Compared to "the falling blade of a guillotine"

Thanks to the punishingly high standards he set for himself -- not to mention a less-than-sunny way with potential clients -- Abraham, who was born in Austria and moved permanently to the United States in the mid-1960s, completed few buildings in his long career. He was far better known as a teacher and the creator of primitive, hauntingly powerful architectural drawings.

But his modest output did include one truly remarkable building: the Austrian Cultural Forum, a knife-thin, 24-story tower that opened in 2002 in midtown Manhattan as an outpost for exhibitions and discussions about Austrian culture and politics. Abraham's design for the Forum prevailed in a competition that drew entries from 226 Austrian firms -- essentially "every born Austrian architect who could walk," as Abraham put it at the time. It called for a tough, unforgiving piece of architecture: a 280-foot-tall, 25-foot-wide building squeezed between taller neighbors on East 52nd Street. Abraham famously compared its sharp-edged facade to the falling blade of a guillotine.

Lashing the stays of the Brooklyn Bridge

Vanishing Culture

A 1,200-pound stone head of an Aztec moon goddess has moved into the Getty Villa. So have life-size statues of a warrior adorned with eagle feathers, a duck-billed wind god and a demon known as the Lord of Death.

Made between 1440 and 1521 and on loan from Mexico City's National Museum of Anthropology and the Templo Mayor Museum, the massive artworks are among 64 sculptures, paintings and works on paper in "The Aztec Pantheon and the Art of Empire." Opening Wednesday, it's the most surprising exhibition yet to appear at Southern California's bastion of classical Greek and Roman antiquities.

The Villa has raised eyebrows with temporary installations of contemporary art related to its collections and exhibitions. But Aztec art? At a museum devoted to art made many centuries earlier on the opposite side of the world?

"It's probably not what you would have expected at the Getty Villa," says Claire L. Lyons, the Getty's antiquities curator who organized the show with John M.D. Pohl, a pre-Columbian specialist and research associate at UCLA's Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. "But we have long been interested in expanding beyond the classical Mediterranean." "In Search of Biblical Lands: Nineteenth-Century Photography of the Ancient Near East," to appear in 2011, will explore historic sites and pastoral life on the eastern margins of the Mediterranean.

The New York Aquarium

The New York Aquarium at Coney Island is the place to go to learn about aquatic life. The Aquarium has been a part of the city since December 10, 1896 when it opened at its first location in the Battery's Castle Clinton (above)in Lower Manhattan. The oldest continually operating aquarium in the United States, the New York Zoological Society assumed care of the Aquarium in 1902. In the Aquarium's early years, the facility housed only 150 specimens. Today's version of the Aquarium is home to over 350 species of aquatic wildlife and over 8,000 specimens.

The Aquarium lasted in the Battery until 1941 when it was relocated to Coney Island because of the construction of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. (The Aquarium's inhabitants were temporarily housed at the Bronx Zoo.) The New York Aquarium opened on the Coney Island boardwalk on June 6, 1957, part of a larger plan to revitalize the area. The entire project cost $9 million and used 1.25 million gallons of water. When the aquarium was opened, a New York Zoological Society brochure on the facility boasted “many hundreds of fish species, marine and fresh water, tropical, temperate and arctic, beautiful, weird and downright hideous.” A big attraction, the facility served over 400,000 school children during the first school season it was open.

"It's a sandy slope"

(Letter to the Editor from Kathryn Gray)

When I was a kid in the 1960s, I loved to slide on waxed cardboard down the dune in Manhattan Beach's Sand Dune Park. My mom, who also grew up in Manhattan Beach, ran free on the dunes in the '30s.

I'm saddened to hear that now the dune may be closed. My grandpa, Ralph Dorsey, Los Angeles' chief traffic engineer, worked tirelessly on the Manhattan Beach City Council and as mayor to expand recreational opportunities. He'd be dismayed to see kids and adults shut out of Sand Dune Park. That's not how Manhattan Beach used to work.

Our family has a house near the top of the dune, and we sympathize with neighbors who are concerned about overuse. Luckily, there's a sensible middle ground: Allow the dune to be shared, with some well-thought-out regulations. Let's keep recreation open to all!

