PLAGIARISM USDOT

PLAGIARISM

USDOT’s ‘flat tire’ logo or...the case of the squashed triskelion

The WASHINGTON POST picked up big, a recent Sunday, on our item about the deflated USDOT logo and even used verbatim our line about it looking like USDOT had copped a flat tire. They got a beauty of a retort from a USDOT spokesman: “Somebody (here) apparently reinvented the wheel and got it wrong.”

We’re jealous of that one.

But how did the famous USDOT ‘mark’ suffer such an abortion of a distortion? Noone has hunted that down. Until now...

Our art dept advises that it is almost certain that in a desktop layout program such as Pagemaker the layout person neglected to fully hold down the shift key when reducing a PICT, JPEG or somesuch graphic, the pesky shift key being needed to maintain proportionality. An ITS trade magazine last year printed ITSA’s Jim Costantino’s face out of ratio and a bit squashed looking through the same small slip-up, we’ve discovered, an event which some feared would trigger one of those Vesuvial eruptions, but didn’t. Something else did, but, stop, that’s a different story... We did learn from the WASH POST that the USDOT logo is called a triskelion, a symbol of Greek mythology, but the guys on 15th St NW failed to acknowledge they’d picked it all up here first...the rotten plagiarists. We’d faxed it to them, fully expecting a mention of course of this esteemed, but not yet universally known, publication. But we didn’t score, dammit.

Thieves they are, nothing less.

Now surely, guys, we can settle this one amicably, if you’ll just sign this statement promising due mentions in return for valuable news tips. Unless ya play fair in the future, please be advised, you have fair warning now: our next gem will be faxed across to the TIMES, instead.