Cutting Edge

The National Endowment for the Arts was created in 1965 to use tax dollars for, in part, the "encouragement of excellence" in artistic achievement in America.Today, however, the NEA faces extinction. Many in Congress believe, as Newt Gingrich does, that the NEA is dedicated to spending tax dollars on "the weird."While it funds many noncontro- versial projects, the NEA also funds pictures and actions that many consider obscene, disgusting or sacrilegious.Susan Lubowsky, director of the NEA Visual Arts Program in 1989, offered this defense: "I think that controversy has always been endemic to art, that certainly it's been endemic to 20th-century art. Even as far back as Caravaggio, people complained because he painted the Virgin too naturalistically, with dirty feet.

Be happy! It's a brand-new year! Twenty-seven reasons to go on living:1. The city's luring tourists with new television ads. The ads show a happy couple stripping seductively for each other. This is called "cutting edge." It's so cutting edge, it reminds everybody: "Oh, yeah, Baltimore and sex. Didn't Jay Leno just do a whole week of jokes on Baltimore and venereal disease?"2. U.S. Sen. Trent Lott. Maybe his plan to put the Clinton impeachment quickly behind us will work. After all, the last time we had a scandal of such Sodom and Gomorrah proportions, wasn't it Lott's wife who got stiffed?

NOAM CHOMSKY has been the world's most important linguist since he revolutionized the study of language 40 years ago. In the United States, mainstream news outlets acknowledge his enormous stature in the field of linguistics. But the media response to Chomsky's work in the realm of politics is a different story.During this decade, millions of Americans have been drawn to the books and speeches of Chomsky the political analyst. His vast knowledge, clarity and strong commitment to humane values make Chomsky an appreciated speaker - and an energizing catalyst for social activism.

Be happy! It's a brand-new year! Twenty-seven reasons to go on living:1. The city's luring tourists with new television ads. The ads show a happy couple stripping seductively for each other. This is called "cutting edge." It's so cutting edge, it reminds everybody: "Oh, yeah, Baltimore and sex. Didn't Jay Leno just do a whole week of jokes on Baltimore and venereal disease?"2. U.S. Sen. Trent Lott. Maybe his plan to put the Clinton impeachment quickly behind us will work. After all, the last time we had a scandal of such Sodom and Gomorrah proportions, wasn't it Lott's wife who got stiffed?

Quick to the finishIt sounds too good to be true: nail polish that dries in 90 seconds or less. We put three brands to the test, and here are the results:REVLON TOP SPEEDAdvertised time to dry: 90 seconds for one coatNumber of shades: 52Most popular: Dusk (mauve), Toffee and Skin (light pink)Cutting edge: LavenderComments: This brand gave the best one-coat coverage but was still slightly tacky at test time. It also was the most expensive. The Lapis shade was a hit with our young testers. Adults liked Flesh and Sherry.

LONG BRANCH, N.J. - Over the years, this once-vibrant vacation spot watched its sandy beaches and its tourism erode. Then came the fire in 1987 that destroyed the city's fishing pier, boardwalk and an amusement park called Kid's World.Now, after a decade that left it faded and abandoned, this stretch of Atlantic coast is on the brink of a comeback and, curiously enough, the cutting edge of urban planning.Five developers are negotiating with the city to build housing, a restored pier, an entertainment center, restaurants and shops all connected by resculptured streets lined with trees, walkways and bicycle paths.

A larger-than-life subject, a great performance from an ungrateful George C. Scott and a powerful script from Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North combined to make "Patton" (9 p.m.-midnight, AMC) that rarest of rare birds, a war film favored by both hawks and doves.Hawks loved it because no man ever went at war with more gusto than Gen. George S. Patton Jr., who believed he could single-handedly whup the Germans, if only his bosses would let him. And doves (at least 1970-era doves) appreciated his rebellious nature and disdain for authority.

What a dark time it was in the American kitchen: 1926, a year before the dawn of the Age of Convenient Wrapping.There was butcher paper, a waxed paper available in sheets from the meat market, but little else was available to protect food from spoiling in a sea of air and ambient smells. No Baggies. No Saran Wrap, Ziplocs, Reynolds Oven Bags or Hefty OneZips. No Reynolds Wrap. Not even Cut-Rite Wax Paper in the box with the serrated metal cutting edge -- wax paper as handy as water from a kitchen sink.

Students in Howard County's magnet technology high schools are getting a taste this week of the ethical and moral dilemmas they're likely to face in the high-tech careers of the 21st century -- by watching a play.The magnet students are seeing a drama called "The Cutting Edge" that looks at recent advances in biotechnology and asks the ethical questions those advances are raising."It really makes you think," said River Hill High School freshman Kimani Feaster, 14, after seeing the play's first performance.

Retro fever is taking over fashion this spring. Again. We just did th '50s, the '60s and some of the '70s, and now it's the curvy fir of the '40s that's shaping silhouettes. Why does it seem we're always looking back?"There are only so many ways you can cut a skirt," is how Sun Fashion editor Vide Roberts ecplains fashion's preoccupation with the past. "We had clothes that were cut away from the body for so long that now er're ready for something trim and closer." After all, don't most of us have more baggy T-shirts and oversized sweaters tan we could ever need?