Kathryn Gray
Manhattan Beach

Aaron Copland in Hanoi

HANOI -- This year marks the 15th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the United States and Vietnam. The country is still a tender land, but the Vietnamese have long known how to profit from their various invaders over the past millennium.

American tourists, for instance, are now targets for hawkers of Viet Cong souvenirs around Hanoi’s Opera House. The theater is a scaled-down model of the Paris Opera’s Palais Garnier, and it was thus a glaring symbol of colonialism until the French were overthrown in 1954 and Ho Chi Minh made it a historic site for important political occasions, even if music and dance remain its main business.

On Friday night, though, the hall saw a different détente. American and Vietnamese musicians joined together to premiere new works by young composers from both countries and one by Elliott Carter, who is 101 and was born two years before the 600-seat Opera House was completed.

Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring,” perhaps the most touching musical depiction of America as a tender land, closed the program and proved a moving culmination of two weeks of the Ascending Dragon Music Festival here, a cultural exchange between Southwest Chamber Music and the Vietnam National Academy of Music.

"It's the best-kept secret for 25 years"

It is known simply as the Japanese Garden. But to those familiar with this 6 1/2 -acre oasis, tucked away in the middle of bustling Van Nuys, it is affectionately referred to as "Gene's Garden."

Since its dedication in 1984, Gene Greene has overseen this inspiring display of native plants, exotic birds, trees, waterfalls, lakes and streams - a public treasure that many don't know exists.

"It's the best-kept secret for 25 years," said Greene, who worked closely with the landscape architect who designed the garden.

"Days of Our Lives" continues

With CBS' "Guiding Light" having been extinguished last year and its "As the World Turns" due to end in September, there was at last a modicum of reassuring news for daytime soap opera fans Friday: NBC said it had renewed "Days of Our Lives" through the 2010-11 season.

The serial is due to celebrate its 45th anniversary Nov. 8. Executive producer Ken Corday is the son of the show's creators, Betty and Ted Corday.

NBC said its decision was based on improving ratings for the program. Through 25 weeks of the current season, "Days of Our Lives" is averaging 3.3 million viewers, the network said, a 10% improvement from the same point a year ago and its best showing in the past three years.

"Won't You Be My Neighbor? Day"

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Mister Rogers cared deeply about his neighbors and his neighborhood, both in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe and in real life.

Now, friends and colleagues of late television icon Fred Rogers want to honor his legacy with a national day of volunteering on his birthday. Rogers, who died in 2003 after battling stomach cancer, would have been 82 on Saturday.

David Newell, who played Mr. McFeely on "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," said volunteering meant a lot to Rogers.

As a boy, Rogers volunteered at his hometown hospital in Latrobe, Pa., rolling bandages for soldiers during WWII. And, Newell said, public television, where Rogers' series began, relies on volunteers.

The idea for the Won't You Be My Neighbor? Day grew out of Sweater Day, which Family Communications Inc. of Pittsburgh has promoted over the past several years to honor Rogers. Rogers created the company to produce his show and other family friendly educational fare.

"Island-hopping teen burglar eludes police ???

Colton Harris-Moore, infamous teenage "barefoot bandit" and cult hero, are you back at it again?

The San Juan County sheriff didn't find you amusing Thursday as he dealt with your latest alleged crime, and television news cameras descended on Orcas Island for any tidbits about you.

Sheriff William Cumming knows somebody was taunting the cops by drawing in chalk 39 cartoonish footprints on the crime scene's red concrete floor, and writing near one of the doors, "C-YA!"

The owner of that Orcas Island grocery isn't laughing — he says he had more than $5,000 damage in computers kicked around, with one left soaking in a stainless tub.

Plus, $1,200 taken from four cash registers.

And for good measure, an entire blueberry cheesecake, plus produce and some unbaked meat-and-cheese-filled croissants.

And then there is the management company that takes care of a $600,000 Cirrus SR22 four-passenger single-engine plane that somebody stole that same night — flying it from Anacortes to the little airport at Orcas.

