In case you've ever wanted to see what life as a women's magazine editor-in-chief entails, Cosmo released a behind-the-scene video where Coles practices her new editorial focuses, answering questions about the 365 sex positions a day iPhone app (order the "Linguine"!) and unintentionally displaying her multitasking ability to respond to questions while staring intently at her iPhone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=063Sq7LgUmI

We're not quite sure what to say about this video—shot by a friend of The Observer's last Friday night at the New York Philharmonic concert in Central Park—but we'll try to give you a bit of background. Apparently one enthusiastic gentleman felt the need to "noodle dance" when he heard the fourth movement of Tchaikovsky's Symphony Number 4. And you know how it is: once one person starts twirling around on a dusty baseball field, nearby children feel free to test out their native interpretive dance skills, and then, as you can see from the video, you have a good portion of the crowd abandoning their wine and picnic baskets to form a classical Conga line.

The next Philharmonic concert in Central Park is tonight at 8pm.

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Between the Whitney Biennial, Brucennial, the Armory show, and the Art Show thrown by the Art Dealers Association of America (and the various non-art museum events like the annual American Museum of Natural History Museum Gala and the Museum of the City of New York’s Winter Ball at the Plaza Hotel), not to mention the various VIP events, preshows, alternative shows and the option of just staying home and staring at a blank wall until your eyes bleed, even the most casual art lover can end up feeling overwhelmed by choices.

Our vote? Just go to the Guggenheim and stare at those John Chamberlain sculptures that look like twisted heaps of scrap metal from a car accident. If you really want to sound smart, try out the following phrases on your friends: “I love the juxtaposition of color against the opposing imagery of a dark and tragic accident”; “Abstract Expressionism is my favorite kind of Expressionism. What’s yours?”; or, “Does this colorful simulacrum of a car wreck remind anyone else of Lindsay Lohan’s performance on Saturday Night Live last weekend?”

We don’t want to dwell too long on the horrors of la vie en Ms. Lohan, as the only lines she can remember are the ones she left back in her dressing room. But it’s hard not to question Lorne Michaels’s taste when any basket case with a history of substance abuse can take the stage these days. (In all fairness, basket cases with drug problems made up half the cast of Saturday Night Live in the ’80s and ’90s, but at least they were talented.)

Still, with our heads spinning with images of Picasso, Hirst and Warhol, we have to wonder what the greats would have done with Ms. Lohan’s visage. It wouldn’t have been that difficult for certain artists, as Ms. Lohan herself has begun to resemble a sort of Cubist painting, covered in borrowed diamonds and a bit more angular than we last remembered. And god knows she’s taken to the Warholian definition of fame in the future and stretched her 15 minutes to a good 15 years past its expiration date. Lindsay Lohan: Human Pop Art!

Now we’re starting to feel a little overwhelmed.

With that in mind, families of the victims of that terrible day are calling on Congress to establish protocols that would govern the handling and disposal of human remains after disasters like the terrorist attacks of a decade ago. Congress should hold hearings on the topic, as the families have urged, to ascertain how best to implement protocols related to mass casualties.

The families’ request came after the media revealed that some unidentified human remains from the 9/11 attacks were taken to a landfill and buried there. Families rightly argue that this was egregiously insensitive, that a landfill is hardly the proper final resting place for victims of a national tragedy.

Families and the city still have not come to an agreement on where other unidentified remains should be placed. The city proposed that they be encased in an underground repository adjacent to the 9/11 museum, but many families would prefer an above-ground site similar to Arlington National Cemetery’s tomb of the unknown soldiers.

That debate will be worked out in the courts. In the meantime, Congress should make sure that victims of the next large-scale disaster are accorded more dignity than was shown those whose ashes are now buried in a landfill. Government should have a policy in place, so that relatives no longer have to suffer further heartbreak.

Sadly, that sort of arrogance has become standard operating procedure in the comptroller’s office. Mr. Liu is a discredited public official who can no longer carry out the vital duties of his office. He needs to leave.

Mr. Liu’s campaign fund-raising practices are the subject of a widening federal investigation. The feds moved in after The New York Times revealed that Mr. Liu’s campaign books read like a novel—not because they are easy to read, but because they contain elements of fiction. Individuals listed as contributors came forward to say that they never gave money to the campaign. The names of bundlers, that is, people who solicited bulk contributions, were not disclosed as required by law (after months of stalling, Mr. Liu revealed their names several weeks ago).

