New Age

The Body, by Hanif Kureishi. Scribners. 160 pages. $20. The Body, which is Hanif Kureishi's account of the everlasting human struggle against mortality, seems to come out of the tradition of such novels as The Invisible Man. Both of these books deal with the dangers and seductions of technology, and yet somehow The Body seems only partially realized. This is mystifying. Kureishi is a talented writer, good with language, adept with ideas, and whose heart, which is the critical item for a writer, seems to be in the right place.

One of the greatest human achievements of the 20th century is the gift of longer life. Americans are living 30 years longer than they did in the early 1900s, and this century is projected to be the first in which the old will outnumber the young. By the time the entire baby-boom generation reaches retirement age, doubling the number of senior citizens to 70 million, the country's demographics will mirror Florida's today. The era of old age is here: Demographers estimate that half of all human beings who ever lived beyond the age of 65 in the history of this planet are alive right now. As life spans stretch to new lengths, more Americans are spending an entire third of their lives as senior citizens.

GOV. ROBERT L. Ehrlich Jr. has changed the culture of Annapolis. His arrival has made it a far more partisan place, a more divided and more contentious place. His determination to assert GOP values - and why not, after 36 years out of the governor's mansion? - makes him the change agent. In some ways, the adjustment will be therapeutic; in others, less so. When Democrats were in complete control of both houses and the governor's office, they could concentrate on problem-solving with no political concerns.

More than a hundred years ago, when the first really gargantuan American fortunes in steel, oil and railroads began to pile up, outraged citizens protested that the United States was fast becoming like some European plutocracy, where the corporate elite rigged the rules to further swell their wealth and power. Sound familiar? By 1912 the top 1 percent of Americans owned 56 percent of the nation's wealth. The top 10 percent owned 90 percent. Now, a century later, the word plutocracy has been dusted off and is back in play.

THIS WAS TWO months ago at Iggy's Restaurant, Eastern Avenue and High Street, early on the morning of Maryland's primary election. Gathered around a bunch of tables shoved together were maybe 20 people, all allegedly Democrats, including Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and William Donald Schaefer. And then, in walked Patricia C. Jessamy. "Here she is," Schaefer called out. Jessamy, the embattled Baltimore state's attorney in the fight of her political life, sat down at one end of the gathering, between Townsend and Schaefer.

WASHINGTON - The Library of Congress, home to about 18 million books, many dating to the mid-19th century, might be the last place you would expect to find somebody at the center of one of the hottest debates of the digital era. But Marybeth Peters, who for 38 years has labored away in the U.S. Copyright Office, an obscure arm of the library, is serving as referee in the battle between entertainment companies that are trying to control the copying and...

PHILADELPHIA - It may be hot now, but it's never too early to start thinking about the next ice age. Based on Earth's historical cycle of warm and cold periods, we're due for a big freeze any millennium now. If the next cold spell is like the last one, which ended 10,000 years ago, glaciers would cover much of North America, creeping as far south as New York City. Over the whole planet, ice ages reduce temperatures by only about 5 to 9 degrees, but the chill is more pronounced in temperate zones - such as most of the United States.

LOS ANGELES - The tag line for Revolution Studios' stunt-packed action flick, XXX refers to its tattooed, thrill-addicted hero, played by Vin Diesel, as "a new breed of secret agent." In ads for this summer's successful thriller The Bourne Identity, Universal Pictures alerts audiences that in Matt Damon, the film's star, "a new action hero is Bourne!" And there is a lot of Hollywood gossip these days about just who the director Wolfgang Petersen will choose to play his battling heroes in Batman vs. Superman, Warner Brothers' attempt to breathe life into two dormant film franchises by peopling them with action stars of a more contemporary hue. Here's the deal: Charles Bronson is out of the game.

Praised for transforming one of America's most corrupt cities into a model of civic virtue, San Francisco Mayor James D. Phelan tackled another issue -- immigration. On Dec. 21, 1901, The Saturday Evening Post ran "The Case Against the Chinaman," in which Phelan called for the renewal of an 1882 federal ban on Chinese immigration. For this nativist, the Chinese were a "sullen, non-assimilative people," who displaced "the sons and daughters of the pioneers" by working "incessantly ... for the lowest wages."