Generation

Baltimore has always had a past, and even at its lowest points, it looks hopefully to whatever the future has in store. It's the present that seems to elude the city. But if we cling to the past, with equal parts nostalgia and desperation, if we usually end our sports seasons with an always-next-year sigh, this has been a year of living in real time. Get used to it. We're going to the Super Bowl, and we're not done yet. If you love sports, and you love Baltimore, it's been, to quote both Ray Lewis and Michael Phelps , a ride.

Maryland's three casinos generated $45.2 million in revenue in December, with most of that from the state's largest and newest casino, Maryland Live — and at the expense of the state's oldest. Last month, Maryland Live took in $35.9 million, or a daily average of $244.15 per machine, according to figures released Monday by the Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Agency. The Arundel Mills casino operates 4,750 slot machines and electronic table games. The Arundel Mills casino opened in June.

Once upon a time, people interested in taking a picture used a device known as a camera. Taking pictures was all that this device did. It could never make phone calls. Or play music and video. The pictures were captured on something called film, which came in a roll and had to be inserted into the camera. A certain number of photographs could be taken on each roll, and the used roll had to be removed from the camera to be developed. The development process took time. And chemicals.

I constantly hear adults talking about the importance of instilling "values" in my generation. For the last 14 years, my classroom walls have been plastered with obnoxiously bright posters touting the necessity of civility and respect for others. At school, compromise among students is stressed as a sign of maturity. Yet when I turn on the news, I hear of politicians pointing fingers at each other over the "fiscal cliff" rather than following the Golden Rule. Why have our legislators not come any closer to creating sustainable solutions to these urgent economic issues?

Attendance at the National Aquarium this year is expected to tick up a little more than 1 percent to 1.33 million, but remains significantly below levels experienced several years ago before the recession. Still, an economic impact report to be released Wednesday found that many of the visitors to the Inner Harbor attraction come from out of state, spend a good deal of money in the region and cite the aquarium as the reason they came. The study, conducted by Sage Policy Group, estimates that the aquarium is responsible for an economic impact of nearly $320 million in the Baltimore and Washington region, providing an underpinning for more than 3,300 jobs.

The suspect in the abduction of Violet R. Ripken from her Aberdeen home stopped at a Middle River Walmart the day after the July incident and may have had a brief encounter with the driver of a dark green minivan, Aberdeen Police Lt. Fred Budnick said Monday. Police are asking the driver of the van, which appears to be a Dodge Caravan with stickers on the driver and passenger side back windows, to contact them with any information. Budnick said the driver is not a suspect but perhaps a witness.

The second Grand Prix of Baltimore sold 30,000 fewer tickets and generated $5 million less for the local economy than the first race. But a economic impact report completed last week and released publicly Thursday has nevertheless emboldened J.P. Grant, a partner in Race On LLC. “We pulled that off in 100 days, so it really is the floor of what we can do,” Grant said. “We had a 60-page playbook and could only get through the first three pages. There's much more we'll do this year.” Grant has already started sharing the report with local business leaders, generating what he said was a positive response.

Joseph Bathgate calls them "the Hollywood questions. " When college classmates learn he was a machine gunner for the Marine Corps for two tours in Iraq, they want to know: Did anyone ever shoot at you? Ever get hit? And there's the big one. You ever kill anyone? "It's unusual, I understand that, what I've done," says Bathgate, 24, of Dundalk, now out of the military and studying kinesiology at Towson University. "Still, it's annoying. … Naturally, I feel different" from the other, mostly younger students on campus.

Recently on WWE.com, Paul Heyman listed 10 “Paul Heyman Guys.” It seems to be the cool thing these days, in this exclusive club of individuals that associate themselves with the man known as the "Creative Rabbi," the man widely regarded as one of the best talkers and thinkers in the history of professional wrestling, the patriarch of ECW, the man who ushered in a wave of change in the wrestling landscape in the 1990s. One name that wasn't included in that list, (let's call him Paul Heyman Guy No. 11)