Rug

NYTimes:
Liora Manné’s two-tone Reflections acrylic rug is available in custom color combinations and sizes; $935 for a five-foot-square; rug (shown): (212) 989-2732 or lioramanne.com.

Dharamsala

Photo: Arka Datta/Reuters

NYTimes:
As far as visits by American politicians go, it would be hard to stage a warmer reception. Buddhist nuns waved American flags and the Dalai Lama ordered his followers to offer a standing ovation Friday morning as Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, came to Dharamsala, the emotionally charged headquarters of Tibetan exiles, and seized the opportunity to stick a finger in the eye of China.

California

Topanga Canyon

March 2003

Photo: James Hill/NYTimes

Five years on.

Letter to the Editor of the NYTimes:

To the Editor:

Maureen Dowd wonders how it is possible that George W. Bush can continue to put a positive spin on various dismal facts associated with his administration.

The answer is simple: from the beginning of his tenure, he was, continues to be and always will be the most incompetent president in modern American history.

Alan A. Preti
Fort Washington, Pa., March 17, 2008

1959

Cels and backgrounds from Disney's "Sleeping Beauty."

NYTimes: A Japanese university plans to return about 250 pieces of original animation art to the Walt Disney Company that were mislaid in storage after traveling to Japan nearly five decades ago.

Opening Ceremony

Photo: Robert Wright/NYTimes
Morgan Rehbock in suit by Opening Ceremony.

Christian Siriano

Home

NYTimes: LA Closet Design's cloth hanger cover is filled with dried French lavender, which smells pleasant and repels moths; $42 from (310) 289-1311 or www.laclosetdesign.com.

Kenneth Noland

Following Sea: 1974
Photo: Ken Noland/Licensed by VAGA, New York, courtesy American Federation of Arts

Where the Wild Things Are

Dir: Spike Jonze
Release date: October 2009

Paranoid Park

Photo: Scott Green/IFC Films
Gabe Nevins as Alex
Dir: Gus Van Sant

Mars

Photo: NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and University of Arizona
NYTimes:
Mars is not really blue. But if they looked at realistically colored images, scientists would be trying to distinguish between red rocks and soil and not-quite-so-red rocks and soil. The false-color images, like this one of Ius Chasma in the western part of the Valles Marineris canyon system, stretch the color palate to accentuate details.

Illustration: Oliver Munday/NYTimes

OMA

Office for Metropolitan Architecture
Rem Koolhaas’s vision for a development in Dubai mixes the bold and the nondescript.

NYTimes:
Designed for one of the biggest developers in the United Arab Emirates, Nakheel, [Rem] Koolhaas’s master plan for the proposed 1.5-billion-square-foot Waterfront City in Dubai would simulate the density of Manhattan on an artificial island just off the Persian Gulf. A mix of nondescript towers and occasional bold architectural statements, it would establish Dubai as a center of urban experimentation as well as one of the world’s fastest growing metropolises.

The mixed-use project, startling in scale, is a carefully considered critique not just of the generic city but of a potentially greater evil: the growing use of high-end architecture as a tool for self-promotion. To Mr. Koolhaas this strategy, which many architects refer to as the Bilbao syndrome, reduces cities to theme parks of architectural tchotchkes that mask an underlying homogeneity. His strategy is not to reject either trend outright but to locate each one’s hidden, untapped potential, or as he puts it, “to find optimism in the inevitable.”