Make Mistakes

On-board systems intended to keep airliners from colliding in midair have been triggered more than 45 times this year in the skies over the Washington area as the air traffic controllers who guide planes to and from the region's airports have made dangerous mistakes at a record-setting pace. Two of the closest calls this month involved four airplanes carrying a total of 589 people, including one in which a Delta 737 was turned into the potentially deadly turbulent wake of a United 757 as the two planes flew along the Potomac on final approaches to Reagan National Airport.

There are any number of good reasons why college students shouldn't spend much time watching screenings of pornographic movies on school property or reading racy sex columns in the school newspaper. But it's not the job of college administrators or state lawmakers to make those decisions for them. There may indeed be little journalistic value in "The Bed Post," a sex column that appeared in The Towerlight, Towson University's student newspaper. Aside from its questionable taste, it violated many of the standards student publications traditionally are supposed to teach aspiring young reporters and editors, such as the necessity of judging what is worthy of coverage as news and a willingness to stand behind the facts in a story.

Bringing Dave Trembley back as the Orioles' manager isn't just surprising - it's shocking. How do you not change managers after another disastrous second-half collapse and one of the worst seasons in team history? How do you not change managers when the mandate was to get better as the season progressed and avoid the usual post-All Star Game meltdown - and neither one happened? How do you develop a winning attitude with your young players when there's no change in leadership after a season that included inconceivable base-running blunders, fundamental fielding mistakes and veterans who seemed to mail it in at the end?

Orioles star Brian Roberts said yesterday that his first direct exposure to steroids was when he saw teammates using them after he was called up from the minor leagues in 2001, but he never imagined he would succumb to the temptation to use the drugs. In an informal talk to high school athletes - and in an interview with The Sun - Roberts, a two-time All-Star and one of Baltimore's most popular athletes, described how he came to use steroids once in 2003, why he kept it quiet for years and why he ultimately admitted his mistake.

You have less than 24 hours to make good with the Internal Revenue Service if you haven't already. Filing under deadline pressure could lead to mistakes. And it is usually the small stuff that trips you up. The forgotten document. The missing signature. The transposed figure. A lot of common errors can be avoided if you use a tax software program or the IRS Free File program at www.irs.gov. Paper is more prone to blunders, although millions of filers still prefer it. So here are some landmines to sidestep in your rush: ONE PLUS TWO EQUALS FOUR: Math errors are common.

The crack of the gavel, the smell of freshly brewed coffee and the sight of overgrown men trying to blaze 100-mph lies wound tighter than a baseball past their star-struck target. Ahhhh. Must be spring. Must be baseball season. Today in Room 2154 of the Rayburn House Office Building - where they've argued health care, discussed terrorism and debated immigration - up to 40 members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will listen to tantalizing testimony and try to decipher just who stuck what into whose backside and when.

Let me be the first to say it: I cannot believe the referees last night! The gall! The disrespect! The complete lack of decency! Ravens @Dolphins Sunday, 1 p.m., Ch. 13, 1090 AM, 97.9 FM Line: Off the board

Hyattsville -- Maryland quarterback Josh Portis had a confession to make, and a small cafeteria filled with wide-eyed, waist-high elementary school students looked up at him yesterday morning, waiting for it. "I told them," he said. "I was like, `Unfortunately I made a mistake in the classroom by looking on somebody's paper.'" It was a mistake that cost Portis his eligibility for the 2007 season - a year, as it turned out, the Terps definitely would have used him - and one he told the students at Lewisdale Elementary School not to repeat.

Director Douglas C. Wager opens the Shakespeare Theatre's production of The Comedy of Errors on a serious note, but his sense of irreverence surfaces quickly. The serious part takes the form of a mimed scene of a masked couple holding two sets of twin dolls, which are separated by a storm. The portentous tone continues when Egeon (Ralph Cosham), a merchant from Syracuse and father of one pair of the twins, is sentenced to death unless he can come up with ransom money. His crime is being in the wrong place, Ephesus, at the wrong time; Syracusans face the death penalty merely for setting foot here.