Limits

Let me say more compactly what I tried to say earlier today . The presacriptivist/descriptivist debate is increasingly sterile. Hard-shell prescriptivists trumpet indefensible bogus rules, and hard-shell descriptivists, the ones who proclaim, "Prescriptivism must die," overlook the real need to prescribe reliable advice on writing. It comes down to this: Effective writing requires making sound choices about grammar, usage, syntax, and diction, considering subject, occasion, and audience.

Conservationists are decrying a move by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to loosen what critics say is already a lax restriction on shark finning, the controversial practice of slicing the fins off and discarding the body at sea. At its spring meeting Tuesday in Alexandria, Va., the fisheries commission voted to allow fishing boats catching smooth dogfish to more than double the ratio of fins to bodies that they bring back to...

The news media is always covering stories about disasters large and small that were in some part due to someone not doing their job properly. The BP fiasco is the latest. Then the finger pointing starts, and believe me there is enough blame to go around. Everyone shares in this blame in one way or another, and I include myself in this group for my waiting so long to speak my mind. A major part of the problem is career politicians who get too powerful and look out only for their self interest and a select few who are instrumental in keeping them in power.

The Maryland state school board adopted regulations Tuesday that require more concussion training for those responsible for student-athletes and beef up protocols for addressing head injuries. In addition, the board will convene an advisory board to recommend limits on exposure to contact in sports in which concussions can occur. The unanimous vote to adopt the regulations concludes a months-long process to tackle the issue in Maryland, which included emergency regulations and a 21-member task force made up of physicians, athletic trainers and school administrators.

One of your readers recently wrote that "speed limits were developed before" power steering, anti-lock brakes, and other technological improvements in vehicles. The implication by that writer was that speed limits could be increased now, and that speed cameras were not needed. While it is true that, technologically, vehicles have had all kinds of safety improvements done by engineers and factories over the years, what remains in effect are the laws of physics. A 2-ton piece of metal traveling at 60 mph will still require a certain amount of minimum distance in order to come to a halt.

How easy to forget ("Higher speed limit law moves forward," March 21). Do some of you old timers remember the fuss we made when the speed limit on Interstate 95 was changed to 65 miles per hour? Now, 70 miles per hour is almost normal. So it will be with the same-sex marriage conundrum, immigration and women's rights. It is even possible that abortion will be considered normal sometime later. We cannot stop the healing power of time. It will happen as naturally as the new speed limits became residential.

Fifty years ago, I had a wild ride with another teen driver who must have set numerous speed records for residential areas. "Don't worry," he assured me, "it's the slow drivers who cause all the accidents. " A month later, he totaled the family car. I was reminded of this by the recent letter in which a writer advocates raising speed limits to solve the speeding problem ("Raise the speed limit by 10 mph, then make it stick," Dec. 12). That doesn't work; studies by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety have shown that many drivers will exceed the speed limit no matter how high you set it. What really jumped out at me was his assertion that "drivers obeying speed limits that are set too low cause accidents when other people are forced to change lanes trying to get around them.

In reading your article regarding sexual assaults at the U.S. Naval Academy ("Sexual assaults are up at Naval Academy - or are they?" Jan. 8), I can't help but respond. I went into the U.S. Army in August of 1969 when there was no co-ed training in any of the military branches. If there was sexual harassment, it was an off-duty situation. I strongly believe that women should have every opportunity that the men do but with certain exceptions. I don't think they should train together or share the same barracks or foxhole.

Scrolling or flashing electronic signs on the Towson City Center would have to be 55 feet or less from the ground under legislation approved Monday by the Baltimore County Council. The measure revised a bill the council passed in October, which allows electronic signs of up to 300 square feet on the building. Fifth District Councilman David Marks, a Perry Hall Republican, sponsored both bills. He offered the height limit after working with the Greater Towson Council of Community Associations, which had complained that the October legislation would allow flashing signs that could be seen far as far away as Cockeysville and the Loch Raven Reservoir – and that county council members hadn't listened to the community's concerns.

Congress must raise the debt limit and balance the budget, but not on the backs of senior citizens. The first thing everyone wants to do is cut Social Security and Medicare. The Republicans say it is an entitlement, but I'm sorry: We paid for it every week out of our paychecks. We earned it. As far as Medicare is concerned, we pay for that every month too out of our Social Security checks. That comes to $1,152 a year, plus we also have to buy supplemental insurance, and that is expensive, $2,000 to $3,000 a year.

