Bug

An excerpt of an Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal editorial FridayDROP this name at a party: VW Bug. Anyone who ever owned one will immediately launch into an animated retelling of the Volkswagen Beetle's legendary idiosyncrasies. For starters, you didn't need an ignition key so long as you had a slight incline nearby -- say, the ramp of a driveway. Get it rolling, hop in, pop the clutch and you were gone.The cars ran forever on only a few dollars' gasoline. There was rarely a parking space so tiny you couldn't squeeeeze your Bug into it. And, oh, those heaters.

Johns Hopkins' 12-4 record last season disguised a matter that troubles every coach but has few solutions: injuries. Four starters missed extended time in 2012 because of a variety of ailments. Attackman Chris Boland - who has since graduated - sat out eight starts after breaking his collarbone in the team's season-opening win against Towson, and then-junior midfielder John Greeley was sidelined for the final four contests after re-tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.

DO YOU HAVE A BUG PROBLEM? DO YOU A) SHAKE YOUR SHOES UPSIDE DOWN before you put them on? b) feel the only sure way to dispose of a bug is to wrap it in 40 tissues and flush it down the toilet? c) avoid certain areas of your house at night because you're afraid of what you might find?Are you a woman? I thought so. I'm convinced that the true difference between the sexes lies in our gut reaction to creepy crawly things. Women are repulsed; men see a challenge to their manhood.For the most part, we bug-fearing women are independent and intelligent.

When C.J. Brown and Perry Hills were lost for the season, it continued a run of bad luck for Maryland quarterbacks. Hills, Brown, Danny O'Brien, Jordan Steffy - that's a partial list of quarterback starters from recent years who suffered knockout punches. It's been years since Maryland had a starting quarterback go wire-to-wire. “Hopefully this bug will get out of Maryland,” said Brown, who has endured season-ending injuries twice in his career.  He said the second one - the torn ACL from August - is more difficult.

When C.J. Brown and Perry Hills were lost for the season, it continued a run of bad luck for Maryland quarterbacks. Hills, Brown, Danny O'Brien, Jordan Steffy - that's a partial list of quarterback starters from recent years who suffered knockout punches. It's been years since Maryland had a starting quarterback go wire-to-wire. “Hopefully this bug will get out of Maryland,” said Brown, who has endured season-ending injuries twice in his career.  He said the second one - the torn ACL from August - is more difficult.

I STUBBED MY TOE on a garden cucumber and found myself in a lather. Part of my excitation was that I was startled. Cucumbers sneak up on you. They are stealth vegetables, seemingly coming to fruition under cover of dark green leaves.Yet for me this cucumber was more than a mere surprise. It was an exclusive. It was a one-and-only. This 7 inches of cellulose represented a victory, of sorts, of man over bug, in this case the wily cucumber beetle. And this cucumber was the only one I had been able to get past the beetle in the past two years.

Among the boxes of food, water and clothing heading out of Fort Meade today for hurricane-ravaged South Florida is a much-requested commodity -- insect repellent."

Washington -- Bugs are beautiful. Orkin Pest Control says so.You may know Orkin most as the folks who will come into your home and zap out whatever creepy crawlers are running around, but the Atlanta-based company has another, more benevolent face. It's the official corporate sponsor of the O. Orkin Insect Zoo, which will open today after a year of extensive renovation at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.Yesterday morning, while a taped soundtrack played the soothing tones of whirring cicadas and chirping crickets, Smithsonian officials and Orkin representatives beamed with pride at a press briefing.

MOSCOW - The first time around, the new American Embassy building here was like a giant Soviet antenna, a monument to the ingenuity of the KGB and a constant and embarrassing reminder to the United States of a skirmish lost in the hard-fought Cold War. Yesterday, U.S. Ambassador James Collins welcomed reporters to the second version of the building, finally open and operating 15 years after the first attempt had to be abandoned. "It's a symbol," Collins said. "We are entering a new era in our relations with the Russian Federation.

We have hundreds of strange-looking insects that just appeared inside and outside our home. They are brown in color, nearly an inch long and have back legs like a grasshopper. What are they and should we be concerned?You are describing the adult leaf-footed bug. It feeds on some vegetable-garden plants but otherwise is harmless. The bugs over-winter in sheltered locations and emerge in the spring. This winter they have been stimulated by mild weather to move about with their other insect brethren.

A car driven by an elderly woman smashed through the front of a clothing store in Owings Mills Saturday morning, injuring a shopper, but not seriously, according to Baltimore County police. The accident occurred at 11:36 a.m. at the Fashion Bug in the 11000 block of Reisterstown Road. Police said the 76-year-old driver of a Subaru Outback apparently lost control of her vehicle while trying to park it near the store. The car accelerated forward and came to a stop inside the store, police said.

