Icon

USA Today informs us that the Dow Jones industrial average is "a Wall Street icon," and the Random House Unabridged Dictionary says that an icon is a representation of something sacred that is "venerated itself as sacred." Don't feel bad if you don't share the veneration. The Dow reached a new high last week, but "high" is a relative term that barely applies to the Dow and not at all to other parts of the economy. If you see investment bankers genuflecting and feel left out, look around.

Despite intense community objections to a planned waterfront high-rise in Canton, the Icon tower appears to be gathering some momentum - as city planners endorse the possibility of even more development for the popular southeastern neighborhood. Yesterday, the city's urban design and architecture review panel discussed conceptual plans for the Icon, a condominium and retail project that would rise 23 stories from what is now a Lighthouse Point parking lot. The Icon's developers say they would like to come back within weeks to seek the panel's approval for the design so that in March the Planning Commission might consider the major land-use amendments the project ultimately would require.

I bought a new Compaq Presario 5000 in October that came preloaded with Windows XP. It always comes up with an error message that worries me. When I log on, on the status bar in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, there is an icon with an X through it. It refers to the local area connection and says "network cable unplugged." Is this anything I should worry about? That alarming red X seems to be Microsoft's software engineers' idea of telling you that there is nothing to worry about.

It's a pity some people think the Middle Ages were a great big bore, a time in history when nothing much happened beyond the usual pillaging, pestilence and slaughter. They may miss out on a terrific new show. Called Sacred Arts and City Life: The Glory of Medieval Novgorod, this marvelous exhibition, which opened this weekend at the Walters Art Museum, centers on some of the greatest Russian artworks of the Middle Ages, the magnificent icon paintings created by anonymous artist-craftsmen.

I've lost the Recycle icon on my desktop. I can still delete items to the recycle bin, but then cannot clean out the recycle bin. How do I get the icon back? Since Windows code does not permit the trash icon to be deleted or moved into another folder, yours probably got moved until it is hanging by a single pixel off the edge of your monitor display and thus seems to have disappeared. A feature called Auto Arrange will both show you what happened and restore your trash can to a prominent spot on the desktop.

Republican senatorial candidate Representative Lynn Martin is finding that running against what she calls "an icon" is not easy, but she's doing all she can to pull him -- Democratic Sen. Paul Simon -- down.Ms. Martin, trailing Mr. Simon badly all summer, has seized on three negative news stories about the long-respected Mr. Simon in an effort to crack his reputation for integrity. The stories have caused considerable embarrassment for Mr. Simon, but so far his protective shell of 40 years of public service appears to be essentially intact.

Who among the hundreds of people who packed City Hall recently to debate the ever-divisive Icon tower proposal left satisfied? Certainly not the developer, who hoped the $75 million high-rise he's pushed for two years would inch closer to approval. Certainly not Canton activists, who wished the City Council committee would vote down the condominium plan they've fought since Day One. But maybe the politicians, who, by not voting at all, seemed to sidestep a sticky issue with potential for repercussions in an election year.

Over the objections of Canton community leaders, City Council President Sheila Dixon says the council will consider legislation for a waterfront high-rise. Next week, Dixon plans to introduce two bills that could pave the way for the Icon, an on-again, off-again condominium/retail project to be built on what's now a Lighthouse Point parking lot. Though the move dismays Canton residents who forcefully oppose the development, Dixon, who becomes mayor in January, said that just because she's sponsoring the bills doesn't mean she supports the project.

STRIP AWAY stories of $50 million contracts and drug violations from the sports sections of America's newspapers and one might think they had turned back the clock a few generations to the Golden Age of Sports: The despised Yankees win a World Series. A heavyweight boxing bout generates genuine excitement. A legion of fans trails a hot, young golf sensation (named Tiger, not Arnie). And this afternoon, Army and Navy play a football game that will recall the days when the service academies churned out heroes for the gridiron as well as the battlefield.

Jerry Orbach earned a Tony Award for his work on Broadway and critical acclaim for his film performance in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors. But it is his portrayal of the stoop-shouldered, cynical, world-weary New York Detective Lennie Briscoe on television's longest-running drama, NBC's Law & Order, for which he will be most widely remembered. Orbach, who died Tuesday in Manhattan of prostate cancer at age 69, took a thinly sketched TV character and gave it a soul. With an arched eyebrow here, a wisecrack there - and always an uncompromised investigation - Briscoe came to represent the triumph of simple decency and an honest day's hard work over pretense, privilege and lies in a 1990s Manhattan that seemed to be bursting at the seams with murder and greed.