Gravity

Thank you for publishing Peter Sprigg's "Same-sex marriage is contrary to the public interest" (Feb. 2). I am shocked at the state legislature's egoism in feeling that they are so all-wise and powerful that they can force gay marriage on Marylanders. Voting against traditional marriage is like voting against the law of gravity — you can vote against it, but that does not change the true institution of marriage, a union between one man and one woman. Of course, we want kindness and respect for all people, but tolerance does not mean that anyone who wants to marry should be able to marry.

Here's an interesting idea that Northern Virginia startup BizGravity is tackling: Enabling busy executives to auction off meeting times with people who want to meet for business development, and then donate the proceeds to charity. Think EBay meets LinkedIn, says co-founder John Aggrey. "If you're going to play a round of golf, why not auction off the time," said Aggrey, who's also chairman and CEO of the Unicorn Group , a biz-dev and management consulting group . "Because two or threee people might be willing to pay for that time.

Ambitious architects are not letting the little matter of no way to get there hold them back from designing orbiting hotels and lunar resorts, including an ambitious plan for a lunar Hilton. First dreamed up in 1967 by hotelier Baron Hilton, the plan has now taken on a reality of its own. The British-based chain has hired London architect Peter Inston to design a $3-billion glass-domed resort with 5,000 pressurized guest rooms, private baths, galactic views, a lunar beach and artificial sea. Honolulu architects Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo are designing a 100-guest space hotel with partial-gravity accommodations and dining rooms on the spinning perimeter so guests don't have to be taped to the walls to sleep, their food stays on the plate, and restroom visits do not require complex acrobatics.

Another prophesied Doomsday has passed, leaving doomsayers in deep gloom. But there are two other doom scenarios that should worry us — or at least concern future generations. We all know about global warming, but I recently started worrying about the twin dangers of global wobbling and solar gobbling. I discussed these concerns with a leading astronomer, and he both confirmed and consoled me about my fears. Michael Shara, a former Baltimorean and family friend, now serves as curator of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

School 33's latest main gallery exhibit -- one of its more thought-provoking recent shows -- is called "Anti-Gravity." It might better be called "Gender Concerns."The works of the show's four women artists each have something to do with flying or otherwise defying gravity. The figures on Patricia Autenrieth's quilts are pictured as a falling Icarus in one case and a constellation in another. Kay Dilisio's sculptures are high off the floor on wooden stilts. Beckie Laughlin says her paintings of circles within circles have to do with levitation and flying in dreams.

Take three or four young men, each with testosterone levels in the 97-octane range. Add poverty, hopelessness, contempt for authority and, finally, lots of guns. What you have is a recipe for catastrophe and the script for a terrific movie about a catastrophe, "Laws of Gravity," which opens today at the Charles.Of a piece with its more famous brethren "One False Move" and the soon-to-arrive "Reservoir Dogs," as derived from the original inspiration, "Mean Streets," many years back, "Laws of Gravity" is a small, mean, utterly authentic American movie about crime.

RECENTLY, WHILE visiting New York City (civic motto: "I Got Yer Civic Motto Right Here"), I saw an alarming article in the New York Times, which is a newspaper up there, stating that large chunks of masonry were falling off some of the older buildings.As bad luck would have it in such a crowded city, several of these chunks, tragically, failed to land on George Steinbrenner.The Times article quoted experts as saying that the solution to the falling-chunks problem was to inspect old buildings.

Serious writers who have suffered agonies rarely have the option of shutting up about them. If their craftsmanship can't conquer the unbearable, the argument goes, then how can it be trusted as a tool of truth? Dodging that confrontation is -- well, artistically dodgy. Peggy Rambach, third of the four wives of the late Andre Dubus, himself a powerful writer and a tortured soul, is no dodger. That's starkly obvious from "Fighting Gravity" (Steerforth Press, 144 pages, $19). Why she chose to make the story a novel instead of a straight-out memoir had to be a very private decision.

I HAVEN'T ATTEMPTED to ski for years, but recently I decided to take another stab at it. I was hoping they'd done something about the gravity problem. Gravity is the biggest drawback to skiing. Without gravity, it would be a carefree activity: You'd put on your skis, head for the slopes and just ... hover for a while. Then it would be time for "apres ski" (French for "no longer skiing"). Instead, you have gravity. Huge amounts of it. Ski areas are located smack dab on top of giant gravity piles called "mountains."

Inside the Charm City Skate Park on O'Donnell Street, the smell of sawdust and the echo of skateboard wheels on wood fill the air as skaters fly down steep ramps, flip and spin their boards, ride rails, wipe out and run back to start the course over again. But it's not just any day in the skate park. The 15 skaters sailing off smooth Masonite and plywood ramps yesterday inside the warehouse-size building competed for a chance to compete in this year's national Gravity Games, an Outdoor Life Network competition in Cleveland featuring winners from more than 25 regional amateur skateboard and bike competitions.

