Paradigm

Paradigm Industries Inc., a Baltimore start-up company that makes high-intensity outdoor lighting equipment, announced it has purchased a small California company in a $4 million stock swap.Paradigm merged with Photo Acoustic Technology, a publicly traded firm in West Lake Village, Calif., just north of Los Angeles. Photo Acoustic makes devices to test contaminants on surfaces such as those on rockets and space shuttles.The merger, completed June 27th, will give Paradigm access to Photo Acoustic's U.S. government contacts, a promising market for Paradigm's products, according to its president and co-founder, Richard B. Pazornik.

I heard the oldies station playing the Bob Dylan tune "The Times They Are a-Changin'," and the famous line could well apply to the seismic cultural change surrounding sports concussions. Not so long ago, the injury was hardly a headliner. A "ding" was almost considered a rite of passage and badge of honor for athletes playing contact sports. Today, concussions are front-page news, the focus of millions of dollars' worth of research and legislative action across the country.

Lenders have approved Rite Aid Corp.'s planned sale of its pharmacy benefits subsidiary to Texas-based Advance Paradigm Inc. for $1 billion, the troubled drugstore chain said yesterday. Advance Paradigm will pay $675 million in cash, $200 million in senior subordinated notes and $125 million in new stock for Rite Aid's PCS Health Systems Inc. - a third less than Rite Aid paid for the company last year. The deal is expected to close by Sept. 30, after a waiting period set by antitrust law. The lenders' approval was an expected step in the pending sale, company officials said yesterday.

Memo to the mayor of Baltimore and City Council members: The housing bust and the recession have made significantly more homes in the surrounding counties affordable to first-time home-buyers. That means the city could be losing its long-standing edge in affordability. So you'd better do something to reduce the city's ridiculously high property tax rate — and fast — or lose even more potential customers to the suburbs over the next few years. The numbers — and that conclusion — come from Jody Landers, executive vice president of the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors, one-time city councilman, and longtime civic activist.

Blue Cross sells subsidiaryBlue Cross and Blue Shield of Maryland has sold its pharmacy management subsidiary, ParadigM Pharmacy Management Inc., to Advance Pharmacy Services Inc. of Dallas. The price was not disclosed, but the insurer said it would add $10 million to reserves.Timomium-based ParadigM reported $2.3 million in revenues last year. Blue Cross said the sale was part of its effort to focus on its core health insurance business. Timonium-based ParadigM employs 26 people, mostly pharmacists who started the firm in 1990.

THE CURRENT myopia about terrorism is summed up in a recent headline: "Netanyahu puts onus on Arafat."It may serve the political needs of the prime minister of Israel to blame the president of the Palestinian Authority for the terrorist bombing in Jerusalem this month.And it may be convenient for Americans to think of terrorism as yet another dilemma to be resolved by more shuttle diplomacy.But the emerging paradigm of terrorism is much different than in the '70s and '80s, when the likes of Carlos the Jackal were controlled from Moscow or Damascus, Syria.

Next time you ponder how much technology has improved our lives, consider this: In prehistoric times, it took people 20 hours of work a week to meet their survival needs. So much for the rosy sitcoms of the '50s showing how much leisure we'd all have due to technological advances.The fact is, Americans are working longer and harder than ever before, just to make ends meet. With the advent of the working couple, single-parent families and overachiever schedules, each of us has fewer leisure hours.

WASHINGTON -- A White House policy guru named James Pinkerton has been pushing a set of domestic initiatives to empower the poor -- such as school vouchers, enterprise zones and low-cost home rehabilitation and ownership -- as opposed to the old welfare approach. He has labeled it "The New Paradigm," meaning a conservative blueprint for dealing with social needs in the 1990s. (In case you don't have your dictionary handy, "paradigm" is an egghead's word for model or pattern.)The label could just as well be assigned to the original effort by President Bush to establish what he has unfortunately called "a new world order" (apologies to Adolf Hitler)

Paradigm 179 Main St., Annapolis 410-626-6030 Open 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Saturday; 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday Annapolis isn't just for tourists anymore. Realizing that the Historic District was ready to move beyond its T-shirt shop roots, Jessica Jordan opened Paradigm. "Annapolis needed a fun boutique with clothing at approachable prices," said Jordan, who worked previously for the state legislature and for the state Board of Elections as its chief financial officer. "We have quite a range of men's and women's clothing, but the items we carry are ones we think are smart.

