win total.
But the interesting thing to me is that if you add up all the over-under totals, you get 2,437.5. There are 30 MLB teams playing 162 games, and since each game can only end in one win, that means there are only 2,430 possible wins in...
There is no way this movie can live up to its...
On the stage earlier Ms. Foster had called the film “probably the biggest struggle of my professional career.”
She referred both to its subject — hopeless depression and a man who struggles through it with the help of a beaver hand puppet — and to the turmoil surrounding its lead actor, Mel...
The last time I thought about Nate Dogg was last...
WatchVideo evidence that Snoop Dogg did indeed my humble hamburg of Mobile, Alabama.
February 2011
4 posts
WatchStella was singing at 18 minutes old.
Goldbricking →
bestofwikipedia:
Goldbricking, in today’s terms, generally refers to staff who use their work internet access for personal reasons while maintaining the appearance of working, which can lead to inefficiency. The term originates from the confidence trick of applying a gold coating to a brick of worthless metal. (via sleevia)
I thought this was called working.
1 tag
Stealing first
Cleveland Indians outfielder Manny Ramirez startled the fans at Jacobs Field in the first game of a double-header played last August 13 between the Tigers and Indians when it appeared he was trying to steal first base. Here is what happened.
In the bottom of the eighth inning Ramirez singled, scoring Omar Vizquel from second base. Manny proceeded to advance to second on defensive...
January 2011
3 posts
“Where else can you find a two pound burger that includes other meat sensations,...”
– Akron Aeros COO Jim Pfander, describing the Cleveland Indians’ AA affiliate’s newest food offering. I believe the correct answer is “Hell.”
So this is how the Civil War begins
The occasion for this sudden attack, according to later newspaper reports, was the unexpected appearance in Mobile Bay of a small naval vessel, the USS Crusader, which was wrongly assumed to be bringing federal troops. (Her captain actually just needed to stop and cash a check.)
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/caught-sleeping/
December 2010
3 posts
Katy Perry’s “California Gurls,”...
November 2010
3 posts
How customer service works in 2010
The beautiful, talented, Tumblr-avoiding Molly Knight posted all of these tweets within an hour of each other. Fascinting.
Molly Knight I arrived 42 min early for my flight instead of 45. @Delta charged me $50 for next flight even though I have flown 30K since June. Hate them
Molly Knight Refund the $100 i just spent, would be the obvious thing. RT @DeltaAssist: @molly_knight Is...
“Nascar has more fans who are accepting of me being gay than gays have been...”
– Michael Myers, in this NYT profile.
October 2010
4 posts
Dan Murtaugh's brash Buccos
All year, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has been re-running its 50-year-old stories of the 1960 Pirates season. They capped off the series today, with the game story from Game Seven, which many (especially those in Pittsburgh) would call the greatest baseball game ever played.
There is so much I love about this, but I think nothing is as good as the dateline:
THE HOME OF THE WORLD CHAMPS, Oct,...
Best baseball sentence of 2010
Lincecum threw 10 or 15 generation pitches on Thursday, sliders that burned out and disappeared like they were entering the earth’s atmosphere, changeups that sputtered and coughed on the way to the plate like old Buicks, fastballs that seem to skip double-dutch just as they arrive at the plate.
http://joeposnanski.si.com/2010/10/08/halladay-and-lincecum/
September 2010
11 posts
“Where is the freedom of speech? It’s a tradition. You can’t truly ban it if it’s...”
– University of South Alabama student Kaileigh Simm, invoking the first amendment to defend her right to yell “South in your mouth” when her team makes a free throw.
“Philosophers have often looked for the defining feature of humans — language,...”
– Paul Bloom, a Yale psychologist, in James Gorman’s incredibly enjoyable piece about hot peppers in the Times.