The entire undergraduate student bodies of the Johns Hopkins University and the U.S. Naval Academy combined. The population of Bel Air, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. The average attendance at a Hershey Bears hockey game (the highest in the AHL). Every one of those descriptions represents roughly 10,000 people. By any way of looking at it, that's quite a large crowd. It's also the same number of people who are killed each year in vehicle crashes involving alcohol-impaired drivers in this country.

Even moderate drinking before driving could become illegal if a federal safety panel's recommendation Tuesday is enacted eventually by the states. The National Transportation Safety Board recommended that states cut their thresholds for drunken driving by more than a third — from a blood-alcohol content of .08 percent to .05 percent — to reduce highway fatalities. A 180-pound man would reach 0.05 BAC by consuming three beers in one hour, according to a Wisconsin Department of Transportation online calculator.

Maryland moved Monday to reduce the commercial harvest of female blue crabs in the aftermath of a survey finding that the Chesapeake Bay's crab population hit a five-year low last winter. The Department of Natural Resources announced that it was lowering the daily allowable catch of female crabs, effective Thursday. The move comes nearly a month after Maryland and Virginia officials announced the results of their annual winter dredge survey, which found that the bay's crab population had declined by nearly two-thirds over the previous year, to around 300 million, with juvenile crabs plummeting 80 percent.

Baltimore-area home sales rose 15 percent in April compared with a year earlier, and newly pending deals soared as buyers kicked the spring housing market into higher gear, according to data released Friday. Prices remained largely unchanged at $238,000 for the typical home in the region — Baltimore and its five suburban counties. That remains well under the region's April peak of $275,000 six years ago, after the housing bubble pushed up prices but before the bust and financial crisis deflated them.

Details of financial transactions by members of Congress and thousands of high-level federal workers were supposed to be posted online last month for anyone in the world to see — a key step, supporters of the move said, toward greater transparency in government. What happened instead was President Barack Obama signed a law that once again made the financial information of public employees — useful for identifying insider trading or conflicts of interest — difficult to find.

A vote by the Baltimore County Council on Monday will bar new development at Green Spring Station in Lutherville for the near future. Developers cannot build near intersections graded "F" under the county's "basic services maps," which identify deficiencies in public infrastructure throughout the county. The council approved the maps Monday. The intersection of West Joppa and Falls roads near Green Spring Station — which has shops, restaurants and offices — had been labeled failing for about a decade, and the planning board recommended "F" again this year.

Your article about Councilman Ken Oliver proposing a bill to allow David S. Brown Company to bypass parking and building requirements for the Metro Centre project in Owings Mills is nothing more than an attempt by Mr. Brown to circumvent the zoning commissioners approval of this project and bypass zoning requirements ("Bill would lift Metro Centre limits," May 24). This amounts to creating a PUD. This project was approved years ago, and Mr. Brown has delayed this project while he worked on others.

I was pleased with The Sun's editorial stand on campaign finance transparency ("Self-interest trumps democracy," July 18). However, I wish you had pointed out how much the status quo hurts both parties. The flood of unlimited, undisclosed money affects the primaries as well as general elections. It controls who can run and what positions they can take, limiting the choices for all voters. The Republican presidential primaries illustrate the point. Few Republicans seem very happy with Mitt Romney.

Maryland is moving to toughen regulations on the fast-growing medspa industry - a move designed to narrow a "loophole" and prevent deaths such as one last year following a liposuction treatment at a Timonium facility. Regulations being discussed by state officials would bar plastic surgeons from performing liposuction and other procedures in medspas and medical offices unless the facilities are inspected by the government or third-party accrediting bodies, Maryland Secretary of Health Joshua Sharfstein said.

As a financial services representative and small business owner, I see firsthand the challenges many Hispanic Americans in our community face in accessing affordable ways to get retirement savings help. More than 60 percent of Hispanic workers don't have access to an employee-sponsored retirement plan, which is why opening an Individual Retirement Account is important. The Hispanic American communities that we live and work in have an urgent need for retirement saving advice and products.