Diminutive

Too short. Too light. Not athletic enough. Ravens defensive back Corey Ivy has been dogged by such judgments during an eight-year trek through three football leagues and at least seven pro teams. Ravens@Chiefs Sunday, 1 p.m., Ch. 13, 1090 AM, 97.9 FM Line: Chiefs by 3

Joppatowne guard Zameria Jones signed her first autograph when she was 10. Even then, the natural instincts and athleticism that today allow her to hit circus shots and come from nowhere to make big defensive plays were obvious. With added skills, game smarts and experience, the senior does those things every night for the No. 3 Mariners (24-1), who are headed to UMBC to defend their Class 1A state title starting with Friday's 7 p.m. semifinal vs. No. 9 Dunbar. "I started going to the Boys and Girls Club when I was 7, and I used to play every day," Jones said with a laugh.

A year ago, Jermaine Lewis was biding his time in the background as a rookie backup receiver learning the finer points of his specialty, the kick return game.Midway through his second year, regardless of where he is positioned, Lewis is a Ravens highlight waiting to happen.As an established, starting slot man in the team's three-receiver set, Lewis presents weekly matchup nightmares to defenses. Faced with Lewis' shiftiness and explosive, breakaway speed, cornerbacks or safeties are ill-advised to challenge him with man-to-man coverage.

"9" is not a perfect 10, but its imperfection is what makes it gripping and bewitching. This post-apocalyptic cartoon fable is the rare piece of 3-D animation that feels handmade from cuffs to collar. Shane Acker, the writer-director, doesn't provide us with the riches of a born storyteller. But he just may be a born moviemaker. As a visual artist he sweeps you up in gimcrack panoramas that merge into a desolate beauty. This movie will make young-adult and older viewers alike gasp like toddlers amazed by their first pop-up book.

The whole basketball world knows about Muggsy Bogues now, but Baltimore knew about him first. From the time he was a diminutive youngster growing up on Orleans Street in East Baltimore, anybody who knew anything about basketball could see he was unique.As a mere lad living in the Lafayette Court housing project, he and best friend Reggie Williams engaged in memorable battles in rec ball against a Cecil Court team that featured David Wingate and Reggie Lewis. The four would be reunited on the Dunbar High School teams of the early 1980s that won 59 games in a row, then would become stars in college.

Irish Forever, the diminutive 2-year-old filly trained in Harford County by Billy Boniface, is scheduled to take on seven rivals today in the $250,000 Miesque Stakes at Hollywood Park.It is the first start for the horse since she convincingly won the Selima Stakes on Oct. 16 at Laurel.Boniface had originally planned to race the filly, who is unbeaten in four grass starts, in Florida this winter. "But there wasn't any stakes for her there worth more than $50,000," he said.

Liliana Porter's charming but philosophically fraught visual fantasies, on view at Goya Contemporary gallery, come wrapped in the glittery, bright primary colors one associates with all the good things about childhood, like boxes of chocolates covered in foil or cunningly wrapped Christmas presents under the tree. Indeed, the nominal subjects of Porter's large-format color photographs are mostly children's playthings: tiny figures of princesses, clowns, ballerinas and circus acrobats; stuffed dogs and carved wooden reindeer; porcelain-skinned dolls and other adorable personages that look as if they just emerged from some youngster's toy chest.

In the final week of a legislative session, bills have a way of dying and then reviving. So it wasn't too shocking that the Senate yesterday reanimated Gov. Martin O'Malley's proposal to promote energy conservation one day after killing the measure. The real surprise was the continued false portrayal of the bill as a choice between giving money to ratepayers or handing it over to faceless bureaucrats. Looking out for ratepayers' interests should be regarded as more than taking a politically expedient opportunity to lower everyone's monthly bills by little more than a dollar.

SL56 cellular phone loads plenty into its small package Siemen's SL56 cellular telephone ($199 with rebate and service from AT&T and Cingular) has style. As a cellular telephone, it is packed with features. But you can get such features on many of the company's telephones. It's the compact way it's built that gives it its verve. When stored in your pocket, the dual band GSM SL56 is smaller than a deck of cards - about half the size. It weighs 2.8 ounces, measures 3.2 inches long by 1.8 inches wide and is less than an inch thick.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Losing is taking its toll on Muggsy Bogues.The Baltimore native wasn't his usual spirited, tenacious self in the Charlotte Hornets' 114-103 loss to the Orlando Magic yesterday.He played so poorly that he blamed the loss on himself. He missed nine of 10 shots, scored two points and committed three turnovers in the first three periods."I wasn't on top of my game," Bogues said. "If you ask me, I cost us the game. I didn't have the energy I normally have, that kick, that shot I need to give this team."