An interesting blend of music and theology will be presented in "Scripture and Song," a program at Beth Am Synagogue (2501 Eutaw Place) at 2 p.m. today. It will consist of a musical conversation of sorts between Baltimore Choral Arts Society music director Tom Hall and Noam Zion, a professor of Biblical studies at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Mr. Zion and Mr. Hall will explore -- with the assistance of the full orchestra and chorus of the society -- the relations between Saul and David in ancient times and between Salieri and Mozart in the 18th century.

L eadership in Outer Space and on Earth For the first time, a U.S. president has canceled the main future human spaceflight program, leaving NASA without a direction, soon without a vehicle to fly people in space, and with its role as world space leader in doubt. How did we get into this predicament, and is there a path toward regaining the kind of space eminence Americans have taken for granted? As an unapologetic space cadet, I'm appalled by Washington's chaotic leadership and judgment over several decades.

- President Barack Obama's top counterterrorism adviser told governors Sunday that federal agencies still aren't sharing enough critical information with state and local officials, more than eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks. John Brennan, the president's special assistant for homeland security, said information-sharing has improved since 2001. But "we still have a long way to go," he said. "We're not there yet, certainly." Brennan made the remarks in response to a question from Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, at the first meeting of a new National Governors Association committee on homeland security and public safety.

Paradigm 179 Main St., Annapolis 410-626-6030 Open 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Saturday; 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday Annapolis isn't just for tourists anymore. Realizing that the Historic District was ready to move beyond its T-shirt shop roots, Jessica Jordan opened Paradigm. "Annapolis needed a fun boutique with clothing at approachable prices," said Jordan, who worked previously for the state legislature and for the state Board of Elections as its chief financial officer. "We have quite a range of men's and women's clothing, but the items we carry are ones we think are smart.

Faith is inspiration for charity, peace It has become fashionable to try to blame belief in God for most human conflict ("Faith: Something worth fighting for," Dec 31). But in fact just the opposite is the case. If belief in God was truly the prime motivator in human conflict, one might expect its opposite, atheism, to produce a harvest of peace and concord. Yet the only officially atheistic system of government ever implemented, Communism, resulted in a toll of human death and misery unparalleled in the history of mankind.

GROWING UP in Israel, I was taught about the Holocaust from the first grade. Each year, around Holocaust Day, we would learn about it through movies, songs and literature. On the actual day, my classmates and I would take part in the annual commemoration ceremony. It would always take place in the big auditorium where a huge banner hung above the stage reading, "NEVER AGAIN." As a boy sitting in that auditorium, I understood that the man I was expected to become was strong and tough, competent and self-assured, stoic and controlled.

WASHINGTON -- Jimmy is just a poor white boy trying to make it in a black man's world. To which the black men, some of them anyway, react with unbridled hostility. As depicted in the compelling new movie 8 Mile, they brand him with names one can't repeat in a daily newspaper. But for all that, perhaps the harshest thing they say about him isn't a curse word at all. They call him Elvis. Black folks have always had this thing about Elvis. On the one hand, we loved him. The fact that Billboard magazine counts him as one of the most successful black music artists of the '50s seems ample evidence of that.

"Beyond Gender," by Betty Friedan. Edited with Brigid O'Farrell. The Woodrow Wilson Press. $22.95.When Betty Friedan's "inner Geiger counter" began ticking loudly in the early 1960s, she wrote "The Feminine Mystique" and touched a spark to the repressed ambition and anger of millions of dissatisfied women. The movement those women created proceeded to challenge the status quo of gender roles and responsibilities and turn conventional wisdom upside down.Friedan's Geiger counter is ticking again.

Hoping to position itself for a turnaround, Rite Aid Corp. said yesterday that it had agreed to sell its pharmacy benefits subsidiary to Texas-based Advance Paradigm Inc. for $1 billion. Rite Aid, struggling against heavy losses, high debt and sharply lower share prices, is selling PCS Health Systems Inc. for a third less than the $1.5 billion it paid last year for the company. It will use the proceeds to pay down debt. Advance Paradigm - which like PCS is a pharmacy benefits manager that acts as an intermediary between pharmacy companies and health plans or employers - will pay Rite Aid $675 million in cash, $200 million in senior subordinated notes and $125 million in new stock.