Clock

We in the media have met the enemy and found out that he is us. Why do we keep giving Sarah Palin free publicity which is just what she is after? Al Funk, Timonium

Lotfy Nathan spent some five years putting together his film about West Baltimore's dirt-bike culture. Now, with national acclaim for "12 O'clock Boys" promising to turn it into one of the year's breakout documentaries after a February premiere at the South by Southwest arts festival in Austin, Texas, he's happily basking in the acclaim. "The reception in Austin was incredible," Nathan said last week from Toronto, where the film was being shown at the annual Hot Docs festival. "It was more than I could have asked for. " This week, a distribution deal with independent film distributors Oscilloscope Laboratories safely in hand, the Maryland Institute College of Art -educated Nathan is bringing his film home.

Here's an update on one problem for Baltimore residents and workers: Baltimore's signature timepiece should get some attention next week. The time displayed by the hands on the southern face of the Bromo Seltzer Tower has been incorrect for several years. Watchdog first reported about the problem, which then affected all the faces, in 2007. Repairs resolved the issue for all the faces except for the one facing south. Clock repair specialists were called in, but nothing helped.

My dog wakes me up at 5:30 every morning and won't leave me alone until I get up for her walk and breakfast. I want to sleep in during the week - how can I get her to sleep later? Unfortunately, you've trained yourself an excellent alarm clock, and the fastest and easiest way to turn that clock off is to put it in another room the night before you want to sleep late. Be warned that asking her to wait a little longer to eat won't cause any damage, but asking her to hold it when she has to go out can have messy consequences.

Pastor David Whitney said our rights come from God, not the government, and even if he only said it once in three hours, it requires a reply ("Church-state objections to class," Feb. 24). There is no evidence for God, so any rights attributed to be from him are strictly man-made. Maryland has had four constitutions, but it seems Mr. Whitney thinks nothing has occurred here in the last 250 years. We've gone from a colony ruled by a king claiming a God-given right to rule, to a state in a country that gave blacks and women their freedom and the right to vote.

The Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association and affiliated Baltimore Catholic League have adopted a 35-second shot clock for the upcoming basketball season. The shot clock will be in place this season for all three of the MIAA conferences and the BCL at the varsity and junior varsity levels. After years of consideration, the addition of the shot clock was approved in April at an annual meeting among MIAA athletic directors after the leagues' coaches made a formal proposal following the conclusion of last season.

Wilmer A. "Bud" Rehmeyer, a World War II veteran who owned and operated a Baltimore County clock and jewelry repair shop for more than 50 years, died July 10 of heart failure at Chapel Hill Nursing Home in Randallstown. He was 96. The son of a schoolteacher, who was also a Fuller Brush salesman, and a garment worker was born in Glen Rock, Pa., and later moved with his family to Hampden. He was a City College graduate and worked downtown on Liberty Street for a watch supply company before being drafted into the Army in 1941.

The hands of time really did stand still Tuesday at approximately 10:35 a.m. But that wasn't until after they twisted and clanged in the wind for more than an hour as workers hoisted two huge metal clock hands up the south face of the Bromo Seltzer Tower on an elaborate pulley system. The four-sided clock soaring nearly 288 feet was built in 1911 and is an indelible part of the Baltimore landscape. Films set in Charm City often include a shot of the brown brick tower that resembles a medieval fortress.

Not too long ago, some readers made suggestions as to which player ranked as the toughest Oriole. Someone mentioned Brady Anderson's appendicitis in 1996. He had it, then he didn't. Coincidentally, Anderson sent me a text message on Thursday. So I asked him about it. One doctor said his appendix had to be removed. "I couldn't believe it," Anderson said last week. "I had 32 home runs at the time." A different doctor said the condition might go away if he could deal with the pain. After a few days, he came back and hit 18 more home runs, and the Orioles made the playoffs.

