Tesla Crosses Over With Model X

Los Angels based Tesla Motors, eager to push electric vehicles ever further into the mainstream, unveiled a practical all-wheel-drive, seven-passenger crossover utility at a red-carpet affair befitting a movie premiere.

Company CEO Elon Musk, never given to understatement, all but called the Model X a revolutionary vehicle that delivers everything we love about automobiles while freeing us from the shackles of petroleum.

“We’ve created a car that has more functionality than a minivan, more style than an SUV and more performance than a Porsche 911 Carrera,” Musk said, making his obligatory comparison to a premium automaker during a small gathering for the press before the formal unveiling Thursday night.

It remains to be seen if Musk makes good on that last claim — there is but one Model X prototype, and he wasn’t about to let us drive it. But the X is an attractive enough automobile, with sleek lines, a curvaceous shape and striking “falcon wing” rear doors that open like wings.

The X is the second mainstream automobile from Tesla, and it builds upon much of the technology and tooling of the Model S sedan. We’re still waiting for the sedan — Tesla promises to begin deliveries within five months — but Musk says it’s time to look ahead.

“The reason for bringing the Model X out now,” Musk said, “is to show that we really can do more than one car, that we can leverage the investment in the Model S into another vehicle.”

As much as Musk loves to say his company is more Silicon Valley than Detroit, he’s once again following the auto industry playbook by maximizing the versatility of an existing platform.

David Choe’s Facebook Art

Having made a painting of Barack Obama (then a senator) by October 9, 2008 as part of a display for a New York art exhibition, which now by the way hangs on a wall in the White House, artist David Choe seems to have scored another hit. The graffiti artist is believed to have made a fortune following Facebook’s IPO. In 2005 he did a work for Facebook, painting the walls of their HQ with his artistic work. For this, he was paid with shares in the company instead of cash. This is now expected to be worth about $200 million once Facebook begins trading as a public company. Am sure this is going to inspire you artists out there to target tech startups and oh “ please pay me in shares not cash”. Good luck!

'Mona Lisa' copy done hand in hand with da Vinci

Mona Lisa


A "Mona Lisa" copy owned by Spain's Prado Museum was almost certainly painted by one of Leonardo da Vinci's apprentices alongside the master himself as he did the original, museum officials said Wednesday. The stunning find of what the Prado now says is probably the earliest known copy of La Gioconda will give art lovers and experts an idea of what the Mona Lisa looked like back in the 16th century, said Gabriele Finaldi, the museum's deputy director collections. "It is as if we were in the same studio, standing at the next easel," he told reporters.


The copy has been part of the Prado collection for years and displayed occasionally but no one paid much attention to it because around the woman in the Mona Lisa was a stark black background, not the pretty landscape seen in the original. Two years ago, to get the copy ready for a da Vinci exhibit later this year in Paris, where the original hangs in the Louvre, tests were done and this gave restorers a hint that something lie under the black coat, which was added in the 18th century for reasons not fully understood. When the black covering was removed, a Tuscan landscape very similar to the one in the original emerged. And X-ray tests which allow experts to peek under a painting's surface to see how it developed as it was composed showed that changes made in the copy were similar to changes made to the original as it evolved. Varnish has also been removed from the Mona Lisa's face, making it look brighter and younger than the face coated with cracked, darkish varnish at the Paris museum. "You can imagine that this is what the Mona Lisa looked like back in the 16th century," Finaldi said. Miguel Falomir, the Prado's director for Italian painting, said the copy gives art lovers and experts a chance "to admire the Mona Lisa with totally different eyes." He and Finaldi said the museum's best guess is that the copy was done by a da Vinci apprentice named Francesco Melzi, because of the style observed in it.


Besides the black background, one other difference from the original is the woman in the copy has eyebrows and the Mona Lisa in the real masterpiece does not. There are dozens of the surviving replicas of the masterpiece from the 16th and 17th centuries. The Louvre supports the Prado's new evaluation of the painting, Finaldi said. The Prado plans to put it on display later this month before it travels to France for the da Vinci show. 
By DANIEL WOOLLS - MADRID (AP)