New Cards

The crash of the American baseball card industry became official yesterday in a lawyer's office in New Jersey. Twenty-five years after breaking the Topps Co. Inc.'s monopoly on the industry, Fleer Corp. - bankrupt and $33 million in debt to a list of creditors, including $12,800 to Cal Ripken Jr. - was expected to be sold at auction last night, the most visible casualty of a pastime that has suffered sharp declines and a significant demographic shift over the past decade. What was once a hobby for boys, who stuck cards in the spokes of their bikes or flipped them on neighborhood playgrounds, has become an exclusive marketplace for adults.

Baltimore police aren't just looking to arrest criminals anymore, they're trying to get inside their heads. Officers are distributing cards designed to intimidate suspects arrested in East Baltimore, and the department is developing a video to counter a recent DVD in which potential witnesses are threatened. The Baltimore Police Department is even thinking about placing officers atop lifeguard chairs in the most violent parts of the city. "It's psychological warfare," said Police Commissioner Leonard D. Hamm.

Since Otar Left Unrated; Score ***1/2 Contrived dialogue can lead believable characters and plots astray and ruin everything in its path. Thankfully there's a flip side, displayed most beautifully in Julie Bertuccelli's Since Otar Left, a gem in which fictional characters become human by talking as real people really talk. Otar tells the story of three generations of Georgian women - Eka, her daughter Marina and her granddaughter Ada - who live in Tbilisi, capital of the former Soviet republic.

Beth LaPenotiere, Since its opening May 17, branch manager Beth LaPenotiere says, the Abingdon branch of the Harford County public library system has been very busy. The library, which started with about 90,000 items and now has more than 100,000, circulated 25,002 items in its first 12 days, said LaPenotiere, who previously managed the Fallston/Jarrettsville branch. By comparison, the Aberdeen library, a branch that some Abingdon patrons used to visit, circulated 19,584 items in May, according to LaPenotiere.

Soaring prices for brand-name medicines are outpacing inflation by a wide margin and eroding possible savings for seniors using new Medicare-sponsored drug discount cards, according to separate studies released yesterday by two nonpartisan consumer advocacy groups. Prices for 197 drugs most commonly prescribed for older Americans rose on average by 27.6 percent over the past four years - almost triple the overall rate of inflation in the period, an AARP Public Policy Institute report revealed.

Almost every computer has a graphics card. Sometimes the "card" is truly an entire circuit board. Other times it is merely a chip on the main circuit board. Either way, the graphics card, or "graphics adapter" or "video adapter" - terms that are all used interchangeably - translates the results from the main processor and memory into the actual dots of light you see on the computer display. To do that, the graphics adapter has its own processing circuits and its own memory. In fact, it's like a separate "helper" computer inside your main computer.

THE FEDERAL Reserve lowered short-term interest rates last week for the seventh time this year, which raises a question for consumers who carry credit-card balances. If you're a responsible customer - you make payments on time and keep well below your credit limit - yet are paying a high rate, what are you waiting for? Now is a good time to shop for a lower-rate card if you're paying more than 15 percent, some experts said. "The rate cuts have helped the already robust competition in the market place," said Robert McKinley, chief executive officer of CardWeb.

I WAS SITTING on the stoop the other day, going through junk mail and newspapers and my second-grader's school work, and I found myself, during a weak moment, staring at a couple of dudes - the Pizza Boli's dude and the Giant Bonus Card dude. One promotes home-delivered pizza, the other tries to get customers excited about Giant's latest frequent-shopper gimmick. Have you see them? I think they could be cousins. (Their faces appear with the rest of this column on Page 6B. Go have a look and come back.

Report cards were issued at Manchester Elementary School last week, but the user manual was not enclosed.This is the time of year when schools in the Baltimore area are sending home first-quarter report cards, which are following a trend of providing more information in a checklist of specific skills.But parents aren't always sure what it means -- and they're not sure what to tell the grandparents when they ask about grades."I have a problem getting a progress report that requires a separate manual to understand it," said Grace Angle, who has three children at Manchester in Carroll County.

Report cards were issued at Manchester Elementary School last week, but the user manual was not enclosed.This is the time of year when schools in the Baltimore area are sending home first-quarter report cards, which are following a trend of providing more information in a checklist of specific skills.But parents aren't always sure what it means -- and they're not sure what to tell the grandparents when they ask about grades."I have a problem getting a progress report that requires a separate manual to understand it," said Grace Angle, who has three children at Manchester in Carroll County.