Logic

It was, if recollection is accurate, in the fifth grade that I got my first thoroughgoing instruction in English grammar and usage. My fifth- and sixth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Jessie Perkins, and my seventh- and eighth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Elizabeth Craig, redoubtable women both, took the same attitude toward English that Miss Prism took toward Fiction: The good end happily and the bad unhappily. There are Rules, they are known, they are to be applied universally, and violators pay a price.

Whatever they've got to say, they can say in front of everyone. This is a modern take on the founding notion of the United States that the public is entitled to know about the formulation implementation of public policy. There are a few instances under the law that allow government business to be conducted in a closed forum, but they are specific and designed to protect the public interest in, for example, land dealings. They are not, as Harford County government's chief of staff put it earlier this week, to make it possible to have a meeting "in a very constructive setting.

THE BIBLICAL story of Job comes to mind a lot these days as our faith in the future is repeatedly tested. We're on the brink of a potentially disastrous war with Iraq. The economy just can't seem to right itself, much less begin the long road to recovery. We're still haunted by the demons of Sept. 11, 2001. And now some whack job is driving around the Washington suburbs randomly shooting men, women and a 13-year-old boy caught in the most mundane acts of life. Six people have been killed with a single shot from a high-powered rifle.

IMAGINE the bedlam inside a factory where 64 percent of the products topple off the assembly line, where 89 percent of what remains is labeled "substandard."Walk the length of that line and you will find every response that might be found at a disaster site. Over there, front-line administrators and employees struggle valiantly to stay the course, while at other stations, teams stand around in frustrated disarray, and at a rare station, individuals are inexplicably compounding the problem.

Selling subscription access to genetic information helped shares of Gene Logic Inc. open around $42 on June 26, 2000 - the same day a news conference was held at the White House to announce a completed draft of the human genome. Six years later, that business model also was responsible for a closing stock price of $1.30, after the company warned its earnings would be lower than expected. The Gaithersburg biotech is in the middle of learning a lesson many of its peers have already taken to heart: There's little interest in paying for genetic information, particularly when much of it is available free.

To hear Whit Stillman tell it on the phone, his life has been one long bumble that has brought him to the strangest and least expected place in the world."

College Park-- --Good luck to Gary Williams getting his Maryland players pumped up to play in the NIT this weekend. Can such glum, sour, heartbroken expressions be wiped off 11 faces by then? Actually, add Williams' face to the challenge. As he expressed his displeasure last night with being left out of the NCAA tournament field of 65, he looked more disgusted than he did after any of the Terps' losses this season, or any other season. He didn't look much better an hour and a half later, when he said that he was going to decline the National Invitation Tournament invitation and voluntarily end the school's streak of 12 postseason appearances.

I'm sorry, what was the question?If the workings of Gov. William Donald Schaefer's mind remain a mystery, don't blame the people who bring you the news. They're doing their best.Consider his rambling answer to this simple question at a news conference last week: "Governor, on the state sport, which do you support: jousting or duckpins?"Mr. Schaefer's ensuing monologue consumed several minutes and touched on these topics:* The Christmas cards he sent to some of his critics.* His ability to make the press look foolish.

NEW YORK - "I believe that there is no person in the world that must be protected from pictures," the Brazilian photojournalist Sebastiao Salgado, who has photographed the most immiserated people on Earth, once said. "Everything that happens in the world must be shown." This is a noble sentiment, but also a silly, or at least impossible, one. "Everything" that happens in the world can never be photographed, if only for practical reasons. And, clearly, there are areas of private life in which vast numbers of people would object to being photographed.

A paternal interest in the flag debateSen. Frederick C. Malkus knows how to get his colleagues' attention.In a debate last week on a resolution requesting a U.S. constitutional amendment banning desecration of the flag, the senator from Dorchester County prefaced his defense of the resolution this way:"We have a courthouse in Cambridge. Recently, I was a defendant in a paternity suit there -- and I lose. Because I disagree with that court's decision, does that mean I have the right to burn the courthouse down?"