DIM

Marylanders may get a naked-eye look at a comet this month. Comet Lulin was discovered in 2007 by astronomers in China and Taiwan, and it has rounded the sun, headed our way. It's now low in the southwest before dawn, too dim to see without a telescope. But by Feb. 24 it should be faintly visible to the naked eye (and easy to see with binoculars) near Saturn, high in the southeast before midnight.

WASHINGTON -- A besieged President Clinton journeyed to Capitol Hill yesterday to join congressional Democrats in formally proposing that Medicare coverage be extended to early retirees and laid-off workers as young as 55.The proposal -- whose prospects are considered dim -- was unveiled by Clinton in happier times in January, before allegations surfaced of a sexual relationship between him and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.But if the swirling sex-and-perjury scandal has diminished Clinton's legislative and political authority, it was not in evidence yesterday as he trotted out one of the most ambitious legislative proposals of the 1998 election year.

AMERICAN POLICY in Bosnia is built upon a shaky framework of political fiction, unrealistic deadlines and military muscle. Only the latter category is succeeding. The NATO-led force of heavily-armed troops has separated the Serb, Croat and Muslim armies along 1,000 kilometers of ethnic hostility. But the danger remains that this huge effort may be in vain -- that once international peacekeepers depart, Bosnia's warring tribes will resume their struggle.The chief political fiction is a Croat-Muslim federation that Gen. George Joulwan, the supreme NATO commander, charitably describes as "very fragile."

WHEN Abraham Lincoln, at age 23, announced his candidacy for the Illinois legislature in 1832, he said that he was born and raised "in the most humble walks of life," and that he had "no wealthy or popular relations" to recommend him and that his only ambition in life was to be "esteemed" by his fellow citizens. For the next 33 years, until his assassination at the hands of 26-year-old, Harford County native John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln pursued his ambition with a calculated but laudable opportunism that helped propel him to become one of the nation's greatest presidents.

I know what caused the Great Los Angeles earthquake.That Sunday night, the Touchstone Division of the Disney empire must have held a screening of "My Father, the Hero."And the body of Walt Disney turned over in its grave so violently that . . . OH MY GOD! 6.5 ON THE RICHTER SCALE!In fact, the only thing that keeps the movie at all watchable is a great shambling performance by Gerard Depardieu, who is so shaggy-lovable he deserves an Oscar for most distinguished performance in the least distinguished movie.

When I remember now the love we shared,The tenderness with which we used to reachone another when the moment flaredInto a passion that consumed us each;When I remember all the sweet concernThat sheltered us from angry wind and storm,The loyalty that steadfastly did burnTo keep our hearts and spirits ever-warm;When I remember all of this, it seemsLike some hallucination I have framedThat has the essence of dim, distant dreamsWhere all that was is nothing as...

Women and the Cairo ConferenceIf we credit Mr. Berger with both saying what he means andmeaning what he says, we are left with two dominant concerns.On one level, he appears to be telling us that in order to preserve the appearance of tolerance people should disguise their true attitudes by using socially acceptable expressions that speak on multiple levels simultaneously.If you talk about "urban" violence or "inner-city" ills, your intended audience will know whom you are talking about. This has become such a common mode of expressing racial and ethnic attitudes that for many years social scientists have identified it as an integral component of what we call "the new prejudice."

As a longtime admirer of Jesse Jackson's genuine achievements in the past (achievements too often underestimated), I am grieved at the spectacle he is making of himself.Mr. Jackson used to have, it seemed, a cause of the week. Now it is a cause of the day, or even of the hour. He said he was going to fast for the dying Haitians who seek entry into this country and treatment for AIDS. But Mr. Jackson dropped that to run off after other goals -- jockeying for an assured shot at the leadership of the NAACP, picketing the opening game of the Baltimore Orioles when the president brought the cameras to it.It does not seem to strike him that he trivializes a life-and-death matter like the Haitians' crisis when he runs from it to the important but far less urgent matter of black managers in baseball.

You'll laugh, you'll sing along and you'll probably be grossed out more than once -- which is the way lots of people react to Madonna. So why shouldn't a parody of the pop queen be the same, only more so?MTV's Julie Brown is the perpetrator of "Medusa: Dare to Be Truthful," a sometimes savage satire of the Madonna-on-tour film "Truth or Dare," premiering at 10 p.m. tomorrow on the Showtime premium cable network (with repeats Dec. 5, 13, 18 and 31).Visually, Brown is sometimes dead on the mark, down to Madonna's right-cheek mole and her overly made-up eyes.

