Manhattan Project

In "Article 99," John Mahoney plays Dr. Henry Dreyfoos, the callous director of a Veterans Hospital who's more concerned with his institution's budget than with the care accorded its patients. "I'm this incredibly unfeeling administrator who is basically using his position as a stepping stone to a political career in Washington," the actor reports.Ray Liotta, Kiefer Sutherland, Forest Whitaker and Kathy Baker are the four young, dedicated docs who do battle with Mahoney in the Howard Deutch-directed black comedy.

MY BEST SHOT A stroll on the lake bY Laila Snyder, Dundalk This is a picture of my grandson Chris taken by his father on a trip to Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia. It was taken just before he went under, and it looks like he's walking on water. A MEMORABLE PLACE Los Alamos' quiet power By Aldema Ridge Recent news from Los Alamos, N.M., was not good. Wildfires ripped through sacred lands of the Pueblo people. Missing computer hard drives threatened national security. But in April, when I traveled to Los Alamos, salmon- colored mountains were still covered with pines.

Hey, New Jersey, you want a piece of us? Huh? You lookin' to get your face rearranged or something? 'Cause it said in the newspaper yesterday that you're all bent out of shape about this Defense Department plan to transfer thousands of military jobs from your Fort Monmouth to Aberdeen Proving Ground here in the Free State. In fact, you're so ticked that some of your state officials have been questioning whether we have enough scientific talent down here to fill all those jobs. Oh, that's low, New Jersey.

Fifty years ago today, on July 16, 1945, the United States exploded the first atomic bomb. It wasn't over Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but in New Mexico. And somehow, the cause of this brilliant light, this enormous blast, remained a secret until the end of World War II.It wasn't the first secret of the war, by any means. And atomic secrecy was such a habit by war's end that it continued for years afterward. Most journalists willingly obliged; physicists, whose discoveries had sprung from freedom of information before the war, found their avenues of communication shut off; and any American without a security clearance lacked the facts necessary to learn to guide such a terrifying force.

I always fall for streets that arrive with history attached. Balmar's is cast in iron. Not so far from the new metal lettering proclaiming Clipper Mill is this newly created thoroughfare called Balmar. Therein lies a tale of what's being built on the western flank of the Jones Falls Valley. Located in Woodberry, Clipper Mill is the name attached to a 17-acre sprawling industrial campus that sits in a little recess between Druid Hill Park and Television Hill. This is a chunk of prime new-old Baltimore, for many years off-limits because of the dangers posed by heavy industry located here.

ONE NIGHT IN 1990, Ann Finkbeiner, a Baltimore science writer, attended a dinner at Johns Hopkins University in honor of an eccentric physicist. The others in attendance, her husband included, regarded Freeman Dyson as a genius, much the way a star athlete might look upon an actual Hall of Famer. What struck Finkbeiner, though, were Dyson's stories. In one, the elderly, birdlike man described himself wandering the Mexican border late one night, helping police officers look for drugs. Why, Finkbeiner wondered, would a physicist -- a man normally interested in the properties of matter, space and time -- be looking for narcotics along a border?

Ten days ago in Houston, the Ravens were fresh off a big win and the team's media relations staff had corralled Joe Flacco for the post-game news conference. But the rookie quarterback had to stand off to the side and wait his turn. While coach John Harbaugh was answering questions, eight-year veteran Todd Heap came into the room. Kevin Byrne, the Ravens' public relations whiz, flashed a look that told Flacco that Heap would be cutting ahead and speaking with reporters first. "I know," Flacco said.

GENIUS: THE LIFEAND SCIENCEOF RICHARD FEYNMAN.James Gleick.Pantheon.532 pages. $27.50.Not only does James Gleick think Richard Feynman was a genius, he thinks he "was the most brilliant, iconoclastic, and influential physicist of modern times." Considering the competition, that's quite a statement."No other physicist since Einstein so ecumenically accepted the challenge of all nature's riddles," he explains in one place. "Feynman developed a stature among physicists that transcended any raw sum of his actual contributions to the field," says at another.

WASHINGTON -- As the FBI prepared to question a scientist last week in the alleged theft of American nuclear-weapons secrets by China, former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry was closeted across the Pacific for several days with key Chinese military and security experts, talking shop.Perry is among thousands of Americans who meet regularly with their Chinese counterparts in exchanges on scientific, military and technological subjects that have drawn warm praise from both sides.But now, as charges of lax security reverberate through the nation's military-scientific community in the wake of the espionage probe, academics and experts are bracing for a new climate of suspicion that could freeze this growing cooperation.

Fares, times and other things you should know about our four ways to get to Manhattan:PLANES ... What: One-hour Southwest Airlines "no-frills" shuttle from BWI to MacArthur Airport in Islip, Long Island, then a train into Manhattan. Cost: $102 round-trip if returning the same day. If you stay overnight, the fare is $88. Fares include taxes. (By comparison, TWA flies from BWI to LaGuardia for $188; Delta flies from Washington National to LaGuardia for $170.) Conditions: $102 fare requires 14-day advance purchase; $88 fare requires seven-day advance purchase.