Context

When this offseason began, just about everyone in Birdland was hoping and praying for the Orioles to get the big guy, which is why the signing this week of former NBA forward Mark Hendrickson has been viewed in certain quarters as some kind of cruel joke. The big guy, of course, was free-agent slugger Mark Teixeira, and big was a figurative term. He was the top position player in the free-agent market, and he's from Severna Park and he would have made a big difference in the way a generation of disengaged Orioles fans view the beleaguered O's franchise.

The chief justice's comment came in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision last week that sharply limits the ability of school districts to manage the racial makeup of the student bodies in their schools. Roberts said school officials in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., had failed to show that their plans considered race in the context of a larger educational concept, and therefore did not meet a standard set in Brown v. Board of Education, the historic 1954 desegregation decision. ?The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discrimination on the basis of race.

When people think of anthropologists, they may picture Margaret Mead studying the remote culture of Papua New Guinea, or Louis and Mary Leakey unearthing the remains of human ancestors in Africa.But in the plush offices of a Baltimore marketing company anthropologists are taking root and training their sights on the tribal customs of Jane and Joe Consumer here in the United States.Cultural anthropologists head and staff Context-Based Research Group, a subsidiary started this month by Richardson, Myers & Donofrio.

"Let me say clearly that I am sorry for my offensive remarks. Or perhaps I should say, for the remarks that were construed as offensive in the context in which they were presented. That is, as offensive statements made by me. I am sorry if the remarks were not taken in the spirit in which they were made, which was certainly not really malicious as references to certain people's personal hygiene go."That part of the entire statement was misunderstood and I apologize for that. In so far as it was taken as a statement about an entire group, I apologize for that also.

THE POET, John Keats, would have understood about tennis. When three members of his family had succumbed to tuberculosis, and he feared the same fate, he was spurred to write his greatest works.This frenzy of creation in the face of extinction is called spes phthisica, pronounced ''space tizica.'' (Spes, Greek for ''anticipation,'' phthisica, for tuberculosis.) Keats even had a premonition (fulfilled, sadly) of his own early demise:/!When I have fears that I maycease to be,, Before my pen has gleaned myteeming brain . . .The phenomenon can be recognized in a much broader context -- in tennis, for example.

WASHINGTON -- In the face of spirited Republican attacks on President Clinton's character, his lawyers revised their language in legal papers in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case yesterday, saying in a new brief that the president is not claiming any kind of immunity as a member of the armed forces."

Far more dramatically than any picture from Auschwitz, Turner Broadcasting's "Survivors of the Holocaust" reveals the true horror unleashed by Nazi Germany during World War II.The horror is not simply that people died, or that men could be so brutal. The real horror is that the people who died were no different from the rest of us; that a supposedly civilized nation simply let it happen; that those who survived were no less victims than those who died.And why did all this happen? Simply because some people hated some other people -- not unlike the present circumstances in Bosnia, where untold thousands have died for the crime of being born members of a certain ethnic group.

"Here's the Deal: The Buying and Selling of a Great American City," by Ross Miller. Illustrated. Knopf. 302 pages. $27.50For every city there is a parallel Unbuilt City - an invisible universe of office towers, hotels and other structures that never made the leap from vision to reality. For every building in downtown Baltimore that has taken shape over the last 20 years, for example, there is at least one other building that was proposed but never materialized - most commonly due to lack of funding.

When it comes to news and documentaries, television is supposed to be long on visuals and short on context.But context -- wide, deep and occasionally even wise -- is exactly what television is offering this week as we approach the 20th anniversary of one of America's more shameful moments, the fall of Saigon, which brought the Vietnam War to an end in 1975.CBS News Correspondent Bob Simon has been in Vietnam this week delivering splendid reports, which will conclude tonight during the "CBS Evening News With Dan Rather & Connie Chung" airing at 7 on WJZ (Channel 13)

WASHINGTON -- Here is a new measure of an old phenomenon, the fetish many people make of arms control agreements: Many who say that weapons developed in the Cold War context have necessarily lost all usefulness also say that arms control agreements negotiated in that context -- even though negotiated with a political entity that no longer exists -- must at all costs be preserved.This mentality has been a barrier to progress toward providing the nation with defenses against ballistic missile attacks.

