Dare

UPDATE: Check out a photo gallery of images from Joe Flacco's wedding here. The photos can also be found on the website of photographer Jason Prezant , but the site has been inaccessible due to the high interest in the Flacco pictures. . Joe Flacco's wedding photos have been posted out in the blogosphere, and simply put, they are amazing. The photos, which were published to the blog of wedding photographer Jason Prezant, shed a little light onto what the Ravens quarterback is like away from the television cameras and our microphones.

It was a delight to see Dr. Ben Carson on The Sun's front page recently ("Controversial address vaults Hopkins' Carson into political arena," Feb. 18), and it was a stark contrast to the vitriolic online piece earlier by TV critic David Zurawik ("Hopkins' Dr. Benjamin Carson anointed new Fox darling of the right on Hannity," Feb. 16). Mr. Zurawik's hatred for Fox News came through loud and clear. He clearly was using Dr. Carson as a conduit to disparage Fox. No wonder he was critical of the way President Barack Obama appeared in a film shown on Sean Hannity's program Friday evening.

On February 17, 2007, KIM DARE beloved daughter of Victor Dare and the late May Jackson, devoted mother of Willie Little and Anthony Faunt Leroy, dear sister of Deitrice, Kear and Rolanda Dare. Also survived by a granddaughter and many friends. Friends may call at the family owned MARCH FUNERAL HOME WEST, INC., 4300 Wabash Avenue on Thursday after 10 A.M., where the family will honor Kim's life on Friday at 1:30 P.M. Funeral services will follow at 2 P.M.

Attention national media: You know Martin O'Malley, defender of the underdog. It's time to get to know Martin O'Malley, thug. The Maryland governor, widely rumored to harbor presidential aspirations, canonized himself in the progressive movement for championing gay marriage and in-state tuition for some illegal immigrants in the last election. He also deftly weaved a portrait of Maryland as a green energy, public-education utopia during his many appearances on national cable TV news during election season as President Barack Obama's surrogate.

obsville Elementary School conducted a Red Ribbon campaign, collecting quarters on Mountain Road last Saturday for DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education). Above, Melissa Aburn, 11, collects from a eft, students display coins on a ribbon.

Baseball Hall of Famer Jim Palmer, Gov. William Donald Schaefer and author Tom Clancy will present awards for an elementary school essay contest "How DARE Has Helped Me to Stay Drug-Free" from 8 to 9:15 a.m. on Friday, April 26, at Catonsville Middle School.The event, sponsored by DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) Program, celebratesthe program's accomplishments throughout the state.Jennifer Brown, from Jessup Elementary School, is the Anne Arundel county award recipient.State and county officials, law enforcement officers, students, school administrators and corporate and community leaders from around the state will attend.

AKRON, Ohio -- It was the dreaded double-dog dare.That and a temperature of 6 degrees got a 6-year-old Akron boy more than he bargained for.As any fan of the 1983 Jean Shepherd movie "A Christmas Story" knows, the double-dog dare cannot be ignored. The movie is the story of 9-year-old Ralphie's quest for a BB gun during a 1940s Christmas.In one scene, one of Ralphie's classmates is "double-dog dared" to stick his tongue to the flagpole to see if it really will freeze.He does and it does.On Wednesday morning, movie fantasy became embarrassing fact when an Akron boy took up his friends' dare and stuck his tongue to a cast-iron fire hydrant.

Project DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) is designed to help elementary school children resist peer pressure to experiment with tobacco, drugs and alcohol. DARE uses uniformed law enforcement officersto teach a formal curriculum and gives special attention to fifth-graders, preparing them for junior high school -- where they are most likely to begin encountering pressures to use drugs.Fifth-graders at Odenton Elementary School have just completed the 16-week program and graduated last Thursday night during a presentation for the entire community.

AT GORMAN Crossing Elementary School, the newest elementary in our little corner of the county, the year has been progressing nicely. Before the holiday break, 85 fifth-graders graduated from the 16-week DARE -- Drug Awareness Resistance Education -- program presented by Howard County police Officer Lauren Markley. Markley, who teaches the one-day-a-week classes, is very good with children, says PTA member Carol Ostrow, who was in charge of the after-graduation reception. The graduation ceremony took place Dec. 22. The children wore red DARE T-shirts.

Frank C. Dare, a retired Aberdeen Proving Ground teacher, died of cancer Sept. 10 at his Aberdeen home. He was 81. Born in Washington and raised in Colmar Manor in Prince George's County, he earned an industrial arts education degree from the University of Maryland, College Park. Before World War II, he was a machinist apprentice in a torpedo factory in Alexandria, Va. He subsequently enlisted in the Army and was sent to Europe. Family members said he suffered from frostbite during the winter of 1944-1945 while fighting in the Battle of the Bulge.

