May 11th, I'm boarding a small, seventy-person plane from Charlotte to New Bern, NC, to go to the Duke Marine Lab. The plane is powered by one propeller on each wing. A little uneasy, I reach in the front seat pocket and turn open the safety pamphlet to find the image above.

Yes, the genius who designed this pamphlet had an artist draw cartoons of people acting out the safety procedures of the aircraft...and then thought it absolutely essential that the cartoons have life-like hair...

Think about this. Upon the designer's request, a technician had to find models to pose in the desired positions for the pamphlet, use a photo editing program to select around the hair of the mother and baby, and paste the hair over the cartoon characters. Wow. Thank you, designer, for the realistic hair. It is vastly more useful to me than, I don't know, say, words explaining what to do.

Feel safe in the air, people. The folks responsible for our safety either a) are screwing with us or b) overvalue good-looking hair. So, yeah, think about this the next time you fly.