Does architecture need to be freed? And, if it does, freed from what? I was a little skeptical both of the title of the new show at Paris' Fondation Cartier, Freeing Architecture: Junya Ishigami, and of the young and impossibly cool Japanese architect who is its subject. But the skepticism fell gently away as he led me through the works in a torrent of vague, almost childlike descriptions.

Professional basketball offered one of the few viable escapes from the cycle of crime and poverty in the downtrodden section of Cleveland where Artreyo Boyd grew up, so the courts were where you proved yourself. NBA video games, on the other hand, were never seen as much more than a way to kill time.This week in New York, Boyd's name was called out as the No.

In Beirut, there's a saying: "All Beirut parties lead to the bunker." But despite the cosmopolitan city having faced decades of unrest, locals don't mean they're seeking refuge. They're continuing the party at B018, a club known as the birthplace of Beirut's electronic music scene. Here carefree Beirutis party through the night in an underground club - which is not actually a bunker, but resembles one - with muted decor lit only by strobe lights.

Badr, pigeon keeperTamesloht, MoroccoMy name is Badr, and I am 15 years old and from Morocco. I live in a place called Fiers et Forts, which means Proud and Strong, with 89 other children. It is in a small village called Tamesloht in Morocco near Marrakech. I was brought here when I was 3 years old by my grandmother, Madou, and my mother, Dorine. They had found me on the street with my father, but he couldn't take care of me.This place is everything to me. I have everything I need here.

Sometimes, love finds you. Then again, so does cancer. It was here that I was mired once again, locking in a full nelson against a bat-wielding knucklehead and thinking to myself: When did my life become this perfect storm of romantic despair and seething rage? In a flash, like a dog too enamored of its vomit to realize the damage done, I remembered: Sheila. The love of my life. The bane of my existence. Things weren't always like this.

No one said democracy was efficient, but maybe it can be flexible. Andrew Applegate’s family has been in the fishing business since his ancestors moved from Cranbury, New Jersey, to the Sandy Hook area around 100 years ago. Along with some commercial fishing, Applegate’s father ran a couple of large party fishing boats out of Atlantic City, and through the decades the family caught whatever was available.

Shock was the first sensation that rippled through college basketball following 16th-seeded University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s historic opening-round annihilation of No. 1 seed Virginia on March 16. Then came the rage, ridicule and discrediting of the Virginia Cavaliers.

In 1996, my father, John Peter Galanis, was sent away to prison for 27 years. At the time I think it was the longest prison sentence for a white-collar criminal ever. Bernie Madoff changed the game subsequently, but nobody created the criminal mechanism that John had: a white-collar crime family. Deal by deal, fraud by fraud, we had become the Galanis crime family.

Forget Condoleezza Rice. Bring on LaVar Ball.As the FBI continues to investigate an unseemly bribery scandal that is shaking college basketball to its core, the NCAA launched a blue-ribbon committee headed by the former U.S. secretary of state to study what ails the sport. But there is not one current college basketball player on the Rice committee.

Early in my legal career I worked for a public defender's office in the San Francisco Bay Area. The chance to represent the oppressed, downtrodden accused against the tyranny of the police state was attractive for a young, aspiring attorney. I certainly had the fire in my gut to take on the challenge even if I also realized that, given my lack of experience, I was unlikely to do much more than review documents and move paper.As it turns out, that initial assessment was wholly inaccurate.