Female

On its opening weekend, Pixar's Ratatouille, the story of a rat who finds his true calling in the kitchen of human beings, topped the box office list, making $47.2 million. I do not know if I will see the movie. For one thing, I have had rodents in my home and found the experience revolting, and have not yet decided whether I can stomach seeing a film about vermin, despite its obvious creativity and good reviews. Something else disturbs me even more about Ratatouille, though. I see a fair number of family movies, and it has become hard not to notice that although those extraordinary minds at Pixar, as with every other major Hollywood animation studio in recent years, can find inspiration in many forms - toys, cars, ogres, rats, bugs and countless other critters - they cannot seem to find inspiration in a female of any species.

Former Arundel wrestler Nicole Woody, the first girl to reach a state final while competing against boys, has signed to wrestle at Oklahoma City University. Woody, who made her decision Monday, will join a women's program that is just getting started. The Stars' first dual meet will be against the University of the Cumberlands of Kentucky on Oct. 13. Woody, who was the Class 4A-3A state runner-up at 103 pounds last March, was America's lone junior world champion - male or female - in Guatemala last August.

RIDGEFIELD, Conn. -- Helene Grimaud is headed outside to feed her pets.But the phone rings."Thank you," she says after listening to the caller for a moment. "But I'm just too busy.""That was Vogue, she says. "Someone named Annie Leibovitz wanted to come up to photograph me with the guys."Again she starts to take lunch out to the "guys"; again the phone rings.It's the producer of National Public Radio's "Performance Today." Grimaud politely explains that she's too busy to make an appearance on the program."

WASHINGTON -- In the teasing style of 2000 presidential wannabes, Elizabeth Hanford Dole is inching toward a White House run by dipping a dainty toe in the water. She's formed the ritual "exploratory committee."Translation: Send money. She'll run if she can come up with the $20 million entrance fee.She'll get it. Mrs. Dole wasn't wasting time on those campaigns with husband Bob Dole. She has connections in every big state and deep in the Republican business network. Plus the bevies of women who exhort, "Run, Liz, run."

QUESTION: I've heard there are outdated laws about sexual behaviors - such as being arrested for oral sex - in certain states. Is this true?ANSWER: Many of the old, sex-related laws remain on the books in some states, according to Robert Wayne Pelton, author of "Loony Sex Laws That You Never Knew You Were Breaking" (Walker Publishing Co., 1992, $9.95). Here are some examples listed by state, according to his book.* Illinois. In the city of Oblong, it's against the law to make love while hunting or fishing on your wedding day.* Ohio and Indiana.

An armed robbery went awry at a Boston Market restaurant in Catonsville yesterday morning, leaving one employee critically wounded and two others in custody, Baltimore County police said.The manager and two employees -- one male, one female -- were opening the fast-food restaurant in the 6400 block of Baltimore National Pike just before 8: 30 a.m., when an armed masked man came into the rear of the store, said county police spokesman Bill Toohey.The masked man told the three workers to get money from the store's safe, but there was some kind of problem, Toohey said.

I HAVE been taking surveys and making analyses of heroes and heroism since the mid-1980s. And in most surveys, Mom is the No. 1 hero.We use a very simple technique. We ask people to list and rank their top heroes -- male and female -- living or dead. I do not define hero, leaving that up to the respondents.I question such research done by others because often they skew the results by asking respondents to list their most admired public officials.Thus, a false impression has been created that the public largely regards public figures such as former U.S. presidents as heroes.

When Jo Dee Catlin Jacob enlisted in the Navy in 1974, she had to wear white gloves and high heels, "and it was not at all uncommon to be expected to pour the coffee.""When I joined, it was impossible for a woman to fly, to go to sea, to be a SEAL," she said. "It was very much a traditional Ozzie-and-Harriet, woman-subservient world."Remnants of that era remain: Women still may not serve on submarines, and a study released this month by the RAND National Defense Institute found that they are underrepresented in the combat-ready ranks of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.

The 32nd Annual Baltimore Sun High School Athlete of the Year Awards Luncheon will be held Monday, June 8 at Martin's West. Athletes selected during the 1997-98 school year are invited along with their coach and both parents or any two relatives.One male and one female will be chosen as the male and female Athletes of the Year and the winners will be announced at the luncheon. For questions, call Sam Davis at 410-332-6534.With the high school season soon winding down, The Baltimore Sun will be looking for final statistics in boys and girls lacrosse, softball, and boys and girls track.

NEW YORK -- Former female employees of Home Depot Inc. won the support of U.S. equal-opportunity officials yesterday in their sex discrimination lawsuit against the home-improvement retailer.The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said it filed court papers yesterday to intervene in a federal sex-discrimination lawsuit against Home Depot in New Orleans. That suit, filed in 1995, is one of three pending against the Atlanta-based retailer, alleging it discriminated against women in hiring and promotions.