Thank you for publishing Peter Sprigg's "Same-sex marriage is contrary to the public interest" (Feb. 2). I am shocked at the state legislature's egoism in feeling that they are so all-wise and powerful that they can force gay marriage on Marylanders. Voting against traditional marriage is like voting against the law of gravity — you can vote against it, but that does not change the true institution of marriage, a union between one man and one woman. Of course, we want kindness and respect for all people, but tolerance does not mean that anyone who wants to marry should be able to marry.

TV 'Top Chef': This season may be set in Las Vegas, but that doesn't mean we aren't represented. Three chefs from Maryland (Baltimore's Jesse Sandlin, above, and Frederick brothers Bryan and Michael Voltaggio) are in the running for the cooking crown. And they're not wallflowers. All three get ample screen time in the opener. Airs 10 p.m. Wednesday on Bravo. FESTIVAL 64 Bit Gen Gamer Fest: The Ottobar's homage to retro games gets a 32-bit upgrade this year with a celebration of hits from the mid-'90s.

RUSUTSU, Japan - President Bush and leaders of the world's richest nations pledged yesterday to "move toward a low-carbon society" by cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050, the latest step in a long evolution by a president who for years played down the threat of global warming. The declaration by the Group of Eight - the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia - was the first time that the Bush White House had publicly backed an explicit long-term target for eliminating the gases that scientists have said are warming the planet.

GREENBELT -- Even in a breakaway ex-colony, the queen of England drew thousands to the barricades to gawk and cheer and wave the Union Jack. She stopped traffic with her long black motorcade and moved inside a bubble of efficient black-suited security men. But not even the queen could alter the laws of orbital mechanics.

NASA and the Air Force are studying ways to ward off a medium-sized asteroid that will streak within 18,000 miles of Earth in 2029 and has an extremely slight chance of crashing into our planet in 2036. Ideas discussed this week at a Planetary Defense Conference in Washington include a "gravity tug" or "space tractor" that would hover near the space rock and tow it into a safe orbit. Other possibilities include a head-on collision with an unmanned spaceship or a nuclear explosion. In the past eight years, 754 asteroids bigger than 1 kilometer (about six-tenths of a mile, or 3,280 feet)

When she envisioned a deluxe newsstand, the kind of place to find glossy magazines in dozens of languages, obscure literary journals and fashion quarterlies that cost as much as $90, Christina Cieri thought of only one location. Harbor East. "If I couldn't do it here, I didn't want to do it," the Harbor News owner says. "Do you see it in Federal Hill? In Mount Vernon? In Fells Point? In Canton? I don't." She felt this neighborhood's promise and wanted a part of it. Here, she says, "it's all about the future."

THE START of the U.S.-British military campaign yesterday in Afghanistan was, as Prime Minister Tony Blair said, a "moment of utmost gravity for the world." Americans must expect casualties among U.S. forces and innocent civilians, no matter how hard the allies try to avoid them. Americans must also expect no speedy conclusion or splashy victories. The initial cruise missile strikes were, as President Bush said yesterday, "designed to clear the way for sustained, comprehensive and relentless operations," to drive terrorists out of Afghanistan and into justice.

NASA and the Air Force are studying ways to ward off a medium-sized asteroid that will streak within 18,000 miles of Earth in 2029 and has an extremely slight chance of crashing into our planet in 2036. Ideas discussed this week at a Planetary Defense Conference in Washington include a "gravity tug" or "space tractor" that would hover near the space rock and tow it into a safe orbit. Other possibilities include a head-on collision with an unmanned spaceship or a nuclear explosion. In the past eight years, 754 asteroids bigger than 1 kilometer (about six-tenths of a mile, or 3,280 feet)

Is the end of the housing slump in sight? History and a dozen major indicators say, "Heck, no." Homebuilder stocks say, "Yes." The Russell 1000 Homebuilding Index is up 30 percent since its lows in July. Shares in builders such as NVR and D.R. Horton rose as much as 19 percent for the first five weeks of this year before falling back a little last week. Sometimes the stock market makes uncanny and successful forecasts, as when it began bidding up energy stocks in late 2003, when oil was only $28 a barrel.

When corporate earnings have been climbing at a double-digit rate for a historic 18 quarters in a row and are projected to climb at close to 10 percent in the next year, it's tough to sing the blues. And most of Wall Street is not. The consensus for the next year is that corporate profit growth will slow but continue to climb, along with a slower-growing, but still sound, economy. Yet, as profit growth projections cool to 9.7 percent in 2007 from about 15 percent this year, some strategists are warning investors to be careful about expecting too much from the stock market.