Eye

In response to the article in today's newspaper ( "A slow death," Feb. 13), I hope that Gov. Martin O'Malley never has to experience having a loved one brutally murdered and watch as justice system does nothing to punish the monster who killed them. How much does our country pay to keep an individual on death row year after year? Why should they receive three meals a day when there are starving, homeless people who have nothing? I know as a humane nation we must treat the human race in a humane way, but how about how the murder victims were treated?

No one likes to get stuck with a needle. But it's the only way doctors can get blood to test for diabetes, anemia and numerous other health problems. Scientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing say there is a much less invasive and painless means of detecting illnesses in patients — spit. Like blood, spit contains proteins, hormones, enzymes and DNA that can be used to test for and combat disease. It is easy and inexpensive to collect and analyze, making it ideal for research.

Sarita Murray looks younger than her 44 years. She greeted visitors to her Northwest Baltimore home on a recent afternoon wearing a short black tutu, oversized pearls around her neck and a fitted white T-shirt bearing an image of a woman's eye made up in shimmery pink shades, much like Murray's on this day. The eye is the logo for her breast cancer awareness group, Blink Pink, launched a year ago. Stacked boxes of pink confetti competed...

The struggling Sparrows Point steel mill could be sold within the next six months, mill owner RG Steel said Monday. "We're not going to be specific at this time," said Bette Kovach, an RG Steel spokeswoman, as she confirmed comments by two company executives that potential buyers were eyeing the Baltimore County plant, as well as others owned by the firm. Speaking last week to the Baltimore chapter of the Association of Women in the Metal Industries, Jerry Nelson, RG Steel's chief commercial officer, said that "people have expressed interest" in acquiring some RG Steel plants and that "I think it's safe to say everything is on the table.

The great idea proffered by The Sun that everyone should agree between now and November to engage in a genuine debate about issues of importance cracked me up ("Obama and judicial review," April 6). This "suggestion" coming from The Sun, perhaps one of the worst perpetrators of race-baiting and fake victimization, was disgusting and totally disingenuous. I suggest the newspaper clean up its own house before offering, to it's readers, such "sage" advice on how to behave. Gail Householder, Marriottsville

Along the 26.2 urban miles that form today's Baltimore marathon, runners aiming for the finish line will slog through the city's best neighborhoods and some of its worst past intersections where hundreds of people have gathered to cheer and along desolate avenues where they hear nothing but the soft thump of rubber soles hitting concrete. People will scream for them and at them. They'll toss candy and splash water and hold signs. But in the entire city, there's just one guy who will give runners nearing the end of the race what they might need most — something partly cheesy, quite furry and wholly heartfelt.

A 25-year-old man was shot above the left eye Thursday night outside a Baltimore drug store, but was expected to survive, according to police. A department spokeswoman said an officer responding to a call about a shooting shortly after 10 p.m. found the man lying on the ground outside a Walgreens store on the 2300 block of W. Patapsco Ave. and called paramedics. The victim was taken to a hospital with what the spokeswoman said was a nonfatal wound. Detectives from the department's Southern District were investigating the shooting.

A couple of scientific breakthroughs recently caught our eye - because, in the end, they all hit close to home. First, wild gorillas were documented using a branch as a walking stick to ford a small pool. Previously, they had not been observed using tools, and so this advertised more clearly their evolutionary link to man. Second, a recently discovered planet - dubbed Xena and possibly our solar system's 10th planet - turns out to have its own moon, orbiting much like the moon circles the Earth.

WITH APOLOGIES to the Book of Matthew: How can the General Assembly hope to remove the mote from another's eye but fail to consider the beam in its own? The question is not entirely metaphorical. Optometrists are once again calling on the legislature to let them perform more eye-related procedures. One of them involves an instrument called an Alger Brush, which works much like a drill and is used to remove tiny foreign objects from the cornea. The optometrists also would like to be able to use topical steroids and antiviral drugs, treat a form of glaucoma and dispense more types of prescription antibiotics.

THE BOGEYMAN of privacy zealots was powerfully evoked in a single sentence in George Orwell's "1984": "Big Brother is watching you." It was the idea that soon we would all be under the constant watchful eye of government, our every move cataloged.We still sometimes feel this keenly, when we discover that there is an FBI file on someone we know, or when we receive a report from a credit agency and see a late payment on a car loan from 1986 duly noted.What we never expected was turnabout, and yet that is what we have seen in the last year.

"Black-Eyed Susans! Get 'em here!" Emanuel Sabedra shouted inside the front gates, above the excited throngs and circling planes and buzzing engines of golf carts zipping by. Sabedra, dressed in maroon and gold jockey shirt, has been hawking the $9 cocktails at Preakness for 12 years. By 11 a.m., he had sold five racks of 24. Butch Hoppe, a 24-year-old trucking company owner, had his first taste of the Preakness staple. "It's alright," he said. "I got it for the souvenir cup more than the drink.

