Jargon

Some of the grand jurors investigating allegations of misconduct by Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon have grown tired of the probe and its near-daily media coverage, one grand juror told a Sun reporter last month. The exchange provoked a cringe: grand jurors - or any jurors - are not supposed to expose themselves to news accounts of the cases they are assigned. And it raises a question that goes to the heart of the integrity of the criminal justice system: are jurors routinely violating their oath not to research cases - at home on their computers, in the jury deliberation room on the iPhones, by glancing at news reports - on their own?

SCHOOL TESTING officials don't talk like the rest of us. They speak not of roses, crabs and beer, but of norms, cluster equating, rubrics and coefficient alphas.So when I set out last month to watch the scoring of the 1999 Maryland School Performance Assessment Program reading tests, I expected incoherence.It wasn't that bad. The MSPAP scorers are Maryland teachers who speak plain English, and several of them spoke of their joy -- even after years of scoring -- when they come across a creative response from a totally anonymous Maryland third-grader.

As a member of an escorted tour, you don't even have to know the Matterhorn isn't a tuba," the late Temple Fielding, father of the Fielding guides, once wrote. That still may be true, but today's traveler can ill afford to be ignorant. I'm referring, of course, to deciphering a tour brochure. Knowing what's offered -- and what's not -- can mean the difference between taking a grand European tour or a disappointing one. A good travel agent should be adept at decoding the lingo. But if you are booking on the Web or directly with a tour operator, you may need help.

Memo to Associates:In benchmarking our company's performance against a peer group since our recent re-engineering, we realize that further rightsizing is in order to achieve the efficiencies needed to return to our core competencies. To ensure that this continues to be a high- performance workplace, we will begin outsourcing our human resources functions and convert other departments into cross-functional teams. A paradigm shift is necessary if we are to remain a learning organization in an era of discontinuous change.

A photo accompanying an article in Sunday's Sun about th murder of an ex-Marine whose experiences were the basis for the movie "A Few Good Men" misidentified the man's attorney. )) His name is Don Marcari.The Sun regrets the errors.NEEDHAM, Mass. -- They are apparently unrelated flashes of violence, framing the final eight years of David Cox's life, from the front lines of the Cold War in Cuba to a muddy river bank in suburban Boston.The most traumatic incident of his military tour in Cuba would inspire a movie that left him indignant, his and his comrades' service careers altered to quench Hollywood's desire for drama.

Users voted online Oct. 29-Nov.9 to choose Maryland's best blogs and social media accounts in The Baltimore Sun's fourth annual Mobbies. Best Baltimore Sun Blog - Baltimore Diner A blog about Baltimore restaurant news, Maryland cooking and food 2) Baltimore Crime Beat 3) The Darkroom 4) BaltTech 5) Maryland Weather 6) Ravens Insider 7) Only in Baltimore 7) Orioles Insider 9) Midnight Sun 10) B'More Green 10) The Real Estate Wonk 12)

For the past few years, Lara DiPaola has come home from her job in marketing and started her second job, as an unofficial translator for her 13-year-old-daughter, Katie. Like many teens, Katie speaks in abbrevs — shortened or combined versions of words or phrases, popular in text messages and on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. It's up to DiPaola to fill in the missing letters. "I'd say to my daughter, 'Katie, where did you leave the blow-dryer?' and she'd respond, 'IDK,'" said DiPaola, who lives in Severn.

"The Symphony: A Listeners Guide," by Michael Steinberg (Oxford University Press, 678 pages, $35). Mr. Steinberg's collected program notes for the San Francisco Symphony, the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony. Explorations and celebrations of mostly great music written with truly extraordinary clarity and gusto, jargon-free. Enduringly valuable to even the once-a-year concertgoer, and superb for the more frequent enthusiast.

Only three years ago, Baltimore and Maryland were all but out of the TV and film production business. After the glory years of “Homicide,” “The Corner,” “The Wire” and tens of millions of HBO dollars spent here on Maryland crews and materials, state funding for incentives had ended, and Hollywood had left Baltimore in its rear view mirror for what looked like good. But last Monday, Media Rights Capital and Netflix were back in town with stars like Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright and all those big, white Haddad's trucks to start filming season two of “House of Cards,” a series that last year had an economic impact of $140 million on the area, according to the Maryland Film Office.

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Some bibulous rustics call it white lightning, others call it 'shine, while the more soul-struck prefer a snort of holy water. Whatever your designated poison, it is the crystal-clear corn liquor of Appalachia, the illegal essence of three centuries of mountain hollow stills. Payton D. Fireman, a local lawyer with a taste for marketing, has begun bottling and selling the volatile potion legally for the first time in state memory under the label Mountain Moonshine. "Of course it's rough: It's moonshine," said Fireman to a visitor brought bolt upright and teary-eyed by a shot of the clear white whiskey.