Picture floating high above Pratt Street in a ski-lift-style gondola, soaring over the Inner Harbor on a seven-minute journey from the Convention Center to Fells Point. Trey Winstead of Winstead Brothers LLC has been studying, planning and engineering such a 1.3-mile route along overhead cables for six years. Now along with his brother Peter Winstead he's ready to pitch the plan to put Baltimore on the cutting edge of urban aerial transit to the city's design panel. "This is going to be the best new attraction in the country," said Winstead, a civil engineer who came up with the idea with his brother after they moved to downtown Baltimore in 2002.

Hillary Clinton is trying to go where no woman has gone before - to the White House. Other women have run for the country's highest office - from Shirley Chisholm to Elizabeth Dole. But never has a woman had such a good chance first to capture her party's nomination, then to win the presidency. So this time it could happen - the United States could have a woman president. Is the country ready for that? Perhaps the most amazing thing is that in the 21st century, that question is even being asked.

If you think turning a battleship around is hard, you should try turning around a big research university. "It's like a battleship that's going in many different directions at the same time," says John Toll, former head of the University of Maryland, College Park and the state's university system. "It's more like a fleet." So Lawrence Summers, who announced last week that he was leaving the presidency of Harvard University after five controversial years in the job, gets some sympathy.

Dozens of readers responded with solutions for the marketing dilemmas in Baltimore ("Imagining a better Baltimore," Arts & Society, Jan. 12). Some were facetious, some sentimental, but most sounded the earnest belief that if Baltimore is not the "Greatest City in America," as the mayor proclaims, it's at least distinctive enough to deserve a better slogan. Linda Fox of Baltimore suggested this: "Baltimore: City on the Edge," leaving it open to interpretation which "edge" that might be -- "the edge of greatness ... the cutting edge of medical research ... cutting edge of the New Politics ... the edge of the harbor."

Scott Padgett first realized he was no longer hip when he quit checking Rolling Stone's list of the top albums on college campuses. Padgett, who turned 50 in the past year, held onto all vestiges of hipness as long as he could before he grudgingly came to the conclusion that inevitably confronts everyone: You can't stay hip forever. Michael Nuccitelli, a Brewster, N.Y., psychologist, calls Padgett's dimming interest in the top college albums an "ah-ha experience." What's that? It's one in a series of moments when you slowly realize that your age and your hipness quotient are rapidly moving in opposite directions.

On the first day of kindergarten, orientation time for us nervous, novice parents, my wife and I are handed a thick envelope. No explanation is given. Our teacher doesn't have to bother. Little did we realize -- first-timers that we are -- but we've just been given an offer we can't refuse. Inside are gift wrap order forms. The PTA wants us to sell, sell, sell. As Dante might say, "lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate" -- abandon all hope ye who enter here. Within days I'm on the phone with my father, hopeful that he will spare me from the torture of knocking on neighbors' doors or strong-arming acquaintances: How many rolls of wrapping paper, Grandpa?

Be happy! It's a brand-new year! Twenty-seven reasons to go on living:1. The city's luring tourists with new television ads. The ads show a happy couple stripping seductively for each other. This is called "cutting edge." It's so cutting edge, it reminds everybody: "Oh, yeah, Baltimore and sex. Didn't Jay Leno just do a whole week of jokes on Baltimore and venereal disease?"2. U.S. Sen. Trent Lott. Maybe his plan to put the Clinton impeachment quickly behind us will work. After all, the last time we had a scandal of such Sodom and Gomorrah proportions, wasn't it Lott's wife who got stiffed?

Be happy! It's a brand-new year! Twenty-seven reasons to go on living:1. The city's luring tourists with new television ads. The ads show a happy couple stripping seductively for each other. This is called "cutting edge." It's so cutting edge, it reminds everybody: "Oh, yeah, Baltimore and sex. Didn't Jay Leno just do a whole week of jokes on Baltimore and venereal disease?"2. U.S. Sen. Trent Lott. Maybe his plan to put the Clinton impeachment quickly behind us will work. After all, the last time we had a scandal of such Sodom and Gomorrah proportions, wasn't it Lott's wife who got stiffed?

NOAM CHOMSKY has been the world's most important linguist since he revolutionized the study of language 40 years ago. In the United States, mainstream news outlets acknowledge his enormous stature in the field of linguistics. But the media response to Chomsky's work in the realm of politics is a different story.During this decade, millions of Americans have been drawn to the books and speeches of Chomsky the political analyst. His vast knowledge, clarity and strong commitment to humane values make Chomsky an appreciated speaker - and an energizing catalyst for social activism.

Quick to the finishIt sounds too good to be true: nail polish that dries in 90 seconds or less. We put three brands to the test, and here are the results:REVLON TOP SPEEDAdvertised time to dry: 90 seconds for one coatNumber of shades: 52Most popular: Dusk (mauve), Toffee and Skin (light pink)Cutting edge: LavenderComments: This brand gave the best one-coat coverage but was still slightly tacky at test time. It also was the most expensive. The Lapis shade was a hit with our young testers. Adults liked Flesh and Sherry.