In the final week of a legislative session, bills have a way of dying and then reviving. So it wasn't too shocking that the Senate yesterday reanimated Gov. Martin O'Malley's proposal to promote energy conservation one day after killing the measure. The real surprise was the continued false portrayal of the bill as a choice between giving money to ratepayers or handing it over to faceless bureaucrats. Looking out for ratepayers' interests should be regarded as more than taking a politically expedient opportunity to lower everyone's monthly bills by little more than a dollar.

Making your own CDs and DVDs with a computer is old news. Making them look as good as the ones you buy is another story. First we used markers to label what's on a disc. Then came the CD label. These are first inserted into a printer and then stuck onto the disc. But if you don't center them exactly, you wind up with a lopsided mess that can cause the disc to malfunction as it spins. Plus it just looks bad. More recently, some printer models have appeared that let you print directly onto the disc using CDs and DVDs that have a printable surface.

Too short. Too light. Not athletic enough. Ravens defensive back Corey Ivy has been dogged by such judgments during an eight-year trek through three football leagues and at least seven pro teams. Ravens@Chiefs Sunday, 1 p.m., Ch. 13, 1090 AM, 97.9 FM Line: Chiefs by 3

Liliana Porter's charming but philosophically fraught visual fantasies, on view at Goya Contemporary gallery, come wrapped in the glittery, bright primary colors one associates with all the good things about childhood, like boxes of chocolates covered in foil or cunningly wrapped Christmas presents under the tree. Indeed, the nominal subjects of Porter's large-format color photographs are mostly children's playthings: tiny figures of princesses, clowns, ballerinas and circus acrobats; stuffed dogs and carved wooden reindeer; porcelain-skinned dolls and other adorable personages that look as if they just emerged from some youngster's toy chest.

A bumper crop of technological goodies flooded the market in 2005. We have harvested the best and brightest for our favorites of the year. Remember now, this is a wish list, so don't be put off by the sticker shock you might experience when you see some of the price tags. There's still something for everyone. 1. X-UFO remote-controlled flying toy: The X-UFO was named the 2005 Toy Innovation Winner in the technology category, and once you fly it, you'll see why. Made with carbon fiber, this lightweight gyro can fly up to 300 feet, indoors or out. And it's propelled by four individual engines.

CHATSWORTH, Calif. -- All deserts are not alike, but there is enough sand, dirt and barren ground here, in the hills northwest of Los Angeles, that the place could easily pass for the bleak, dusty plains of war-torn Iraq. At least that is what the makers of Over There, a new wartime television drama, are hoping. Zeroing in on an Army platoon on its first tour of duty fighting the Iraqi insurgency, the show's producers -- Steven Bochco and Chris Gerolmo -- had to simulate the look and conditions of modern-day Iraq for audiences who see the real thing on their living-room screens every day. Because it would have been prohibitively expensive to film Over There in, say, Morocco, where other desert-themed film and television productions have often landed, the producers and their production designer, Keith Neely, settled on the Hidden Creek Ranch, in the rolling, chaparral-dotted foothills of the Santa Susana Mountains.

A bumper crop of technological goodies flooded the market in 2005. We have harvested the best and brightest for our favorites of the year. Remember now, this is a wish list, so don't be put off by the sticker shock you might experience when you see some of the price tags. There's still something for everyone. 1. X-UFO remote-controlled flying toy: The X-UFO was named the 2005 Toy Innovation Winner in the technology category, and once you fly it, you'll see why. Made with carbon fiber, this lightweight gyro can fly up to 300 feet, indoors or out. And it's propelled by four individual engines.

"9" is not a perfect 10, but its imperfection is what makes it gripping and bewitching. This post-apocalyptic cartoon fable is the rare piece of 3-D animation that feels handmade from cuffs to collar. Shane Acker, the writer-director, doesn't provide us with the riches of a born storyteller. But he just may be a born moviemaker. As a visual artist he sweeps you up in gimcrack panoramas that merge into a desolate beauty. This movie will make young-adult and older viewers alike gasp like toddlers amazed by their first pop-up book.

HOW OFTEN HAS it been said of someone that he or she was born to a particular sport? Add one more to the list because Nicole Woody, almost literally, was born to wrestling. Her uncles and cousins and brothers, younger and older, were all wrestlers. Her mother, Mary, keeps time and runs the scoreboard at Arundel High matches and Nicole, probably beyond her own remembrance, took in her first match, a Navy-Penn State set-to, when she was 9 months old. "She was really comfortable in the wrestling room, so we just put her on a blanket in the corner with a bunch of toys," said Mary Woody.

They were looking for someone with a Ph.D. and a strong background in credit analysis. Mary John Miller had neither. But George J. Collins, who retired as T. Rowe Price Associates' chief executive in 1997, remembers thinking Miller would make a better analyst than any of the other applicants who answered the Baltimore investment firm's ad in The Wall Street Journal in 1983. A former Capitol Hill staff member and urban planner, Miller had spent years studying public policy and how municipal governments could fix their infrastructure.