At the risk of being the killjoy at the next crab feast, let us suggest some restraint over the comeback of the blue crab is in order. While the winter dredge survey results released last week by Maryland and Virginia officials suggest the number of blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay has rebounded over the past year, it appears the number of young crabs has only held steady. The lesson here is that restrictions imposed last year on crabbing have made a difference, but the long-term impact isn't entirely clear.

The number of blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay has increased significantly over the past year, Maryland and Virginia officials announced Friday, saying that harvest limits designed to combat steep declines in the population appear to be working. Results of the 2008-2009 winter dredge survey show that the number of female crabs in the bay doubled in the past year. Catch restrictions were aimed at preserving females so they could survive to produce the next generation. Overall, the number of crabs in the bay increased from 280 million in 2007-2008 to more than 418 million in 2008-2009, officials estimate, a rapid and surprising rebound.

Maryland's new crabbing restrictions succeeded in reducing the catch of female crabs significantly last year, state officials said yesterday, despite reports from watermen that their harvest increased by 50 percent. State fisheries officials said that based on independent surveys, they estimate the female crab harvest in Maryland declined by 28 percent to 36 percent. Prompted by surveys indicating that the Chesapeake Bay's crab population was dangerously low, Maryland and Virginia both pledged last year to reduce the female crab catch by 34 percent.

Maryland plans to limit the blue crab catch again next year in hopes of replenishing the Chesapeake Bay's crustaceans, state officials announced yesterday. But they also said they're tweaking the catch rules in an effort to spread the economic pain more evenly among the state's watermen. The proposed restrictions, drafted in cooperation with Virginia officials, are aimed at maintaining a 34 percent reduction in the catch of female crabs for a second year so they can reproduce. To protect female crabs, Maryland's Department of Natural Resources plans to set daily limits on how many watermen can catch, and to ban catching females altogether for periods in the spring and fall.

Baltimore's Police Department needs to elevate more women to high-level positions, according to two City Council members who have fielded complaints from female officers who say they have been slighted. "We want to make sure the female officers - some of them work very hard - are afforded the same opportunities as the male officers," City Councilman Bernard "Jack" Young said yesterday during a City Hall hearing on women in law enforcement and recruitment. "I've seen some of those female officers out there.

The harvesting of female crabs is something I could never understand. When I was growing up in Baltimore in the 1950s, it was considered taboo to eat a female crab. What happened? Were we so shortsighted as to ignore the obvious: that increasing our harvest quotas would eventually kill the crabbing industry? Working in the Middle River area, I have seen many of my clients get out of the crabbing business, selling their boats and looking elsewhere for income. The same fate earlier befell our oystermen.

HOOPERS ISLAND -- For more than a century, the blue crab has sustained life on this marshy sliver of land between the Chesapeake Bay and the Honga River. Income from the harvest pays the mortgage, the electric bill, the tab at the grocery store, even college tuition. But islanders fear that their way of life - long made precarious by unpredictable weather, rising equipment costs and dwindling crab populations - is about to be regulated out of existence. Last week, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources announced it will end the season for female crabs Oct. 23, about seven weeks early.

Thirty-three weeks pregnant with twins, yet determined to lead her talented University of Maryland women's basketball team into the national championships, coach Brenda Frese - known for energetically pacing the sideline - found a novel way to relieve her aching lower back during a home game last month: She had an office chair rolled onto the gym floor. The result was a powerful visual metaphor for women in the world of sports. Ms. Frese's example, like Paula Radcliffe training through pregnancy and winning the 2007 New York City Marathon, doesn't camouflage - but actually flaunts - the fact that women are physically different than men. It also challenges an assumption that still dogs women today: The female body is athletically inferior to a male body.

BAGHDAD -- Iraqi police officials have dropped plans to disarm policewomen and give their guns to male officers after an outcry from critics, who said the move was a sign of religious zealots' rising influence in Iraq. Despite the turnabout, which police confirmed yesterday, the U.S. military general who introduced women into the police force said they remained hindered in their attempts to practice real policing skills. "Even with the revocation order, we will have to watch very closely the actions taken in regards to the remaining female Iraqi police," said U.S. Army Brig.

It's Wednesday night, just after 7, and the betting has already begun in Greg Avedesian's kitchen. He and six friends have bellied up to a white folding card table, wedged between stove and sink, and begun a four-hour game of Texas Hold 'em. The Seattle group has been gathering for poker night once or twice a month for the past three years. The rules are always the same: There is a different host each week, buy-in is $20 and there are no girls allowed. No wives, no girlfriends, no female friends, no female co-workers.