Discovery

I hope everyone has taken a few moments to collect themselves after that spectacular finale. Midway through, I was a bit worried as the episode was beginning to seem more like a series finale than a season finale. However, the last 15 minutes provided everything a good finale should: suspense, murder, a love triangle (quadrangle!), a drug overdose, break-ups (bonus points for calling off an engagement), a conniving friend, heart break, a parent finding their child unconscious, unplanned pregnancy, a declaration of “never speak to me again” followed by a quick hang up, an engagement, a serious accident (plane instead of car, way to go big!

Parents of the only charter school in Baltimore County are criticizing the system for not having a process for the school to renew its contract, which is set to expire in two months. However, Imagine Discovery Public Charter School, near Woodlawn, has been offered a one-year extension, according to Charles Herndon, a Baltimore County school system spokesman. "We have agreed to extend the charter contract one year. During that time, there would be an evaluation done as to whether we would extend that to four years," he said.

If all goes as planned, sometime this morning a spacecraft will blast off from its launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and ride a fiery plume of contrails upward through the pre-dawn darkness to begin a two-week journey to the International Space Station and back. But the flight won't be just another NASA resupply mission. Instead, the Falcon 9 rocket and its unmanned Dragon cargo capsule built by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation - SpaceX for short - will be the first commercially owned and operated vehicle ever to rendezvous with the station's orbiting astronauts.

Washington Space Shuttle Discovery, National Air and Space Museum The space shuttle Discovery soared around the Washington Monument and the White House in a salute to the nation's capital Tuesday before landing for the last time near its new home at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum annex in northern Virginia. Discovery will be transferred from NASA into the museum's collection at the Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center on April 19 in an outdoor ceremony open to the public.

As one of the afflicted, I was comforted to learn that this pernicious defect has been isolated ("There's a 'liberal gene,' researchers say," Nov. 2). My own genetic misfortune has been apparent since I cast my first misguided ballot for Adlai Stevenson in 1956, and it is no doubt far too late for any medical intervention to be effective. But this latest discovery will surely bring about a revolution in the attitude toward stem cell research on the part of George W. Bush, the Vatican, various members of the U.S. Congress and all those other virtuous and right thinking souls who have opposed it so vigorously in the past.

The message appears on electronic signs atop Manhattan phone kiosks, on posters in seaside towns of Great Britain, in television and magazine ads spanning the globe. For the Discovery Channel, three words say it all: "Explore Your World."Chris Moseley, Discovery Communications Inc.'s senior vice president for marketing and communications, likes the sound of the slogan she chose and the message behind it -- no frills, no glitz, the antithesis of Madison Avenue hype.The Baltimore native liked it so much, she put it in ads everywhere, on T-shirts, on toys in Discovery stores, on Discovery videocassettes, on Discovery CD-ROMs.

NEW YORK - Ted Koppel knows that persuading television viewers to tune into a four-part documentary about China's economic growth could be a difficult sell. So in the days leading to the broadcast of his latest Discovery Channel program, the veteran newsman took a drastic step to gin up interest: He brought his daughter's dog onto The Daily Show and suggested that the network might send Pepper to "Bideawee Farm" if the series doesn't get good ratings. All kidding aside, Koppel feels a particular sense of urgency about The People's Republic of Capitalism, which premieres tomorrow.

While the Discovery Channel has been busy thawing out woolly mammoths from frozen tundra this winter, it's become what you might call hot stuff itself elsewhere on the TV and radio dial. Recent network TV shows and a heavily played pop single by the Philadelphia-based Bloodhound Gang have celebrated the more prurient side of those Discovery nature shows: the mating sequences. For instance, in Bloodhound Gang's "The Bad Touch," radio listeners and MTV viewers hear front-man Jimmy Pop's deadpan monotone croon this refrain over and over: "You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals.

The discovery of a pipe bomb led to the evacuation of more than 40 trailers in a mobile home park in Edgewood yesterday afternoon, state police reported.Gary Capello told police he discovered a plastic garbage bag containing the homemade explosive device while mowing his lawn at the Bauers Mobile Home Park about 3 p.m., authorities said.State police bomb technicians defused it shortly before 6 p.m., and the residents were allowed to return. The incident remained under investigation last night.

NEW YORK -- John Hendricks, the 47-year-old founder of the Discovery Channel, walks briskly toward the Rose Room at the Plaza Hotel, where he will unveil his bid for a piece of the Internet. For months this soft-spoken chief executive with the schoolboy haircut has been possessed by the idea. For years he has rehearsed for the questions he's about to be asked. Now, he checks to be sure someone has made handouts of his slide show. They explain why his Maryland-based cable programming giant intends to invest $500 million in a medium seemingly foreign to television documentaries.

