Planet

It must be testimony to the mass of Planet Leizman that on my second visit there I was moved to ask if a certain painting, roughly the size of a squash court, had been added to a wall since my first visit just three days earlier.The artist, Bill Leizman, laughed. The painting, a quilt of abstract shapes and color, was not only huge but surrounded by other things that obviously had been fixed to the three-story brick interior for years. Still, somehow I had missed it. That's my point. That's how visually overpowering Planet Leizman is; it is one of the most stunning places I have ever visited and a genuine discovery on the side streets of East Baltimore.

I had to respond to Peter Jensen 's vituperative diatribe "Don't Save the Planet" about conservatives supposedly going out of their way to avoid protecting the planet (May 3). Since when did a question limited to specially marked light bulbs measure anyone's environmental consciousness? Based on our voting record, I guess you could label us conservatives. Like most people I know, we use both tubular and CFL fluorescent bulbs (where practical - show me one that works in freezers, variable intensity lamps, outdoor flood lights, desk lamps that take small bulbs, garage trouble light, etc.)

Happy Earth Day, everyone! I hope you'll get an opportunity to take advantage of some of the Earth Day freebies, deals and discounts we mentioned yesterday. Many reward behavior that benefits the planet, such as carrying a reusable beverage container or offering a reusable bag to tote your purchases. Some greener choices make good economic as well as environmental sense: shops sometimes offer smaller discounts yearround when you bring your own mug or bag; making your home more energy efficient can lower your utility bills; and keeping your car's tires filled can improve your gas mileage.

To the age-old question of how many conservatives does it take to screw in a light bulb, we now have a definitive answer: Just one, but it will take him weeks to chase down a vintage incandescent bulb because he won't touch an energy-efficient one. At least that's the obvious conclusion to draw from a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study, put together by researchers from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, asked hundreds of people to pass judgment on light bulb options.

Chris Bolgiano is to be commended for emphasizing that choosing to not have children is not only a meaningful life option but also contributes to curbing the world's population problem ("To be — or not to be — a mother," May 9). But her remark that "the birthrate in America is historically low" leaves the impression the U.S. does not have a population problem. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only are we the third most populous nation in the world (behind China and India)

Baltimore is so poor that it considers closing fire houses and firing firefighters and the ACLU is pushing for school construction in the billions ("ACLU criticizes lack of school construction funding in city," June 2). Classic case of stupidity par excellence. F.P. Cordell, Lutherville

Where are these jobs that Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan profess to have at their fingertips should they be elected? Why isn't the electorate demanding to know? Could it possibly be that they are planning to drill in every open space this country has where they even smell oil and the environment be damned? Judging by what was spoken at the Republican National Convention, that is exactly what the rascals plan! Amy Carroll, Timonium

Taken right out of the Bill Clinton handbook, Gov. Martin O'Malley floats a trial balloon and suggests a hike in the state's gas tax only to alter the plan and now suggest an increase in the sales tax from 6 percent to 7 percent. Is this man on the same planet as we the taxpayers? Doesn't he know how much the people who pay taxes are hurting? Raising these taxes goes to the gut of people who are still fortunate to be employed. Perhaps the "New Americans" the governor is so fond of can afford the tax hike and pay for the new roads and bridges only they will be using.

IT'S WONDERFUL, the burst of publications with lists of things we can do to save the planet. It's great to see so much energy behind recycling, energy-efficient light bulbs and fund-raisers for the rain forest. If we all did 50 simple things to save the planet, that would help, there's no doubt about it.Some of these efforts are not only easy, they also pay off directly and quickly. It takes no more trouble to throw an aluminum can into a recycling container than into a mixed-trash one, and it makes money, instead of costing for disposal.

More than the apes are smart in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes. " This smartly packaged prequel in the long-running simian series rejuvenates what had seemed like a tired franchise. Don't be surprised if these digitally created apes continue to rise in future installments. What makes this latest ape movie work is that it adheres to traits that seem old-fashioned in the current summer movie marketplace. Working with a solidly crafted script by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, director Rupert Wyatt oversees a deliberately paced, detail-oriented story.

