Big Picture

After traveling 14 hours Monday, practicing about three hours since, and then playing with typical on-the-road caution for 83 minutes last night, Ecuador seemed unlikely to win at Memorial Stadium.But a goal off a contested breakaway that began with a long pass from just outside Ecuador's penalty area about seven minutes from the game's end gave Ecuador a 1-0 victory.From coach Steve Sampson to defenders Thomas Dooley, Robin Fraser and Martin Vasquez, the U.S. verdict was "off-side." No doubt, many in the stands saw it the same way. But referee Raul Dominguez of Texas didn't blow his whistle and his nearest assistant on the break, Ellicott City's Rob Fereday, kept his flag down.

BEN CARSON, the Hopkins pediatric neuro- surgeon who takes his role as role model seriously, preaches the gospel of education, education, education, and doesn't leave a yawn in the room.He's an example of how the will to learn makes all the difference in life. Once the self-described dummy of his class back in Detroit, and not motivated to change that situation, Carson, at his mother's prodding, went on to great things and international celebrity for his accomplishments in the operating room.

Not My ViewThe July 6 editorial page included a very interesting political cartoon by KAL that perfectly illustrates the double standard that the liberals in this country practice on a daily basis.In the cartoon, irate rioters in support of the flag burning amendment, school prayer amendment and the balanced budget amendment assail the Constitution.Obviously, the artist who drew the cartoon believes that these amendments assault the freedoms guaranteed to him in the Constitution. I would like to ask where is the cartoon that points out the assaults on the Second, Fourth, Sixth, Eighth and 10th amendments that have been going on for years?

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton entered office with the job of charting America's foreign policy beyond the Cold War. Nine months later, a series of self-inflicted wounds to his prestige has hobbled his efforts, raising questions about his ability to project force credibly abroad.Doubts about the American leader's competence in world affairs -- overseas, on Capitol Hill and among the public -- are high. In a recent Gallup poll, approval of the president's handling of foreign affairs dropped from 51 percent to 40 percent.

It wasn't just a 425-acre swath of one of the prettiest sections of Baltimore County. The place pulsed with history. Its red-roofed barns had housed some of the 20th century's greatest thoroughbreds. The remains of Native Dancer, the genetic link between many modern champions, lay beneath a tombstone at its center. Sagamore Farm fit the ambitions of Under Armour founder Kevin Plank. When he plucked his high school buddy, Tom Mullikin, from a Kentucky farm to start a racing and breeding outfit, Plank said the only goal was to win a Triple Crown.

As the leader of a large, diverse and rapidly urbanizing jurisdiction, Baltimore County Executive C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger is in the difficult position of trying to uphold the county's quality of life while its revenue sources stagnate.Mr. Ruppersberger echoed his predecessor, Republican Roger B. Hayden, in his first budget address yesterday when he said, "The days of unlimited government resources are over and will likely never return." The county has no choice but to "refocus our existing resources."

For full disclosure's sake, I am a 1968 graduate of what is now Towson University (and a 1974 graduate of Morgan State University). I taught high school for 14 years and founded an advertising agency that has a sports specialty. Our company has done sports ticket sales campaigns for 43 university programs in 24 states over a 30 year period - including Towson - as well as several pro teams, including all of the local franchises. To say that specializing in college athletics is not a way to build a big media billing agency is an understatement.

Young workers will have to scramble to land jobs — even unpaid ones — this summer, but the employment outlook for them is brighter than it was last year. "The economy generally is picking up," says Robert Trumble, a management professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. "If unemployment keeps inching down … it increases opportunities for teens in the summer. " Last summer was the worst for young job seekers since 1948, when the government began tracking the numbers.

I have a conventional 35 mm panoramic camera and love it. I want to buy a digital camera but am holding off until there is a panoramic model. I've checked most of the major suppliers' Web sites but to no avail. Can you help? The answer isn't in hardware but in a sweet, $100 addition to Adobe's low-priced photography software, Photoshop Elements 2.0. Called Photomerge, this panorama-building tool seems almost magical when it kicks in. To use it, snap off a series of photos while holding an ordinary digital camera at a consistent height, turning maybe 30 degrees each time to cover more of the scene so that each shot slightly overlaps the previous one. Once you have this group of images on the computer, you click on File and Photomerge and then point the software to the photos in the order they were snapped.

Sometimes the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Sometimes they shouldn't even be made into a movie."