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Mr. Lucas, an architectural hobbyist, laid out the original designs for the project and donated an initial $175 million to build and support it. Industry benefactors like Warner Brothers, Fox and the Walt Disney Company have contributed another $50 million.

About $50 million still must be raised — in the face of hard times, even for Hollywood — to equip a second phase that would include a 36,000-square-foot animation building. Nonetheless school officials said that construction is fully paid for and was scheduled to be finished by August 2010.

For Mr. Lucas the grand expansion — which serves a full-time enrollment of about 1,500 graduate and undergraduate cinema students, along with thousands who take an occasional class — is all about sending a message.

“The only way you are going to get respect on a college campus, or a university campus, is to build something that is important,” Mr. Lucas said of his reasons for backing the complex. “Schools and universities mainly understand money.”

"The future belongs to a different kind of person," Pink says. "Designers, inventors, teachers, storytellers — creative and empathetic right-brain thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn't." Pink claims we're living in a different era, a different age. An age in which those who "Think different" may be valued even more than ever.

"...an age animated by a different form of thinking and a new approach to life — one that prizes aptitudes that I call 'high concept' and 'high touch.' High concept involves the capacity to detect patterns and opportunities, to create artistic and emotional beauty, to craft a satisfying narrative....High touch involves the ability to empathize with others, to understand the subtleties of human interaction..."

                                              — Dan Pink, A Whole New Mind

There is something else that people don't understand, and that is that
C-SPAN is a nonprofit business that has been paid handsomely for providing
a valuable public service.
According to Guidestar,

C-SPAN, doing business as the National Cable Satellite Corporation,
had revenues for the year ending March 31, 2005 of $52,437,531
and expenses of only $48,858,668. In other years, the excess of
revenue over expense has been even greater. Indeed, C-SPAN had stashed
away $93,886,282 in total assets, a large part of which is in cash
and securities. (Form 990).
In addition, the C-SPAN Educational Foundation had net assets of
$2,591,238 on March 31, 2005 (Form 990).

What people also may not understand is that C-SPAN is the primary beneficiary
of considerable public largess. The House-Senate Radio-Television gallery,
along with all the individual committees, go to great lengths and expense
to accommodate and support C-SPAN. The Congress wisely does not break these
expenses out as line items in their Legislative Branch Appropriations
Bill, but to underscore the scale of the commitment, I would call your
attention to the comments of the Honorable
David Obey in House Report 109-139:

The cost of the Capitol Visitor Center, first estimated at $95 million,
has ballooned to over $500 million. I have raised my concerns about
this project several times in the past, and I continue to have serious
objections to the current plan. ...
For example, the CVC will provide the House with little, if any, usable new
workspace. ... The current design of the CVC House space includes 87,000-square
feet of space, of which only 3,200 square feet is for hearing rooms where public
business can be conducted, and even this is designed inefficiently. This is
because the real work of the Congress was not a primary consideration in its
construction. It was constructed in such a way as to make it ready for
television. The media room takes up two floors, wasting significant space,
with limited room for staff or the public. The chief value of this opulent
hearing space, and the accompanying new Radio and Television Gallery , seems
to be as a high tech propaganda tool.

The British Broadcasting Corp. began showing excerpts from its news and entertainment programs on the YouTube video-sharing Web site Friday, becoming the first international broadcaster to ink a major deal with the Google Inc.-owned portal.

In an agreement that analysts described as a key step for both the BBC and YouTube, the British broadcaster is offering three branded channels on the site, including one showing up to 30 news clips a day. The deal gives the BBC access to millions more viewers and gives YouTube the credibility of the venerable British broadcaster.

The only two cases of mad cow in U.S.-born cattle, found in Texas and Alabama, were a different form of the disease than the strain commonly found in Europe, French prion researcher Thierry Baron told scientists at a meeting in London in May.

Baron believes it is likely that the two U.S. cases — and at least five others found in France, Italy and Germany — occurred in a way that is strongly reminiscent of the most common human form of the disease, which is also not blamed on a contaminant. More research is necessary to know for certain, Baron said in an e-mail sent last week to USA TODAY.

If it can appear out of thin air to infect cattle as it does humans, "we may never be able to get rid of the disease," says Jean-Philippe Deslys, central coordinator of NeuroPrion, the network that coordinates European prion researchers.