Dirac Angestun Gesept

The Guardian has an article on the completion of renovations to London’s Peter Jones department store in Chelsea.

The old store was one of these mish-mash buildings (”an amalgam of five buildings constructed between 1895 and 1965″) with lots of internal logistical and layout problems. However, the “easy” solution of just closing and doing major renovations was ruled out in order to avoid losing staff and customers to rival stores…so they had to do it all while staying open. (Shades of Boston’s Big Dig.)

Usable selling floor space is up 20%, and the store now features “a vast, bright, six-floor atrium criss-crossed with smoothly operating escalators. At its peak is a new 270-seat self-service cafe offering big views of the west London cloudscape.”

I’m looking forward to seeing it on our next visit to London.

(Also, the Sloane Square station on the Underground has a river running over the platform, in a pipe. Where else will you see that?)

The famous Kendall Square Turkey is back; I saw him today on my way to and from lunch.

He was just chilling out, looking at his reflection in the windows of the Biogen building at 10 Cambridge Center, and enjoying the attention of all the passers-by.

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is having a grand opening of the new south concourse on Saturday.

There are some interesting articles about aspects of the new terminal, including a neat 90-foot-long glass art piece and the P-I’s overview of the new terminal. The latter notes that Sea-Tac started out as a Quonset hut in an open field in 1947…hey, sounds like Logan 2000!

In smaller construction news, planning for a new playground near where I grew up continues.

The P-I’s Robert Jamieson has an interesting column in today’s paper on the roving homeless camp and how it came to Bothell.

Last but not least, some South Sound businesses are being helped onto the World Wide Web. Anyone for almond butter toffee salmon jerky?

(And, yes, these are regional articles and not Seattle-centric…but the title pun was too good to miss.)

The New York Times has an article on the invitation process for Reagan’s funeral, but the interesting part to me was a description of the evacuation of the Capitol due to a false alarm.

Among those chased out of the building were former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr.; former Vice President Dan Quayle; Dr. Jeanne J. Kirkpatrick, a former United States ambassador to the United Nations; former Attorney General Edwin Meese III; Richard V. Allen, a former national security adviser; Kenneth M. Duberstein, a former White House chief of staff; Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of the News Corporation; Tom Korologos, a Reagan White House aide and longtime Republican lobbyist who was recently an adviser in Baghdad to L. Paul Bremer III, the top American civilian administrator in Iraq; Bob Colacello, a Vanity Fair writer who is working on a biography of Mrs. Reagan; and Margaret D. Tutwiler, a former Reagan White House aide who became the State Department spokeswoman in the first Bush administration and the ambassador to Morocco in the second.

The payoff quote, however:

Mr. Colacello said, “I didn’t know Rupert Murdoch could run so fast.”

Sunday’s Boston Globe Magazine had a piece (not available online) debating the issue of legalized gambling, which pointed out that even penny-ante poker nights are illegal in Massachusetts (though, of course, the state Lottery continues to be promoted…).

So would that imply that it’s illegal to bet on the Super Bowl?

Is anyone going to bust a guy who not only bets on football, but does it blatantly, announcing it on the radio? Perhaps our Governor, who feels it’s his duty to “enforce all the laws”, will take a stand?

UPDATE 15:11: He’s even bragging about the wager on a state-run website.