Logic

News item: The Orioles open the 2009 season Monday when Jeremy Guthrie takes the mound against 2007 Cy Young Award winner CC Sabathia of the New York Yankees at Camden Yards. My take: The O's are going with a struggling guy they stole off waivers a couple of years ago and the Yankees are going with a free agent who cost them $161 million this past winter. And, get this, I'm going with the Orioles as an Opening Day reverse lock. News item: There were 37 pitchers on the Orioles' spring training roster when camp opened seven weeks ago, and the coaching staff still struggled to come up with five representative starters for the major league rotation.

Less than five minutes into last night's presidential debate, John McCain started talking about a man he called "Joe the Plumber," who didn't think he would benefit from Barack Obama's tax plan. And Kevin Heron, a senior at McDaniel College, began scrawling on his bingo card. He was among 50 students playing "Debate Fallacy Bingo" - a game devised by McDaniel professors to show how the candidates' arguments often fail basic tests of logic.

I'm feeling a little peeved with the NBA's Most Valuable Player voters after they again put a convenient narrative ahead of logical arguments about the best player. Please don't think I'm bashing Kobe Bryant. He's among the most ingenious scorers I've seen in 25 years as a basketball fan. But LeBron James outscored him, out-rebounded him, dished more assists, shot a higher percentage and lifted a less-gifted team to the playoffs. If you want to dock James for missing seven games, being a mediocre free-throw shooter and playing in the Eastern Conference, so be it. I counter with Chris Paul.

Who wins your money-spending battles, your inner Mr. Spock or Homer Simpson? For a long time, economists assumed consumers made calculated and logical spending decisions that are in their best interests; that they would act like the always cool and calm Mr. Spock from Star Trek. Problem is, in the real world we often behave like the dopey Homer Simpson of the The Simpsons. Like Homer, we repeatedly get into trouble because of poor and impulsive decisions. You need only look at the rising levels of debt, bankruptcy and mortgage foreclosures, coupled with low savings rates and closets full of ridiculous and never-used junk, to see that somewhere consumers have gone awry with money decisions.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- It has been a solid ride, the past 13 seasons here, even in an obsolete ballpark. Great restaurants, beautiful beaches and a conscientious stadium staff. Orioles first baseman Kevin Millar called Fort Lauderdale "the best city in Florida." The people and places here will be missed, but it's time to wave goodbye and head two hours north to Vero Beach. Because the positives that come with spending spring in an eclectic, bustling city do nothing for what should be the Orioles' end goal: to be a better baseball organization.

After conducting a worldwide search, Legg Mason Inc. chose as its new chief executive a person with deep Baltimore roots and one with an intimate knowledge of the asset manager's workings. "I'm thrilled. Honored," Mark R. Fetting said soon after the board voted. There will be no honeymoon period: The firm's star equity managers have missed targets in an increasing volatile market and Fetting's team must persuade jittery investors to stick with Legg Mason for the long haul. "It's very difficult to come in behind the founder of a company that has been as successful as it has been," said Burton Greenwald, a consultant to the mutual fund industry.

Gene Logic Inc., a Gaithersburg biotech, said yesterday that it will sell its genomics information division, officially exiting the gene mapping business the company was founded on more than a decade ago. Ocimum Biosolutions, a life sciences company based in Indianapolis with operations in the Netherlands and India, is buying Gene Logic's unit for $10 million in cash. Gene Logic's shareholders will have to vote on the deal before it can close. Selling genomic information was once a hot business and helped propel Maryland's biotechnology sector.

Four weeks ago, while I was at the grocery store, my husband had a heart attack. On the way home, I met an ambulance on our two-lane country road, and I had a premonition that it was somehow connected to my house. I berated myself for the remainder of my two-mile journey for this voice of doom in my ear. It wasn't logical, after all. "Logic" is a funny word that we banter about often. It takes different forms - you can "use logic" or something can "be logical." Oddly, I have been caught up in the notion that we often do not apply logic when we use these terms.

The crisis in subprime mortgages betrays a deeper predicament facing consumer capitalism triumphant: The "Protestant ethos" of hard work and deferred gratification has been replaced by an infantilist ethos of easy credit and impulsive consumption that puts democracy and the market system at risk. Capitalism's core virtue is that it marries altruism and self-interest. In producing goods and services that answer real consumer needs, it secures a profit for producers. Doing good for others turns out to entail doing well for yourself.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- One of the hazards of college athletics is the temptation to connect dots across a pretty big country, meaning we usually just end up stretching the point. Maybe you remember Ohio State beating Michigan at home, 42-39. The outcome was so close that many, yours truly included, thought the Wolverines deserved a rematch. But they didn't get it. Instead, the Wolverines ended up in the Rose Bowl, where they had the misfortune to encounter a Southern California team still ticked off that UCLA knocked it out of the Bowl Championship Series title game.