They look like poppy seeds with legs as they tumble out of two pint containers and onto the leaves of a scraggly vine sunning itself near a pine tree. But looks deceive. In a split second, the 500 bugs attack the plant like vegan conventioneers at an all-you-can-eat salad bar, chewing the leaves and burrowing into the stems. These are some of the smallest state employees - weevils, actually - doing work usually carried out by chemicals and earth-moving equipment. Their meal is an invasive Asian plant that arrived in York County, Pa., in the mid-1930s and has spread since to 12 East Coast states.

Is late blight going to attack tomatoes this year? I've heard rumors. How can I tell if I'm seeing late blight or early blight? Late blight disease, which devastated tomato plants in 2009, has been found in states all around Maryland, but not in Maryland yet. The late blight fungus likes cool damp conditions (think of the potato famine in Ireland — same fungus), and we had a spell of that weather. Keep an eye out for brown blotches that start at the leaf tip or edges.

The leaves on my azaleas are turning white. They look dirty underneath, too. How can I stop this? Your azaleas are infested with lace bugs. These ubiquitous insects insert their mouth parts into leaf undersides and suck out the chlorophyll. Each piercing makes a pale spot, known as stippling, and eventually the entire leaf can turn yellow and fall off. The black dots under the leaves are fecal spots. Lace bugs themselves are hard to see because they have translucent "lacy" wings.

Harvard University has a research forest.  So does Duke.  Yale has multiple forests.  The University of Maryland has “the wooded hillock. " a 24-acre patch of trees at the northern tip of the state's flagship public campus. Though tiny, largely unheralded and perhaps a bit scruffy by comparison, the forest near the Comcast Center is brimming with biodiversity, no less valuable to the faculty and students who use it than its more heralded Ivy League counterparts. Targeted for bulldozing a few years back to provide parking for buses and other support services, the hillock was spared after months of passionate protests by students and faculty, who argued the woods were a green oasis worth preserving on the sprawling 1,400-acre flagship campus.

Stink bugs have begun to emerge from winter hibernation. They often take refuge in only to creep into your bedroom once the weather warms , as they try to find their way outside again. The pests have only been in this country since 1998, likely from China or Japan. They have only been in Maryland since 2009 or so. But their populations have grown rapidly since then. Try flushing them rather than squishing. And make sure to seal any openings to your house they might sneak in through.

When Microsoft issues a major bug fix for Windows, the smart-money players usually wait a while before installing it. They assume that the bug fix, known in the trade as a "Service Pack," has its own share of bugs, and they're willing to let the eager beavers find out if it contains any disasters waiting to happen. Unfortunately, Microsoft's first major Service Pack for Windows XP, released Sept. 9, is more urgent than usual. Along with dozens of patches for published security flaws - most of of which are obscure or were discovered only in lab tests - Service Pack 1 plugs a previously undisclosed hole in Windows that's potentially devastating and easy for hackers to exploit.

The Central Library, 10375 Little Patuxent Parkway, will offer classes for children in kindergarten through fifth grade. "Buggy About Sign Language," a chance for all ages to explore the insect world through American Sign Language, will be at 1:30 p.m. Aug. 1. Storyteller and signer Kathy MacMillan will lead the 60-minute class. Registration begins Friday. "Dinosaur Bugs," a chance for ages 6-10 to make their own dinosaur, will be offered at 1:30 p.m. Aug. 5. Registration begins July 29. "Bug juice and Chocolate-covered Spiders," a program for ages 6 and older on facts, stories and recipes involving insects, will be at 1:30 p.m. Aug. 6. Participants can make a treat with gummy bugs.

Update:  Starbucks has responded. Linda Mills, a spokeswoman from Starbucks, says: “Starbucks has a goal to minimize artificial ingredients in our products. And the strawberry base that we use  does have a cochineal extract, a common dye used in the food industry. It's in yogurt and fruit juices and a number of consumer products. It helps us move away from artificial  ingredients from our products.”  An online petition has been launched by a South Carolinian against Starbucks' red food coloring in its Strawberry drinks.

Stevenson's 6-3 loss to then-No. 9 Lynchburg Saturday night was exacerbated by the loss of sophomore attackman Tyler Reid. Reid, who registered 38 goals and seven assists last season, left the game in the third quarter and did not return. Coach Paul Cantabene declined to elaborate on the nature of Reid's injury, but acknowledged that his status for Wednesday night's home contest against York and in the near future is uncertain. “He's going to be TBD,” Cantabene said Monday morning.