For over 40 years, Earth Day has sent a powerful message: that each of us has both the capacity and the duty to support the environment that sustains us. This is certainly a message that dedicated conservationists can get behind, but what about everyday people with busy lives, kids to raise and jobs to keep? For many, Earth Day has become a day of celebration rather than an urgent call to join a movement. Earth Day Network, the organization behind Earth Day, cites the impressive statistic that 1 billion people participate in Earth Day activities each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world.

When Debra Buczkowski was 7, in 1976, NASA's Viking space probes were landing on Mars and sending images of the red planet back to Earth as part of their $1 billion mission. “I realized that no matter where I went on this planet, I couldn't pick up anything in those photos,” the New York native says, recalling how that mesmerized her. Her early appreciation for the wonders of astronomy led to a career mapping structures on other rocky bodies like Earth, such as Mercury and Mars, as opposed to the gas giants, like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, she says.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration reported this week that ancient rocks on Mars analyzed by its Curiosity rover, which landed on the Red Planet in August, show that what is today a barren and inhospitable environment might well have supported living organisms quite comfortably in the distant past. Several billion years ago, scientists say, Mars had a thicker atmosphere and warmer weather and was awash in water flowing across its surface that was safe enough to drink. Humans, of course, did not yet exist in that primeval past, which long predated even the appearance of the first dinosaurs on Earth some 230 million years ago. But microbial life could easily have flourished during that era. Though Curiosity's lab isn't equipped to detect Martian life, past or present, it can determine whether the kind of organic molecules that are essential to life - at least as we know it - are present in the Martian environment.

Every four years, presidential candidates tell the American people that this election is a turning point for the country. This year they might actually be right. To be sure, there are always differences between candidates. On a range of issues, from health care to tax reform, voters face a real choice about two different approaches to governing. But the most profound turning point in this election may be the fact that the neither candidate is talking about one of the most critical issues of our time.

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be acquainted, another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: SKINT You may find yourself momentarily embarrassed when the check arrives, or impecunious, penurious, or flat-out stony broke. But if you want a succinct term, you can use skint . It's British, a variant of skinned , and thus metaphorically redolent.

Where are these jobs that Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan profess to have at their fingertips should they be elected? Why isn't the electorate demanding to know? Could it possibly be that they are planning to drill in every open space this country has where they even smell oil and the environment be damned? Judging by what was spoken at the Republican National Convention, that is exactly what the rascals plan! Amy Carroll, Timonium

First of five articles AASEN, Netherlands -- Leopold Hendrick admits a visitor through the locked doors of the world's first bureaucracy dedicated to tracking and taxing animal waste, a kind of manure IRS. The government administrator apologizes for the tight security: "We are not so popular. Some farmers broke in and tried to steal their dossiers." Other nations should track plutonium so closely. Dutch farmers must report to the nation's 340-employee Levy Bureau how much their 4.2 million cattle, 14 million pigs and 108 million chickens eat. They must inform the bureau of their farms' precise output, the meat and dairy products they ship away.

When the Hubble Space Telescope snapped the first pictures of the surface of Pluto, it captured the elusive planet's icy veneer and summer shroud, which one scientist likened to the bright snows of Colorado. And although Pluto didn't have the sexiness of Venus or the panache of Mars, the photographs of a decade ago provided scientists with the first detailed views of the faraway planet since its discovery in 1930. "It's fantastic," gushed astronomer Marc W. Buie back then. Fast forward to 2006.

Not long ago, in the "Readers Respond" column, one of your readers said that President Barack Obama's "failure to prevail" in the recent debt ceiling fiasco "speaks to his failure in leadership. " It clearly does not. The debt ceiling "crisis" is not new at all. The only things prevailing are ignorance, greed and ego in a materialistic society. No single person can stem the tide of our self-indulging species, which seems determined to devour the planet and all of its resources, including the extinction of any other species that gets in the way. What it "speaks to" is the cost of decades of buying on credit for covetous, materialistic Americans - which would include you and me - programmed by a mantra after World War II that urged all of us to "Keep up with the Joneses.

They called it the "seven minutes or terror" for the complex maneuverings and rocket blasts conducted in the final moments of a 354 million mile journey from home, but the Curiosity rover executed its landing flawlessly. Those who doubted U.S. preeminence in space exploration — or even in science and engineering in an era of outsourcing and global competition — should pay heed. Too bad there was no film crew on the surface of Mars (at least as far as we distant earthlings can tell)