Your editorial "A sad 'Kodak' moment" of Jan. 21 clearly identified the problem that resulted in Kodak's bankruptcy as a lack of vision by the executives. As you pointed out, it's ironic that Kodak invented digital photography in 1976 but didn't move forward aggressively. Kodak's failure to capitalize on a technology that it invented is not the first example of an American company lacking the vision to fully develop products into marketable items. Ampex invented video recording only to see foreign companies such as Sony move the technology forward and capture the major share of the market while Ampex disappeared.

Growing up, George E. Raley Jr. heard stories that the military had conducted some sort of testing during World War II on the quiet Southern Maryland peninsula known as Newtowne Neck. As an adult, he would learn that his father had assisted in experiments performed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory to develop a weapon credited with helping the Allies win the war in Europe. So he was not particularly surprised this month when the sands of the peninsula where he once camped, swam and picked blackberries shifted to reveal a small but substantial stockpile of World War II-era munitions.

Bill LaCourse felt inadequate. Some of his Chemistry 101 students sat in the back of the lecture hall and spaced out. Others simply left class as they pleased. "Maybe you're just not a good teacher," his department head said when LaCourse sought advice. His ego would not tolerate that as a final answer. So the University of Maryland, Baltimore County professor decided to put up a fight. If he couldn't make the class work in a traditional lecture format, the format would have to change.

Ever since Adam and Eve took a bite of the apple, we have been haunted by Desire, that shape-shifting seducer who promises us beauty, understanding and fulfillment if only we chase after More. On the one hand, that is a blessing. We would still be clumsy, clueless creatures huddling in caves - or naked in the Garden - without it. Desire and appetite drive our ambition, fire our curiosity and lead us to discover in ways that complacency and fullness never can. It is Desire that propels culture forward, urging us to explore, to dare, to persevere so we may uncover all the wisdom, comforts and delights that make life grand.

Baltimore County police say they believe an 18-year-old man found stabbed to death in a wooded area of Curtis Bay was killed sometime last week in Lansdowne. Ryan Wesley Jackson, of the 3600 block of West Bay Ave., had been reported missing on Oct. 14 after his girlfriend hadn't seen him for two days, county police said. On Oct. 15, his family visited a home in the 700 block of Rambo Court where they believed he might be. "The family went over there, and was able to go into the home," said Det. Cathy Batton, a county police spokeswoman.

The Carroll County Sheriff's Office reported Tuesday that the body of a Baltimore City man missing in the area of Liberty Reservoir since Sept. 9 had been found. According to the Sheriff's Office account, Baltimore City Watershed Rangers patrolling the reservoir were stopped by a motorist just before 9 a.m. on Sept. 13 along Liberty Road (Route 26) reporting an object floating in the reservoir north of the Liberty Road bridge. With the assistance of a Baltimore County Police Helicopter, rangers located a partially decomposed body in the water and called Sheriff's Office deputies and the Rescue Dive Team from the Gamber and Community Volunteer Fire Company to assist.

Discovery Communications Inc. will invest $500 million or more in a long-term partnership with the British Broadcasting Corp. to develop programming and new cable TV channels in the U.S. and abroad, the Bethesda company said yesterday.The deal is expected to lead to a BBC cable channel in the United States that would be owned by the British government-controlled broadcaster, yet distributed through Discovery's relationships with local cable systems.It also will give Discovery the right of first refusal to show nearly all of the BBC's nonfiction programming in the U.S., and the right to work with the BBC to develop programs for Discovery's present and future cable channels, including the Discovery Channel, the Learning Channel, and the Animal Planet Channel.

Discovery Communications, which operates such cable channels as Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, may be working on its own e-book reader, according to a U.S. patent application made public Thursday. The diagrams included with Discovery's patent application, which was filed in February, depict a rectangular device with physical controls for user navigation. The device would be for reading e-books and "providing for e-commerce," and would be a direct competitor to the Amazon Kindle electronic book reader and the Sony Reader digital book reader.

This Septemer has five Fridays. That works out just fine for Fleming's annual Month of Discovery. Each Friday in September, Fleming's Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar will feature tastings of 20 wines from the new Fleming's 100, the restuarant's award-winning list of 100 wines by the glass. The first four Opening Nights will feature wines availalbe at all of the 64 Fleming's nationwide, and the final tasting will feature event feature selections by each Fleming's local wine ganager and operating rartner Each tasting evening is $25, and includes a preview tasting of selections from Fleming's new Small Plates menu.

A 44-year-old Ellicott City man who operated what police described as a sophisticated marijuana-growing operation discovered after a sports car crashed into his residence and caught fire will spend six months on home detention. Howard County Circuit Judge Diane O. Leasure sentenced Richard Marriott on Tuesday to five years in prison, but suspended all but six months, and ordered him to pay a $1,500 fine. Marriott's attorney, Leonard Shapiro, said in court that his client was "certainly not living the lifestyle of a drug dealer.