Binoculars

HOLLYWOOD - The security officer seen scanning the crowd with night-vision binoculars at last week's media screening of Warner Bros.' Dreamcatcher wasn't looking for pockets of critical resistance. He was testing new anti-piracy measures aimed squarely at Hollywood's pre-release promotional machinery. Warner and the other studios are working closely with their trade group, the Motion Picture Association of America, to search for potential high-tech film thieves among the thousands of reporters, critics and assorted hangers-on who populate the movie industry's busy screening circuit.

CHAKOTHI, Pakistan - One mile high in the Himalayan foothills, Pakistani Army Lt. Col. Nauman Saeed peered through binoculars, searching for his enemies on the other side of a deep ravine. "Look! Look! There they are," he said, handing off his binoculars to a group of journalists visiting the Line of Control, the heavily armed border dividing the disputed province of Kashmir between India and Pakistan. Sure enough, five Indian soldiers standing together behind a stone wall came into focus.

Bob and Joanne Solem used to be avid birders, until another animal stole the show. Now, instead of looking skyward, they train their close-focus binoculars on the ground beneath their feet. Green darners, blue dashers and dusky dancers spring into view. Their lives, on lazy summer days, become an endless stream of amber- wings, spreadwings, pond-hawks and baskettails. The Solems, who live in Laurel, are part of the latest trend in the nature world: dragonfly-watching. Once the purview of scientists and specialists, dragonflies - and their near cousins, damselflies - are starting to catch the fancy of the public.

Joystick system offers realistic feel for flight simulators In piloting your flight simulator games on the PC, it would be difficult to find a better product than the X36 Flight Control System. Saitek's $99.95 package comes in two parts, a joystick and a throttle/rudder controller. The joystick is the primary steering device. It also has a safety switch that can be flipped down for launching missiles. The other device is for precise speed control and operating the plane's rudder. Taken together, the joystick and throttle/rudder controller are among the best available, although becoming comfortable with them might take awhile for novices.

Last week, the FBI arrested two men, one a white supremacist, and charged them with obtaining deadly anthrax microbes for use as a terrorist weapon. It was good, fast, better-wrong-than-dead work by the bureau's field office in Las Vegas -- even if weekend laboratory tests showed the anthrax to be a safe form of the bacteria used in animal vaccines, not the military-grade capable of killing thousands.I'll make a bet: Before this espisode passes, we'll hear -- or find on the Internet -- criticism from the loonies that the feds were overzealous, trampling the civil rights of innocent, God-fearing oddballs who are simply looking for unique ways to express their political views.

A soft breeze blows at Timonium. As constant as sugar in cotton candy, it glides through the grandstand next to the familiar old racetrack, carrying the promise of late-summer thrills and the embers of warm, glowing memories.For 10 days each year, in conjunction with the State Fair, thoroughbreds bang around Timonium's tight turns like pinballs. Old racetrackers, dads with babies, children clutching mom, all watch with wide eyes, even cheer the charging horse on the outside as summer completes its own race into fall.

HAVRE DE GRACE -- As I was driving out the lane the other afternoon, I saw something moving in a hillside pasture several ,, hundred yards away. I took a look through the binoculars, which I keep in the truck, and saw that it was a groundhog.Dual occupancyHe was rummaging through the grass near a little clump of woods, and I could see that he'd reopened a hole I'd filled with rocks and dirt earlier in the summer, after I shot what I'd hoped was the sole occupant. There were other holes back in the trees, I knew, but they didn't bother me. This one, though, was in a spot where a horse or cow might step in it. I turned around and went home to get the rifle.

In well-organized households, by this time of the season much of the holiday shopping has been completed. But if your household is anything like mine, there still are smaller presents to be bought as stocking stuffers for spouses or children.You know, things that perhaps aren't among the list of necessary items, but gadgets and thing-a-ma-bobs that might otherwise be passed over by the family fishermen, boaters or hunters.A lot of outdoor gear is hard to buy for someone else without knowing exact preferences for rods and reels, shotguns and rifles or electronic gear for boats.

POLICE LOG* Town Center: 10200 block of Wincopin Circle: Someone broke into a 1990 Honda Civic between 6 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Sunday, and stole a $85 radar detector, a $150 pair of binoculars and $120 worth of CDs.

One day last week, while sharing a hilltop with my woodchuck hunting partner, Wayne Albaugh, he announced, "How do you like these? I finally broke down and bought a good pair of binoculars."Binoculars are essential to the outdoorsman, boater or backyard bird watcher. I have been a regular user for more than 30 years and am convinced that a good set of prism binoculars are well worth their weight in gold.They allow the hunter to save shoe leather and to verify game animals or their hunting buddy's location across the valley.