Oops. Since you can’t see it in the HTML, I should note that the class switch as used here applies alternate left- and right-floating classes to posts appearing in the center column of this layout. (The most-recent full-width entry is pulled out of the loop and treated separately with a query-posts filter.)
Other pages in this site assign specific content by post-id to fixed layout elements. They’re static texts that should be immune to blog chronology, but “News” items, however, need to rotate through the three screen blocks as they age.
I’ve seen lots of people ask how to make the Loop do this sort of thing, but your answer in this thread is the clearest solution yet.