There's a lot of pitching angst out there right now, but let's keep it in context. Did anyone think Mark Hendrickson and Brian Bass were going to be lights out? (For more, go to baltimoresun.com/schmuckblog)

Where would state find funds for city schools? Mark Fetting and Tom Wilcox make several good points in their column "School cut unfair, unwise" (Commentary, Feb. 9). However, they didn't say what other programs Gov. Martin O'Malley should cut in order to restore to the Baltimore school system the $23 million in state aid the governor has proposed to cut. If they do not believe that other programs are as deserving of funding as the Baltimore schools are, they should identify which ones should be defunded.

Kent McKenzie's The Exiles, a 1961 documentary about American Indians living in the Bunker Hill section of Los Angeles, plays just three times this week at the Charles: at noon tomorrow, 7 p.m. Monday and 9 p.m. Thursday. And that's a shame because it's more beautiful and invigorating than any film in town except The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. An unheralded milestone in independent filmmaking, it achieves the nuances and sardonic vitality of Edward Hopper's paintings - and this film does so without the benefit of color, in exquisitely gritty black and white.

When this offseason began, just about everyone in Birdland was hoping and praying for the Orioles to get the big guy, which is why the signing this week of former NBA forward Mark Hendrickson has been viewed in certain quarters as some kind of cruel joke. The big guy, of course, was free-agent slugger Mark Teixeira, and big was a figurative term. He was the top position player in the free-agent market, and he's from Severna Park and he would have made a big difference in the way a generation of disengaged Orioles fans view the beleaguered O's franchise.

Dear Chris Rock: I apologize in advance for the language that will shortly follow. And yes, there is a certain irony there, given that you are one of the most profane men on the planet. Also one of the funniest. That's why I eagerly anticipated your new HBO special, Kill the Messenger, even though I knew there would inevitably come a moment that made me embarrassed for you. And sure enough, it came. During your routine, you noted how, last year, the NAACP held a symbolic "burial" of the N-word.

Earlier this year, at a Writers Bloc event in Beverly Hills, Calif., Norman Mailer acknowledged that he believed in God. This belief, he explained, was qualified; his vision of the deity was as one who is fallible, far from omnipotent, less a Supreme Being than a supreme artist of a kind. Noting that his own creations had often gotten the best of him, Mailer said he didn't see why the same might not be true of God. This was a classic Mailer performance - contrarian, contradictory, brilliant and somehow unsatisfying.

The chief justice's comment came in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision last week that sharply limits the ability of school districts to manage the racial makeup of the student bodies in their schools. Roberts said school officials in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., had failed to show that their plans considered race in the context of a larger educational concept, and therefore did not meet a standard set in Brown v. Board of Education, the historic 1954 desegregation decision. ?The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discrimination on the basis of race.

Now you hear it, now you hear it again. That used to be the rule for restaurants' background music. Through the late 1990s and into this millennium, you could go from trattoria to pizza parlor across the nation and hear Rosemary Clooney belting "Mambo Italiano." Fancy steakhouses have forever offered Frank Sinatra on a continuous loop, while at Rosa's Rosticeria in Santa Cruz, Calif., even some margarita drinkers got a little tired of Bob Marley's lilting reggae Legend album. No connection, but Rosa's has since closed.

Context can't soften the deaths in Iraq Thomas Sowell makes a comparative historical argument that suggests that the casualties in the Iraq conflict are minimal in the context of past wars ("Hyping losses while glossing over victories," Opinion Commentary, Dec. 15). This argument is specious. Today, we have a neoconservative brain trust that has assumed for the rest of us the responsibility for deciding, in secret and with arrogance and deceit, how and when the United States should use its military force to achieve its objectives.

STUDYING. Listening. Staring. Moving. Looking. Constructing. Watching. These simple human activities can have unintended consequences. When seen in a particular context -- an art museum, for instance -- they can create a kind of visual harmony, a brief interaction that, for an instant, is a form of art itself. It might be the moment in which a viewer is framed by the circular forms of a sculpture. Or when a visitor is embraced by the beauty of an impressionist painting. At the Baltimore Museum of Art, which this month marks the 90th anniversary of its incorporation, these moments happen constantly.