October 13, 2005

IT began with a one-liner, a throwaway, a joke: how would you get Stonehenge past a zoning board? Jonathan Rothberg, a scientist who has developed, among other things, an efficient way to sequence the human genome using fireflies and a microchip, posed that question after his plans for a zinc-clad observatory designed by Cesar Pelli were swatted down following a local zoning hearing for, among other reasons, not looking sufficiently colonial.

The Giants are ahead of the Dallas Cowboys in the standings, but they still are chasing Bill Parcells. On Sunday, the franchise with which Parcells built his reputation is playing the one that Parcells is trying to rebuild. Even if the Giants beat the Cowboys in Dallas, they still will be left trying to achieve the level of respect Parcells earned in New York.

Group of some 200 architects and urban planners from around country convenes in Biloxi, Miss, to discuss comprehensive regional plan to rebuild Mississippi Gulf Coast damaged by Hurricane Katrina; many participants suggest that they do not hope to replicate what existed before hurricane; Gov Haley Barbour calls forum inclusive, collaborative, participatory effort that would aid ultimate decision makers (M)

SEEING the boarded-up windows of the old Howard Johnson's on Broadway makes it real. The place is truly gone. This, with due respect to Howard Johnson's, is great news. It says so much about New York City. To say goodbye to this coffee shop is not merely to say goodbye to a relic. It is to bid a final farewell to aspects of a city that exist no longer, and yay to that.

Workers start blanketing Wollman Rink in Central Park in black plastic fabric as they begin installation of musical performance work by French artist Pierre Huyghe, who made trip to Antarctica in search of elusive albino penguin; installation will be filmed and audience will appear as extras; film, last part of artwork's triptych, will be made using images from both polar trip and Central Park performances and will be shown as part of 2006 Whitney Biennial; photo (M)