Behavior

At this month's BET Awards, the Viewers' Choice award seemed like a battle of front-runners. Nominees Beyonce, Jay-Z and Kanye West were seated in the front row, a skip away from the podium. Chris Brown and Lil Wayne were also nominated. They all lost to four teenage boys. Mindless Behavior, the Los Angeles boy band of Prodigy, Princeton, Ray Ray and Roc Royal, bounced up to the stage to accept the night's only award decided on by fans. After catching his breath, Princeton ended his speech with a declaration.

Baltimore Medical System won a nearly half-million grant to develop a program for patients with both chronic diseases and behavior health needs. The $498,906 from CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield will be used to develop a unique-in-the-state turn on patient centered medical homes, a model where a team of providers work to achieve better quality care for lower costs by coordinating patient care. The participants in this program will get integrated care blending primary care, psychiatric care, low-threshold counseling and social services.

A Baltimore County man suffered a "diabetic attack," causing him to act abnormally when police tried to restrain him and then pepper sprayed and Tasered him, resulting in his death, according to a multimillion-dollar lawsuit brought by his wife against county and state police. Linda Johnson says her husband, Carl D'Andre Johnson, who died shortly after he fought with officers two years ago, "would experience an episode of low blood sugar [and] he would have some difficulty, sometimes acting erratically, and would react negatively to being touched," in a suit filed in Baltimore County Circuit Court last month.

In response to William Ramsey's letter regarding pit bulls, I couldn't agree more ("Why not hold all dog owners accountable?" May 16). Pet owners should be liable for the risk presented to the rest of us when they select a breed to own. If pit bulls have been maligned in media reports of them attacking people, why worry about the liability? Do pit bull owners expect me to believe that the news media don't report dog attacks when they don't involve pit bulls? I tolerate my neighbors' dogs barking at all hours, and I understand that they can't clean up half of what their dogs do on my lawn.

Do I understand this correctly? We, the people of Maryland, paid for hotels and meals for our representatives in Annapolis because they failed to do the job of passing a reasonable budget and had to meet in special sessions to prevent fiscal "Doomsday. " So, we reward them by treating them to hotel stays and the cost of meals and libation throughout the duration? Don't they all live in our state? Why couldn't they just drive their cars or take public transportation? Most other job holders do commute to and from work, and many bring their own lunches.

Denver's Bill Tierney is arguably the best coach in college lacrosse history, but he should be careful not to tarnish his legacy. Tierney, who won six national championships at Princeton, has done a great job of turning around Denver's program in recent years, but a lot of fans at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium on Saturday weren't applauding him. Rather, they were criticizing him for his behavior during the game. On almost every whistle, Tierney seemed to be ranting and criticizing the officials in Denver's game against Loyola.

It is always tempting to ignore the bluster and bombast emanating from the vicinity of Patrick L. McDonough, the Baltimore County delegate and radio talk show host who considers himself a man of the people but mostly is a self-promoting bomb-thrower. His is a career built on angry sound bites and finger-pointing, particularly at minority groups, while his actual legislative accomplishments in Annapolis can be contained in a thimble - with room to spare. But his latest bloviation demands attention - if only because ignoring it might suggest it was excusable (which it was not)

I met Mike Manieri, the fireman whose obituary appeared in the paper recently, on several occasions - we frequented many of the same restaurants - and I liked him. I was sorry to read of his passing ("Michael V. Manieri, city firefighter and medic," April 21). I was struck by the comment made about him by one of his former chiefs: "He was a great problem-solver, and at the same time he absolutely refused to do anything that was unethical. " To have something like this said about one's personal ethics should be what everyone - politician, government worker, private sector employee, all of us - should strive for. Jeffrey Smith , Baltimore

There's been a lot of conversation about bullying lately and a big push to stop bullying of children in schools and on-line. I find all this outrage at bullying hypocritical on the part of the adults, school system, pundits, etc. Children learn by the examples set by the adults in their lives. If adults didn't reward bullying behavior, our children would not bully. You say you abhor bullies and would never reward them? How many reality TV shows do you watch where you root for the obnoxious person that insults, slaps, "takes down," or votes off a lesser, weaker individual?

Whether you're counting calories, tallying points, cutting carbohydrates or sweating it out at the gym, dieting is a tough road to navigate. What's even worse is when you sabatoge your own efforts by making some classic diet-busting mistakes you might not even be aware of. Here are seven behaviors that may cause you to fall off that I-wanna-lose-weight wagon — and advice from experts on how to stay on it. The diet-buster: Drinking too...