Ms. Hou, a 25-year-old with limited experience in the high-powered world of New York campaign fund-raising, was arrested on fraud and conspiracy charges, including an accusation that she illegally funneled money into Mr. Liu’s campaign through the use of phony donors. The question, of course, is whether Mr. Liu was aware of these irregularities. If so, Ms. Hou may be more a victim than a perpetrator in this scandal.

Mr. Liu pretends to be blissfully unaware of the growing outrage. Asked recently on WNYC radio about a chorus of calls for his resignation, he responded with a question of his own: “What calls for resignation?”

They are loud and they are clear, but Mr. Liu continues to pretend that he is a credible figure in New York politics and government. He has yet to renounce his prospective campaign for mayor in 2013.

How many more arrests will it take for Mr. Liu to realize that the game is up, and he has lost?

That’s all good. But at this critical juncture in the U.S.-Israeli relationship, words are less important than actions. The president needs to show his support for Israel in tangible ways, both in public and behind the scenes. There can be no equivocation, no cool detachment, no mixed signals. Israel’s enemies and, indeed, the rest of the world need to understand that the United States and Israel stand together in the battle against global terrorism.

Nothing would please the world’s terrorists and terrorist sponsors more than the prospect of a bitter split between the U.S. and Israel. Since 2009, many have observed, the Obama White House has been tougher on Jerusalem than it has been on Teheran. That perception, whether justified or not, has to stop, now. Nobody should have any reason to doubt America’s support for Israel, and for the decisions that Israel will have to make about its own national security.

Washington must remind the world that Iran’s religious and secular leaders, including its grand ayatollah, have pledged themselves—in public—to Israel’s destruction. This sort of rhetoric would be condemned and sanctioned if it emanated from a European or Asian capital. But Iran’s leaders regularly and consistently make it clear that if they had the means, they would wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

Nobody can doubt that Iran’s leaders are intent on building a nuclear weapon, and if they succeed, who can doubt that the ayatollahs will use the weapon to target Israel? That’s why the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran is, as Mr. Obama stated, intolerable.

So the questions become: What to do, and when to do it?

Like any other nation, Israel will act as it sees fit to defend its national security and its civilian population. Mr. Obama, with some justification, told the AIPAC gathering that loose talk about an attack on Iran could be counterproductive. He might be right: Over the weekend, followers of Iran’s grand ayatollah—a man who makes the country’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, seem reasonable—scored a big victory in the nation’s parliamentary elections. Tensions with the Israel, the U.S. and the West certainly played into the ayatollah’s hands.

An Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities is not, in fact, inevitable, although Mr. Netanyahu rightly noted in his own speech to AIPAC that Israel will not stand idly by if Teheran persists in building a weapon of mass destruction. Israel remains skeptical about the power of diplomatic and economic sanctions, with good reasons—sanctions are a rational response to a crisis, but Iran’s leaders clearly are not rational. Nevertheless, time has not yet run out on diplomacy. But the diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran must be effective, indeed, it must be crushing, and it is up to the Obama White House to take the lead.

That course of action will require more than platitudes from Washington. It will require determination and passionate belief. It remains to be seen if Mr. Obama can summon those qualities on behalf of Israel—and, by extension, on behalf of American security as well.

Clearly Anna Sui was inspired by famous owls throughout pop-culture history. We match up the look with the inspiration.

All Photos via Getty Images

01252012 Floor Plan

Meet Evan Ratliff, cofounder and editor of The Atavist, a publishing house that wants to take long-form nonfiction reporting into a multimedia storytelling environment. The Atavist has a dual purpose - to showcase in-depth pieces that fall between traditional magazine and book lengths, and to power the software that allows anyone to create and publish their own likeminded work to devices like the iPad, Kindle, Nook, and iPhone.

Mr. Ratliff, a journalist by trade - his work has appeared in Wired, Outside, and The New Yorker, among others publications - says that The Atavist formed over conversations in Brooklyn bars with New Yorker editor Nicholas Thompson. They brought on cofounder and creative director Jefferson Rabb to help create the platform and app. The result is the ability to read a story multidimensionally, utilizing text, videos, images, and adding an element of interactivity to the way people learn about a subject.