Recently in newsflash Category

Regular readers may have noticed that I haven't posted anything new for three days. This is in anticipation of an upgraded site and a new server! I've been holding off on the latest entries because I want them to be beautiful and linkable. So, while it may seem that nothing much is happening here, big changes are coming.

From the new server I'll be able to run up to 100 websites. Visions of a media empire are dancing in my head!

In 1986 I was admitted to the country of Burma with a one-week tourist visa. I quickly teamed up with three other travellers, and we enjoyed an astonishing whirlwind week. This was way back when Burma was called Burma by everyone, before thousands of marchers for democracy were killed in the streets in 1988. This was before tourist restrictions on photography so I was lucky to be allowed to take them freely.

There were very few cars in Burma, and these were all decades old and therefore delightful to the tourist. I also liked the ornamental luggage rack on this one. After taking the picture, I helped these guys push-start it.

"William Drenttel, at DesignObserver.com.

Click here to catch up on the London 2012 Olympics logo controversy. Just yesterday I was part of an online discussion of the newly released logo, or 'branding system,' with some of my design school buddies. (Not to influence your unique opinion, but we happened to agree with the author of this Design Observer article: it's crap.)

Jackson Pollock, No. 5, 1948.

ARTNET, Nov. 3, 2006.' Hollywood mogul David Geffen has sold Jackson Pollock's No. 5, 1948, for some $140 million to David Martinez, 48, the Mexico-born founder of the London-based Fintech Advisory Ltd. The price is said to be the highest ever for a contemporary painting. . . .

Formerly owned by S.I. Newhouse, the 4 x 8 ft. work was included in the 1998 Pollock retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Speculation has Geffen, who last month reportedly sold two other blue-chip contemporary works for a total of $145.3 million, raising funds to make a bid for the Los Angeles Times.

'A dazzling gold-flecked 1907 portrait by Gustav Klimt has been purchased for the Neue Galerie in Manhattan by the cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder for $135 million, the highest sum ever paid for a painting.

The portrait, of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the wife of a Jewish sugar industrialist and the hostess of a prominent Vienna salon, is considered one of the artist's masterpieces.'

'The New York Times, just today. I say why not and right on!

Attention please, all ART 4561 (Survery of Graphic Design History) students. Thanks to Lee (thank you Lee!) the study guide for our final exam is availble at www.LSUstart.com/paul. Please note that there are two parts, a part A and a part B.

The test will be multiple choice, simple identification, just like the midterm. All of the images in the study guide are also in our textbook (although the images are sometimes black-and-white rather than color and vice-versa).

The final will be held in room 201 of the Design Building (our classroom) at 3:00 pm on Thursday, May 11. See you there and then. . . .

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. ' House lawmakers were locked in a tense debate that Wednesday threatened to rock the chamber. Voices rose. Fists went into the air. Brows were furrowed.

The question: what should be Florida's official pie' . . .

'Ol' nasty key lime pie,' said Rep. Dwight Stansel, R-Live Oak. 'I can't understand how anyone in the world can present a bill making a state pie from a fruit that's not even grown in Florida.'

Stansel's passion aside, the tangy dessert prevailed, 106'14.

'Let's bring key limes back to Florida'and bring sunshine back to the state,' said Rep. Mitch Needelman, R-Melbourne.

'Local6.com, Central Florida, May 3, 2006. From the Associated Press.

'Let's impeach the president for lying
And leading our country into war
Abusing all the power that we gave him
And shipping all our money out the door

He's the man who hired all the criminals
The White House shadows who hide behind closed doors
And bend the facts to fit with their new stories
Of why we have to send our men to war

Let's impeach the president for spying
On citizens inside their own homes
Breaking every law in the country
By tapping our computers and telephones

What if Al Qaeda blew up the levees
Would New Orleans have been safer that way
Sheltered by our government's protection
Or was someone just not home that day'

Let's impeach the president
For hijacking our religion and using it to get elected
Dividing our country into colors
And still leaving black people neglected

Thank god he's cracking down on steroids
Since he sold his old baseball team
There's lot of people looking at big trouble
But of course the president is clean

Thank God'

'Neil Young, the lyrics to Let's Impeach the President from his upcoming album, Living With War. Found this via Fark at Foxnews.com. Foxnews. That would be ironic, would it not'

LONDON, Jan. 12, 2006 (UPI) British biologists have discovered that ants teach each other how to get food, in the first known example of a teacher-pupil relationship in non-humans.

Nigel Franks, a biologist at the University of Bristol, says members of the ant species Temnothorax albipennis use a technique known as tandem running to teach each other how to get from the nest to a food stash.

"While it's well known that animals will mimic each other, so one animal is learning from another . . . there's sort of a two-way street in teaching that defines true teaching," he said.

A report by Franks and colleague Tom Richardson appear in the journal Nature.

In a tandem run, the lead ant only continues forward when frequently tapped on its legs and abdomen by the following ant's antennae. When a gap appears between the two, each ant adjusts its speed to close it.

The lead ant could reach the food stash four times faster when not slowed by a follower, researchers said. But the follower ant finds the food faster than when searching alone and is ultimately able to quickly run solo errands.

Copyright 2006 United Press International.