C'est Bon
Last year it was held in Reno. The year before that in the burgeoning technological research hub of Charlotte, N.C. This year, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers — the world’s leading professional association for the advancement of technology — is bringing its annual Virtual Reality Conference to Lafayette. The event comes to the Cajundome Convention Center March 14-18, thanks in large part to IEEE senior member and event chair Dr. Carolina Cruz-Neira, chief scientist at UL Lafayette and, until recently, executive director of the Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise. The event is expected to draw some 350 attendees and showcase LITE and Lafayette’s fiber-to-the-home project for some of the world’s preeminent virtual reality and 3-D user interface experts. For more info, visit http://conferences.computer.org/vr/2009 .
Pas Bon
Sure Shootin’. Rep. Ernest Wooten is back with a vengeance, once again taking aim at college campuses’ firearm free zones. His bill to allow college students to pack guns in their backpacks got shot down last year, but Wooten is vowing to return for another showdown in the Legislature this year. The proposal has drawn near unanimous opposition from campus police, faculties and student bodies across the state, but Wooten still thinks it’s high time our universities return to the good old days of Wild West vigilante justice. If the Legislature has any sense, this bill will be dead on arrival.
Couillon
Apparently perturbed that a SafeSpeed van had tagged him for speeding Friday night as he drove down Ambassador Caffery Parkway, 42-year-old Douglas A. Begnaud of Scott allegedly approached the van and began yelling at the operator. When the operator opened the door to the vehicle, Begnaud allegedly grabbed the operator, then returned to his truck and rammed the speed van multiple times, pushing the van into a ditch. On Monday morning Begnaud turned himself in and was charged with simple criminal damage to property and simple battery. Let’s just say SafeSpeed reps had very little doubt the alleged perp would be caught. “The violator left before police arrived,” SafeSpeed’s customer relations manager, Christina Barnes, wrote in a Saturday e-mail to LCG’s Tony Tramel notifying him of the incident. “But we captured his plate and a good face shot, which the police are already using to help locate him.”
In rendering his ruling, District Judge John Trahan all but called the real estate developer a liar for inconsistencies in his accounts of what prompted him to punch a school teacher unconscious.
Frank’s Casing Crew, now doing business as Frank’s International, will make its final appearance on ABiz’s list of the Top 50 Privately Held Companies in Acadiana this year, and once again it will likely be at the top with more than $1 billion in annual revenues. The 75-year-old company specializing in tubular fabrication and installation services to the oil and gas industry plans to offer shares of its stock to the public for the first time.
The defeat, or rather highjacking of House Bill 420 in the final days of this year's Legislative Session, say Reps. Vincent Pierre and Terry Landry, is the result of the propaganda spread by one unidentified local media outlet and an unnamed former state Representative, but nothing to do with the original legislation's lack of checks, balances or details.
City-Parish Council Chairman Brandon Shelvin heaped steady doses of condescending ire on a Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Louisiana executive while failing to reveal his financial ties to a BC/BS rival.
Abbeville native David Primeaux was a popular professor until his death late last year, and while he was successful at camouflaging a dark past, he couldn’t outlive it.
Tehmi Chassion’s failure to recuse himself in the school board’s selection of a group health benefits provider raises ‘serious questions’ on whether he violated state ethics law.
He’s a singer. A songwriter. A piano man. A family man. He’s even got his own Wikipedia entry. He’s David Egan. And he knows ancient secrets about the monolithic stones of Stonehenge that he’s not willing to share.
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