Look away from the logo

We've always been concerned that Katie Couric's voice would make our ears bleed, our eyes roll back in our head and cause us to swallow our tongue.
The 2012 London Summer Games logo apparently can do the same.
The animated display of the jigsaw-style logo has already been taken down from the official website today following concern that it -- for real -- could trigger epileptic seizures.
Epilepsy Action, a British health charity, said 10 people had complained about the animation and some had suffered seizures from watching images depicting a diver plunging into a pool, the Associated Press reported.
The Olympic group said it has taken steps to remove the animation from the Web site and will now re-edit the film.
The design is made up of four jagged pieces that form the numbers 2012 in a variety of colors. It cost $796,000 and was targeted at young people. The logo was unveiled Monday and within hours an online petition was established asking for a new design.
London's Design Museum founder Stephen Bayley said the logo was "a puerile mess, an artistic flop and a commercial scandal."
Chief organizer Sebastian Coe claimed the graffiti-style design was created to draw the attention of young people. An official Web site shows flashing and moving images of the logo. In a departure from previous games, the logo has no visual imagery of the host city or country.

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Since we have disabled the blog comment section on some of these recent entries because of unwarrented spam, we have agreed to post this response from Bob Timmerman of South Pasadena in relation to this posting:
I'm not sure why the events of an epileptic seizure seem so funny to people. It's even stranger because Mr. Hoffarth mentions two symptoms: bleeding out of the ear and "swallowing your tongue", that don't even happen when people have seizures.
I can state that because I have epilepsy, which thankfully is able to be controlled by medication. But the only way someone with epilepsy will start bleeding out of their ears is if they hit their head. "Swallowing your tongue" is a widely held misconception. You can't swallow your own tongue. You can have your tongue block your breathing passage after a seizure, but all you have to do is just make sure the person having the seizure has their head in the proper position.
Epilepsy seems to be one of the few diseases that people feel that you can still poke fun at. You can't make fun of someone with AIDS or cancer or heart disease or diabetes or multiple sclerosis. But for some reason, people with a chronic neurological condition like epilepsy are fair game.
The disease never seems to get noticed in the media unless advocacy groups can get some publicity over something like the London Olympics logo causing seizures in people who are sensitive to flashing lights (which isn't particularly common.)
But most people with epilepsy just go on with life the best they can, knowing that, often without any warning, their brains will misfire and they can only hope that they don't hurt themselves in some way or wake up and find that they've soiled their own clothing. Yeah, it's a laugh riot.