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Clipping Big Bird's Wings. The last British Airways Concorde aircraft will reportedly be sold to Dubai (along with the Queen Elizabeth 2) as a tourist attraction on Palm Jumeirah. The supersonic BA fleet was grounded six years ago and all the other aircraft were donated to museums, except this last one, which had been stripped for spare parts. That's not the last indignity it will suffer - to get the plane to Dubai via ship, its wings will have to be cut off before loading. Once at its final destination, it will be tarted up and opened for touring...
...This is the second time in its 30-year history that the Pritzker has gone to a Swiss architect. In 2001 the winners were Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, a team whose signature buildings - the Tate Modern in London, the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the "bird's nest" Olympic Stadium in Beijing - could not be more unlike Zumthor's spare exercises in subtraction and compression. Herzog & de Meuron revel in complexity, intricate structures and elaborate surfaces. Zumthor reduces and purifies. Le Corbusier, that other great Swiss purist, would have approved. (See TIME's photos of Peter Zumthor...
...mistake at the time, Alan W. Livingston, 91, brought the fledgling Beatles to the U.S. while president of Capitol Records. Some of his other nonmistakes include creating the Bozo the Clown character and co-writing the song "I Taut I Taw a Puddy Tat," a musical dialogue between Tweety Bird and Sylvester...
...late 1970s, China's economic reform and opening up spurred a fervor of fossil-hunting among impoverished peasants, who began selling their finds to the highest bidders - state institutions, private individuals and foreigners alike. Since then, numerous dinosaur and bird fossils have been identified in the northeast province of Liaoning, and the southwest regions of Guizhou and Yunnan have become well known for their massive output of Triassic marine-life fossils. Fakery became a natural part of this lucrative business, and several Chinese paleontologists say fakes, typically made into the shape of bones using plastic, charcoal and construction materials...
...Mountain Cleaners The Swiss Tourism Board announced it was seeking volunteers to join the Association of Mountain Cleaners. It claimed, 'The Association of Mountain Cleaners... makes sure that our holiday guests can always enjoy perfect mountains. Using brooms, brushes, water and muscle power, they clean the rocks of any bird droppings." Visitors to myswitzerland.com were invited to take a Mountain cleaner aptitude test and submit their name for a chance to win a week's holiday in Switzerland. See YouTube video.)... [April Fools...