When “12 O'Clock Boys” director Lotfy Nathan brought his film to this month's South by Southwest film festival, one of his main goals was to find distribution for the documentary. Nathan didn't have to wait long, as deadline.com reported this week that Oscilloscope Laboratories had purchased the North American rights to Nathan's documentary on the West Baltimore dirt-bike riders. Oscilloscope, which was co-founded by deceased Beastie Boy Adam “MCA” Yauch, is considered a boutique film company.

Forward. It's more than a presidential campaign slogan. It's also a directive on the second Sunday of March - this weekend - for clocks in the United States to move forward one hour under daylight-saving time. This means more afternoon sun. The official clocks of the United States government will change by an hour at 2 a.m. Sunday, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation, which regulates daylight savings and time zones in the country. Clocks detached from today's omnipresent Internet will have to be changed manually - unless you are in the rare places in the United States, such as parts of Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and other island territories that don't prescribe to the change.

Let's say the CEO of your company is retiring, but he's going to keep an office at headquarters and the services of the same secretary as the new guy. Awkward! Or how about working at a company where the boss just decided you can no longer work from home, a godsend once you had kids, even as she brings her baby to the nursery she built for him next to her office. Meow! This past week was a veritable schadenfreude-fest for those of us who love nothing more than complaining about our work — unless it's discovering how delightfully awful someone else's office must be. So, the Vatican: On top of the usual workplace issues that must plague the Roman Catholic Church's corporate offices — there's that impenetrable glass ceiling for any women employees, for one thing — this past week brought word of a leadership transition from, um, hell.

Lotfy Nathan never figured he'd connect with the 12 O'clock Boys, a West Baltimore dirt-bike gang whose culture he was hoping to capture on film. At best, he figured to end up with a documentary about trying to track down the group, and having little luck at it. Fortunately for Nathan, it didn't work out that way. "It was surprising to me that I was able to sort-of breach the group," says Nathan, whose "12 O'clock Boys" will be getting its world premiere at the South by Southwest arts festival in Austin, Tex., next month.

An Arizona man pleaded guilty Thursday to federal charges of stalking his ex-wife in Maryland after a campaign of harassment and violent threats that included mailing the woman shredded copies of protective orders she had taken out against him, the U.S. Justice Department said. David Charles Richards, 49, of Phoenix, will be sentenced in June and faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison for stalking. Richards and the woman were married in the early 1990s and lived in Anne Arundel County, according to his indictment, but the marriage ended after about 10 weeks when Richards told his wife he had been previously arrested for assault and she ordered him from the home.

There is a most magical hour every Christmas season, and it is not the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve, when the darkened church glows with candles in anticipation of a child's birth. It is not dawn on Christmas morning, when excited children wake their parents so they can see what Santa has left under the tree. And it is not that moment on Christmas night, as in "A Christmas Story," when parents tuck the exhausted children into bed and then sip a quiet glass of wine by a dying fire.

A "perfect storm of errors" caused the city of Baltimore to issue a speed camera citation to a stationary vehicle, the Police Department's chief spokesman said Thursday. Spokesman Anthony Guglielmi acknowledged that Officer Christopher Izquierdo should not have validated the citation, which alleged that a Mazda wagon was going 38 mph even though a video clip from the camera and two time-stamped photos given as evidence clearly show the car stopped at a red light. State law requires every citation to be approved by a sworn law enforcement officer, and in the city that is the final step before a ticket is mailed out to the vehicle's owner.

Maryland Live casino in Anne Arundel County announced plans to begin operating 24-hours per day starting Dec. 27. The move, made legal by the passing of Question 7, must first be approved by the state. Casino officials believe they'll get the OK next week. Robert J. Norton, president and general manager of the casino, said in a news release that the casino continues to prepare for the arrival of 150 live table games early next year. Passage of the referrendum spurred Maryland Live to hire 1,200 additional employees; about 140 of them will be in place by Dec. 27 to handle the expanded hours.