Visitors to Baltimore's downtown on summer weekends will see up to 50 additional police officers, a show of force aimed at preventing a repeat of St. Patrick's Day, when hundreds of youths battled and a tourist was beaten — scenes the mayor described as "a black eye for the city. " Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake toured the streets around the Inner Harbor and downtown for two hours Friday, the first night of increased police presence. During the late-night walk, she made her first public comments since reports that the disturbances on March 17 were far more extensive and more violent than police had initially described.

The Preakness is, let's face it, the dark horse on the nation's party planning circuit. After all, the second leg of the Triple Crown is squeezed between its more challenging and prestigious cousins, the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes. And, it's held in proudly fashion-averse Baltimore. Nonetheless, there are a few pioneering socialites and trailblazing doyennes living in states such as Kentucky and Pennsylvania and New Jersey. For them, the Preakness' underdog status practically demands a celebration — and the more fancy hats and black-eyed Susan centerpieces the better.

A beautiful day at Pimlico will allow Black-Eyed Susan Day to go on with seemingly no problems and a fast track. All 13 races will take place between noon and 5:51 p.m., capped with the Pimlico Special, which has been run just one time since 2007. Unbeaten but inexperienced Mamma Kimbo will enter the 88th running of the $300,000 Black-Eyed Susan (G2) as the favorite, trained under Bob Baffert, who will also saddle Preakness favorite Bodemeister on Saturday. Trainer Todd Pletcher will saddle both Disposablepleasure and In Lingerie.

Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler says he's considering going to court if the interstate panel that regulates Atlantic coast fishing for menhaden doesn't cut back enough the catch of a Virginia-based fleet that takes the lion's share of the forage fish. Speaking at a Chesapeake Bay scientific symposium in Baltimore on Monday, Gansler said he was "working with" the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission as it ponders tightening harvest limits on menhaden. Called by some "the most important fish in the sea," menhaden are a food source for many other fish and wildlife, including ospreys and striped bass, Maryland's state fish.

The computer program came up with Hansen, and he certainly has a shot. However, Hansen's last prep race was very telling, and not in ways that suggest he can win. Many observers felt his Breeders' Cup Juvenile victory last fall demonstrated some distance limitations, and those concerns seem to have been validated in the Blue Grass Stakes, where he gave up the lead in the stretch. Additionally, his owner suggested that he would not go to the lead in the Blue Grass, but he surged to the lead and carved out fairly solid fractions.

Hollywood magic worked its most potent spell last night on Abigail Breslin. With whimsical sleight-of-hand, the preteen Cinderella was transformed from the gawky, bespectacled beauty pageant contender she played in Little Miss Sunshine, to a composed little princess, worthy of any crown. Her red-carpet transformation came during last night's presentation of the 79th Academy Awards, a razzle-dazzle evening of visual delights. Abigail turned up in what resembled an "Easter basket dress," said Joanne Stoner, founder of eDressMe.

Along a Pacific atoll, frogmen are swimming past kaleidoscopic schools of fish, undulating plants and spiky sea urchins in search of a drab white boulder made of coral. It's a medical find: the ideal material for an artificial eye.In an operating room in Baltimore, Dr. Darab Hormozi is implanting a coral ball into a patient blinded in one eye by a nail. Once six muscles are surgically attached, the fake eye will move in tandem with the real one -- even though it can't see a thing.But the implant won't look real until John J. Kelley Jr., a member of the small fraternity of artisans called ocularists, adds a plastic facade that has all the right aesthetic details -- flecked iris, milky white sclera, even the spidery blood vessels that creep along the margins.

When the sale of Constellation Energy Group to Chicago-based Exelon Corp. was announced last April, Calvin G. Butler Jr. was in Baltimore, ready to build support and win over critics. Butler, 42, Exelon's senior vice president of corporate affairs, took up residence at Spinnaker Bay apartments in Harbor East for almost a year while he served as the company's eyes and ears in Maryland. He met with state and city officials, business leaders and nonprofits, including those skeptical about the deal's benefits for consumers and Baltimore.

The great idea proffered by The Sun that everyone should agree between now and November to engage in a genuine debate about issues of importance cracked me up ("Obama and judicial review," April 6). This "suggestion" coming from The Sun, perhaps one of the worst perpetrators of race-baiting and fake victimization, was disgusting and totally disingenuous. I suggest the newspaper clean up its own house before offering, to it's readers, such "sage" advice on how to behave. Gail Householder, Marriottsville