Curve

It's been quite an experience riding the light rail system the past couple of weeks. Certainly it's been a great way to get to know your fellow Baltimoreans a little better. My favorite was that southbound stretch between Mount Washington and North Avenue, whipping around curves in a stuffed-to-the-gills one-car train while standing in a stairwell jotting down quotes offered by fellow members of the "crush load." Let's just say I usually conduct my interviews with a little more personal space between myself and the interviewees.

THE HIGHWAY OUT OF DELHI, INDIA, LOOKS like it has a rash. What is this stuff? It's smashed-up watermelons from a truck. I realize I am going to die here, along with all this fruit, when I notice that my driver hasn't slowed. Ahead on the left is the wreck of the melon truck. I can see the Indian make, Tata, on its colorful bumper and the instruction, "Please Blow Horn." Too late for that. To our right is a steamroller rolling the wrong way. Straight in front, we are about to demolish three old men on a bicycle, a cart being tugged by a camel, a homemade tractor, and -- I can watch their flicking tails up close -- a herd of calico goats.

WASHINGTON -- When Oriole Park at Camden Yards opened in 1992, spectators packed the retro baseball palace not for days, but years. Orioles' attendance, routinely below 25,000 at Memorial Stadium, soared above 40,000 at the new park and remained there for nine seasons. Sixteen years later, baseball teams are painfully learning that the glorious, extended honeymoons with fans may be all but over when it comes to new stadiums. Clubs are still building them, but fans aren't coming - at least not at the rate they did in the heady days of Camden Yards and Cleveland's Jacobs Field (now Progressive Field)

Pregnant women do not tip over, and researchers say an evolutionary curve has a lot to do with the reason why. Anthropologists studying the human spine have found that women's lower vertebrae evolved in ways that reduce back pressure during pregnancy, when the mass of the abdomen grows by nearly one-third and the center of mass shifts forward considerably. That increases pressure on the spinal column, strains the muscles and generally reduces stability. Even without the benefit of advanced study in biomechanics, women tend to deal with the shift - and avoid tumbling over like a bowling pin - by leaning back.

The state attorney general's office will not recommend approval of a settlement reached last week between the Maryland Stadium Authority and its executive director, Alison L. Asti, who agreed to resign if the deal were approved by the Board of Public Works. Without the recommendation, the agreement cannot be considered by the Board of Public Works, said Raquel Guillory, a spokeswoman for the attorney general's office. The decision imperils the settlement, which seemed to signal the end of a tense period at the authority, where Asti's job status was a source of constant speculation.

Hometown -- Baltimore Current members --Marcelino Vicente, vocals; Brian Miller, guitars and vocals; Glenn Woodall, drums; Greg Scelsi, bass and loops Founded in --2005 Style --progressive rock Influenced by --Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Boards of Canada, Stereolab Notable --It took the band only one weekend to record its brand-new self-titled EP, Vicente said. They didn't go into the studio with many preconceived notions, and the result pleased just about everybody in the group, he said.

Al Gore came a long way to talk about global warming with his former congressional colleagues, but the distance was more psychic than physical. He had to cover a lot of personal ground in order to arrive in Washington last week as a certifiable celebrity and Oscar-winning star of the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. As I watched Mr. Gore testify before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, that fateful winter six years ago - when Mr. Gore had to concede the presidential race and then certify George W. Bush's election from the floor of the Senate - seemed like six decades ago. Mr. Gore's bete noire is the committee's ranking Republican, James M. Inhofe.

VIERA, Fla. -- Turn the clock back exactly one year and find Mike O'Connor in minor league camp here. The skinny kid from Baltimore was just hoping for a shot at Double-A ball after what seemed like a lifetime in Single-A. Tell him back then that in spring 2007 he'd be in the Washington Nationals' major league camp and he would have done cartwheels. He would have taken that scenario under any circumstance. But not anymore. Not when it means he can watch, but not pitch. "It's crazy looking back on it and just how quickly things change," said O'Connor, a 1998 Mount St. Joseph graduate.

Jennifer Hudson's Oscar win for her performance in Dreamgirls wasn't just a boon for the once-spurned American Idol contestant. It was a win for full-figured women all over. "People usually think fat and ugly," says Kellie Brown, a spokeswoman for the plus-sized retail chain Avenue. "Fat doesn't have to be ugly. Curviness doesn't have to be ugly. Who would look at Jennifer Hudson and say that she was unattractive?" Evidently, not too many people - including the hip and thin decision-makers at Vogue, one of the nation's foremost go-to magazines for beauty trends.

IT'S A HOME DESIGN TREND THAT has legs. Curvy legs. Feminine styling -- curvaceous contours, slimmer silhouettes and dressmaker details -- has taken wholesale furniture buyers by storm in the past year or two. These are the graceful pieces Maryland shoppers are now finding in local retail showrooms. Eyes accustomed to minimalist pieces and chunky chairs-and-a-half designed for McMansions (both of which looks are still around) will see plenty on furniture store floors to appeal to their softer side.