The nation embraced Paul Wiedorfer and put his name on a medal. But Wiedorfer wants to talk about the guys who never came home. The Germans threw up their arms and surrendered to Wiedorfer. But he and five old friends wonder if the governor and the mayor will do the same.History moves in funny ways. Nearly half a century since its close, some who served in World War II wonder how much value their sacrifice still holds. Wiedorfer won the nation's highest military award, the Medal of Honor.

The start of daylight-saving time today means darker mornings. Sunrise today jumps from 6:28 a.m. in Baltimore to 7:28, making the morning as dim as it was on Jan. 4. We won't recapture that lost morning light until April 15. Happily, sunset occurs after 7 p.m. now, and will advance daily, reaching its latest at 8:37 p.m. on June 27.

Marylanders may get a naked-eye look at a comet this month. Comet Lulin was discovered in 2007 by astronomers in China and Taiwan, and it has rounded the sun, headed our way. It's now low in the southwest before dawn, too dim to see without a telescope. But by Feb. 24 it should be faintly visible to the naked eye (and easy to see with binoculars) near Saturn, high in the southeast before midnight.

Space cadets! Tired of meteors and space station flyovers obscured by clouds? Just before dawn Tuesday, we can watch 2007's second total eclipse of the moon get cut short by moonset. The full August "Fruit Moon" will begin to slip into the Earth's shadow at 4:40 a.m. EDT. Totality begins at 5:52 a.m. But that's only 30 minutes before the eerily dim moon sets into the western horizon. The next lunar eclipse we'll see start to finish? On the evening of Feb. 20, 2008 ... unless it's cloudy.

Six years ago this week, California astronomer Susan Terebey presented a Hubble Space Telescope photo that appeared to be the first ever of a planet outside our solar system. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration was skeptical. Such "exoplanets" had always been too dim, small and distant to be seen directly amid the glare of their parent stars. But after a 90-minute "grilling" of Terebey and her data by independent scientists, NASA called a news conference to describe her unpublished discovery.

Have you ever been in a room and had the lights dim when some major appliance or electric space heater is turned on? People frequently wonder why this happens and what to do about it. Usually, it means that the appliance and the lights are drawing from the same circuit. Appliances with large motors, such as compressors in air conditioners and refrigerators, draw a large amount of current while the motor is starting. This current surge causes a corresponding voltage drop on the circuit, which will cause lights connected to the circuit to dim. To avoid the effects of these voltage drops on other electrical devices in the house, major appliances should be connected to dedicated circuits, serving only the appliance.

TIME WILL NOT dim the glory of their deeds, nor - for the moment - will the wrecking ball. The destruction of Memorial Stadium, originally scheduled to commence tomorrow, has been stalled by last week's vote by the state Board of Public Works - William Donald Schaefer and Richard Dixon stepping up to the plate - temporarily putting off both the old ballpark's destruction and the dismantling of the 110-foot plaque honoring the nation's war dead that was...

Time shall not dim the glory of these Memorial Stadium letters. After the demolition of the stadium on 33rd Street, scheduled for December, the best-known line of the structure's distinctive dedication will be displayed at a new veterans memorial in Camden Yards, Maryland Stadium Authority officials announced yesterday. They also set Oct. 7 as a rain-or-shine date for a public auction in Memorial's center field of stadium memorabilia. The event will continue the next day if necessary.

WASHINGTON -- A besieged President Clinton journeyed to Capitol Hill yesterday to join congressional Democrats in formally proposing that Medicare coverage be extended to early retirees and laid-off workers as young as 55.The proposal -- whose prospects are considered dim -- was unveiled by Clinton in happier times in January, before allegations surfaced of a sexual relationship between him and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.But if the swirling sex-and-perjury scandal has diminished Clinton's legislative and political authority, it was not in evidence yesterday as he trotted out one of the most ambitious legislative proposals of the 1998 election year.

AMERICAN POLICY in Bosnia is built upon a shaky framework of political fiction, unrealistic deadlines and military muscle. Only the latter category is succeeding. The NATO-led force of heavily-armed troops has separated the Serb, Croat and Muslim armies along 1,000 kilometers of ethnic hostility. But the danger remains that this huge effort may be in vain -- that once international peacekeepers depart, Bosnia's warring tribes will resume their struggle.The chief political fiction is a Croat-Muslim federation that Gen. George Joulwan, the supreme NATO commander, charitably describes as "very fragile."

WHEN Abraham Lincoln, at age 23, announced his candidacy for the Illinois legislature in 1832, he said that he was born and raised "in the most humble walks of life," and that he had "no wealthy or popular relations" to recommend him and that his only ambition in life was to be "esteemed" by his fellow citizens. For the next 33 years, until his assassination at the hands of 26-year-old, Harford County native John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln pursued his ambition with a calculated but laudable opportunism that helped propel him to become one of the nation's greatest presidents.