Harris-Moore, 18, is a suspect in several other similar plane thefts.

Whoever flew the expensive plane wasn't very experienced and upon landing the Cirrus went off the runway and into mud.

But, says Tim Lewis, owner of Corporate Air Center in Mount Vernon, it seems only the wheel fenders were damaged.

Lewis says the high-end plane "is a complex airplane that's easy to fly," so somebody without legit flying lessons could have flown it. Still, says Lewis, "You don't need much of a mistake to crash."

It was Kyle Ater, owner of the Homegrown Market & Gourmet Delicatessen in Orcas, who made the first report of the latest alleged Harris-Moore doings.

By Erik Lacitis
Seattle Times staff reporter

"the old-fashioned Ferris wheel"

In the midst of one of the worst recessions in decades, tiny beach-side amusement parks along the California coast are reporting robust business and big crowds while most of the state's big theme parks have seen shrinking revenue.

Small, privately owned seaside parks, such as Pacific Park at the pier in Santa Monica (above), Belmont Park in San Diego and the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, don't have multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns or 3-D attractions as do Disneyland and Universal Studios Hollywood. But they boast something even more appealing to penny-pinching tourists: Free admission.

As a result, vacationers are turning to old-fashioned Ferris wheels and carousels over expensive, high-tech thrill rides.

A dying star as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope.

The spectacular new Imax film "Hubble 3D" will be studied by astronomers, academics and Hollywood special effects artists for years to come. It's a movie that not only puts you in space but lets you travel through it with a speed and wonder that would make James T. Kirk go a little weak in the knees.

The 43-minute documentary follows the crew of the space shuttle Atlantis on their May 2009 mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. A 700-pound Imax 3-D camera accompanied them, anchored in the cargo bay, loaded with a mile of film. That translates into 8 1/2 minutes of footage to chronicle a 13-day mission.

Classic DVD

Two of the most influential TV series that came from radio -- "The Abbott & Costello Show" (above) and "The Goldbergs" -- are arriving on DVD in newly restored editions.

"a power is able to make you do something you don't want to do."

ance is reeling from a documentary about a psychological experiment disguised as a game show. Researchers staged a fictitious reality show to see how far people would go in obeying authority, especially if television reinforces that authority.

The disturbing results have alarmed the French.

The fictitious game show had all the trappings of a real TV quiz show, including a beautiful and well-known hostess, and a raucous audience. A group of contestants posed questions to a man sitting inside a box in front of them in an electric chair.

The hostess and a chanting audience urged the players — who had levers in front of them — to send jolts of electricity into the man in the box when he gave an incorrect answer.

Even when the player screamed out in pain for them to stop, 80 percent of the contestants kept zapping him. In reality, the man in the electric chair was an actor who wasn't really being shocked — but the players and the audience did not know that.

The documentary makers say reality television relies increasingly on violent, humiliating and cruel acts to boost ratings. They say they simply wanted to see if we would go so far as to kill someone for entertainment.

Christophe Nick produced the documentary, The Game of Death, with a group of scientists and researchers.

"Most of us think we have free thinking and so we are responsible for our acts," Nick says. "This experience shows that in certain circumstances, a power — the TV in this case — is able to make you do something you don't want to do."

The idea that something deeply rooted in the human psyche makes most of us unable to resist authority is not new. The French documentary was based on an American experiment carried out in the 1960s by psychologist Stanley Milgram.

Milgram had participants delivering what they believed were electric shocks to a man every time he answered a question incorrectly. In that experiment, 60 percent of participants obeyed the sadistic orders until the end.

The French documentary, which was broadcast in France on Wednesday night, included footage of the Milgram experiment.

Sociologist Jean Claude Kaufmann says the French version combines Milgram's use of authority with the power of live television. He says the result in the French experiment — a higher percentage of participants willing to shock the subject — shows that the manipulative power of television further increases people's willingness to obey.

Television talk shows ruminated over the documentary Thursday. Comparisons are being drawn to the manipulation of the masses in Nazi Germany. One of the game show participants, Jerome Pasanau, said in an interview that he was still haunted by the experience.

