Offspring

The great stallion came down with a case of the colic early one morning last June. When his veterinarians discovered inflammation in the membrane lining his abdomen, they recommended euthanasia. Reluctantly, but knowing he had to do what was right, Claiborne Farm owner Seth Hancock ordered the death of Mr. Prospector, one of America's greatest thoroughbred sires."It was old age, pure and simple," Claiborne assistant farm manager Gus Koch said yesterday from Lexington, Ky. "He had a long life and he just wore out."

FUNKDAFIEDDa Brat (So So Def/Columbia 66164)There's no arguing with Jermaine Dupri's pop instincts. As the musical mastermind behind Kris Kross, TLC and Xscape, he's the leading authority on how to convert cutting-edge hip hop into commercially accessible kids' stuff. So it's no surprise that Da Brat, Dupri's latest teen discovery, is yet another straight-to-the-top pop success; it is, however, a disappointment note how nasty Da Brat's "Funkdafied" is beneath its radio-friendly surface. Sure, the beats are phat and funky, updating the old-school groove of gangsta rap just enough to make Da Brat's rat-a-tat delivery seem as tough as it pretends to be. Unfortunately, she doesn't use that groove to make a point, just to cop an attitude -- and a bad attitude at that.

Ron Reagan says he wants his new talk show to be a cross between "Donahue" and "Nightline." There is a little bit of "Donahue" with Reagan's fielding questions in a smarmy, touch-me-feel-me way in the audience. But it's "Nightline" only in your dreams, Ronnie.Let's be fair: Ron Reagan is every bit as good a talk-show host as Neil Bush was a savings & loan director . . . as David Eisenhower was a sportswriter . . . as Lucy Baines Johnson was a debutante.What is it about presidential offspring -- is it them or us?

THERE COMES a time when fathers have to acknowledge that their sons have surpassed them, that they can run faster, lift more weight, hit balls farther. That is the pattern of the ages, each succeeding generation advancing over its predecessor. But this dynamic, I thought, was not supposed to apply to picking winners in the NCAA men's college basketball tournament. Picking winners is a sedentary activity. It requires planting yourself in a chair, pondering the world, then making declarations full of self-inflated wisdom.

PHILADELPHIA - Why groundhogs bother to get up at all today - on Groundhog Day - has, until now, stood as one of those insoluble mysteries of science. Year after year, they rouse from a deep hibernation at this time of winter, still a month away from mating season and with absolutely nothing around for them to eat. Scientists, being naturally skeptical, don't think they do it just to help humans determine when spring is coming. In fact, new research indicates groundhogs emerge from their holes, like so many single people on a Friday night, to check out the dating scene.

BOSTON - All in all it's probably not the best PR move for an atheist cult to dub its first offspring Eve. It might look as if they think they're God. Besides, the biblical, or even the Darwinian Eve, was the mother of us all. The girl whose birth was trumpeted as the first-ever clone would be the daughter and identical twin of one of us. Still, the Raelian believers and scientists get credit for their 15 minutes of fame and their half-hour on CNN....

NEW YORK - The board of AT&T Corp., the nation's largest communications company, approved a plan late yesterday to split up the company, in what would be AT&T's most significant overhaul since the court-supervised breakup of the company's Bell System in 1984. Under the plan, people close to the company said, AT&T intends to spin off the company's cable television business and wireless units as separate companies over the next 12 to 24 months. The company also plans to create a new stock to track AT&T's consumer long-distance division, which would operate as a separate retail unit.

This season, when it seems like everywhere you turn someone is celebrating the 100th anniversary of Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker" ballet, the Children's Theater Association has taken different path and returned to the 1816 E.T.A. Hoffmann story on which the ballet is based.Presented at the Baltimore Museum of Art, "The Nutcracker, A Play" is said to be the largest production in CTA history. It's also a good deal darker -- "Grimmer" comes to mind -- than the syrupy plot of the ballet.Forget sugarplums.

Breeders now will be paying more for the services of the stallion Citidancer.When three of the horse's offspring -- Urbane, Mystic Rhythms and Short Stay -- won on Saturday's Maryland Million card, it was the best performance by a sire's progeny since four sons and daughters of the deceased stallion Rollicking won in 1988."

Imagine giving birth to a beautiful baby, only to see it decline and die from a fatal disease.That's the plight of parents whose children are born with an inherited condition known as Tay-Sachs disease.But thanks to genetic testing, parents can know if they're at risk for passing on Tay-Sachs to offspring -- and do something about it prior to a pregnancy.Because of voluntary genetic testing before a couple decided to have a child -- or before marriage -- couples at high risk for having a child with the fatal disease found out prior to a pregnancy.