When I was in high school, the drama group traveled to Louisville to see a series of plays (my first experience of Sheridan's Rivals !). As we walked to the theater, a gentleman was handing out some kind of document. It was typed, single-spaced, with no margins. It appeared to describe some elaborate scheme or conspiracy, and the text was littered with biblical notations. It was the first, but not the last, such text I ever encountered, and I scanned it with mild interest before discarding it. Back in the day, people who had, in Jonathan Swift's words, given their wits an unlucky shake were to be found on street corners, shouting or distributing their dense texts.

I almost didn't become a writer. By the time I returned to Baltimore after a few years abroad, I already held three university degrees and was taking a break from my fourth. Just one requirement away from an MA in creative writing, I was the most over-credentialed storyteller I knew. I was also a chicken. Too afraid to try to earn a living allowing what I'd learned in urban planning courses to inform my writing on cities, I took a job with Baltimore's department of planning instead.

They called it the "seven minutes or terror" for the complex maneuverings and rocket blasts conducted in the final moments of a 354 million mile journey from home, but the Curiosity rover executed its landing flawlessly. Those who doubted U.S. preeminence in space exploration — or even in science and engineering in an era of outsourcing and global competition — should pay heed. Too bad there was no film crew on the surface of Mars (at least as far as we distant earthlings can tell)

As Eliza Doolittle put it in "My Fair Lady": "Words, words words, I'm so sick of words!" Once again, in the wake of the latest shooting spree in Colorado, presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney ran a race to the microphones to deplore it, with more words of sympathy than promises or plans to do anything about it. Mr. Obama, who hops aboard Air Force One at the drop of a megabucks fund-raiser these days, jetted out to Colorado to commiserate...

Baltimore magician (and self-proclaimed "world's youngest escape artist") Spencer Horsman slipped out of a straightjacket and avoided almost certain death on last night's episode of "America's Got Talent. " Horsman, a 26-year-old who runs the South Baltimore bar Illusions with his father, had "America's Got Talent" host Nick Cannon strap him into a straight-jacket. He then hung upside down, between a set of metal jaws with nasty looking spikes, held open by a rope. The rope was set afire, and Horsman had a minute and 20 seconds to escape before the jaws clamped shut on him. "Do not try this at home," Cannon warned as Horsman's escape began.

El Paraiso is a crowd-pleaser. Whether your friends are hard to impress foodie types, or cautious and careful when exploring a menu, El Paraiso ("the paradise" in Spanish) will make them happy. The restaurant, in a Reisterstown shopping center, serves tasty and familiar Mexican standards alongside authentic — and equally appealing — Salvadoran dishes like yuca con chicharron and beef tongue tacos. The restaurant opened in 2003, but the recipes date back much further. El Paraiso's owners, Mercedes and Maria Rodriguez, emigrated to the U.S. from El Salvador during the Central American country's civil war in the 1980s.

Julien and Sophie, the central characters of Yann Samuell's wince-inducing Love Me If You Dare, are two of the most insistently unlikable movie creations to afflict audiences in some time, a pair of self-obsessed anti-romanticists who spend some two decades doing stupid things at each other's behest. They also whine a lot. Of such things are destructive relationships made, and Love Me If You Dare, I'm sure, sees itself as an extended metaphor for obsessive love, for how engulfing and overwhelming and gosh-darn pure it can be. Love is a force, the movie argues, that recognizes no bounds, not even those of common sense, certainly not those of common decency.

FEELINGS OF nostalgia have been drawing members of the Brooklyn Park High School Alumni Association back to the area to plan and participate in a community activity. The members, along with officers of the county police's Northern District Drug and Alcohol Resistance Education Unit (DARE) and Millennium Digital Media, are sponsoring the fifth annual DARE Day Celebration from noon to 4 p.m. Oct. 29. It will take place on the alumni's old stomping grounds - now the new Brooklyn Park Middle School at 200 Hammonds Lane.

Several columns ago, I wrote about the 160th anniversary of the foundering of the HMS Birkenhead off the West African coast that established the maritime tradition of "women and children first" when it comes time to evacuate a stricken vessel. My good friend, Helen Delich Bentley, the former congresswoman and former federal maritime commissioner, wrote in a letter to the editor of The Baltimore Sun that I had overlooked one of the most dramatic Atlantic sea rescues of all time, when the Missouri, out of Baltimore, rescued all passengers and crew from the steamer Danmark in 1889.

What impressed me first about the Kung Pao Chicken ($8.99) at this new Harbor East eatery was its boisterous fire. The pepper heat comes up front, with an intensity many Asian restaurants won't offer unless you ask for it. The Kung Pao declares the kitchen is not afraid to scare off wobbly Western palates, which are no doubt less timid than they used to be. Manchurian's heat in this dish is pleasantly risky. The consistency of the bean sauce carried nice smoky notes, and there's no question chilies were at work.