"I wanted to stop the whole time, but I just couldn't. I didn't have the will to do it. And that goes against my nature," he said. "I haven't really figured out why I did it."

Pasanau told the TV host that he felt intimidated and isolated on the fictitious game show set, and that the crowd was overbearing. The host countered by pulling up footage of Pasanau pumping 460 volts of electricity until the actor pretending to be electrocuted seems to keel over dead.

In the footage, the game show hostess yells: "And you've won!"

"Chavez Ravine" (1929)

Anyone who has driven around Los Angeles in the last 50 years knows Millard Sheets' art, even if they don't know his name.

For Home Savings of America, he designed the distinctive white marble branch banks and their artistic decorations, sometimes collaborating with others, starting in 1952. (Many of those buildings became branches of Washington Mutual and now Chase bank.) The stripped classicism of the architecture is enlivened by Sheets' specialty: stylized mosaic murals and wall reliefs.

The décor has a certain period charm, even if the already shaky conceit of a prosperous, postwar American equivalent of Renaissance-era Medici bankers as art patrons has inescapably curdled in our era of too-big-to-fail banking scandals. But there was never any doubt that Sheets, who died in 1989, believed in the notion. He was by most accounts as conservative in his political outlook as he was in his art.

At the Pasadena Museum of California Art, a useful if rather uninspiring exhibition of 23 oil paintings and 60 watercolors looks at the roots of Sheets' undeniably prolific career.

"Flying Horse"

PHOENIX (AP) - It's not every day you see a horse fly.

But with the greatest of ease, a heavy-duty helicopter plucked a mustang named Colorado off a western Arizona river sandbar Tuesday morning, reuniting him with his owner.

Colorado spent five days stranded on the sandbar along the Gila River about 36 miles southwest of Phoenix.

"The Great Escape" tells the story of a heroic group

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. A.P. Clark, a World War II veteran who played a key role in the elaborate breakout from a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp that inspired the movie "The Great Escape," has died. He was 96.

He became a pilot after graduating from the Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., in 1936. During World War II he flew with the 31st Fighter Group, the first American fighter unit in the European Theater, according to an Air Force Academy biography.

Then a lieutenant colonel, Clark was shot down by German fighter planes over Abbeville, France, in July 1942, and spent nearly three years as a prisoner of war at Stalag Luft III in what is now Poland. He is credited with managing the production and hiding supplies in support of the escape of 76 POWs from the camp in 1944.

Mt. McKinley or Mt. Denali ???

Anyone can propose a name for a feature of American geography. And hundreds do. Alaska's effort to change the name of Mt. McKinley to Mt. Denali has been blocked for three decades by lawmakers from President McKinley's home state of Ohio.

(AL GRILLO / Associated Press)

Dream House Raffle for Special Olympics, March 19, 2010

Don’t miss your chance to win the home of your dreams!

Special Olympics Southern California is raffling off a luxurious $2.2 million home in Studio City, south of Ventura Blvd, The 5,000-square-foot, custom home has 5 bedrooms. One grand-prize winner will get to choose between the dream house or $1.5 million in cash.

We could use another Pulitzer

James McGrath Morris sees parallels between Gilded Age media baron Joseph Pulitzer's time and ours, pointing out that when Pulitzer (1847-1911) began to shape "yellow journalism," newspapers were going out of business and readers were bemoaning the end of journalism as they knew it. Pulitzer charged ahead, boasting that the color pages of the New York World emerged from the state-of-the-art printing presses "like rainbow tints in the spray." Indeed, the World seemed like something entirely new in the staid universe of American newspapers, perhaps as revolutionary then as the Internet today and as provocative as the practitioners of advocacy journalism on Fox.

Morris' magisterial new biography, "Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power" (Harper: 560 pp., $29.99), is the first since W.A. Swanberg's 1967 work to reexamine the strange life of the man who was born to a prosperous Jewish family in Hungary and reinvented himself in the United States. He cut his eyeteeth as a cub reporter in St. Louis, and went on to buy one newspaper after another, each one bigger than the last.