Pulse

Stories of the sexual prowess of athletes may or may not b locker-room hype. Yet, in any case, the sexual vigor of athletes is not caused by their training -- because being in great physical shape does not improve one's ability to make love.Lovemaking doesn't take a lot of energy. In fact, it takes the same amount of energy necessary to walk up two flights of stairs. And if you can do that, you can be a good lover.We all know that exercise can be good for you, and in most cases, it is. But too much can be bad. It can reduce your sex drive.

When Sidney Hollander Sr., the legendary Baltimore civil rights and social activist, celebrated his 90th birthday in 1972, he reflected on his life's work seeking equality for those who had long been denied it. "I was always warned by my conservative friends that if you give Negroes one finger, they'll want the whole hand," he told a Sun reporter at the time. "That's what I'm for. If they get the whole hand, then they'll finally be equal. "We've broken down a lot of the taboos and restrictions, but we haven't broken down the emotions behind those taboos and restrictions," he said.

Seeking to capitalize on the popularity of its news channel, Fox launches The Pulse, a magazine show with host Shepard Smith. Bill O'Reilly and Geraldo Rivera, no strangers to controversy, will be among the contributors. The program airs at 9 on WBFF (Channel 45). Scheduled opposite The Pulse in some cities, including Baltimore, the new PBS series Wide Angle may offer a contrasting approach to the news. It promises "in-depth reports from acclaimed documentary filmmakers," with each program devoted to a single topic.

Kimberly Hanline went home from work and hugged her son. "He just looked up at me, but he knew that I had cried." Hanline was the first Baltimore police officer to help 5-year-old Raven Wyatt after she had collapsed on Pulaski Street from a bullet fired into her head last summer. Hanline and Officer Monica Nashan cradled the wounded girl and restored her pulse with chest compressions. "When we did CPR, she started to move," Hanline said. Both officers later went home to their own children, emotionally drained from a day that would become a focal point for a city tired of shootings and upset that an innocent girl had been hit by a stray bullet as she walked home from a store carrying a new set of hair beads.

It's always a pleasure to see the work of an artist conscious of just what her talent is and working firmly within it. That's certainly the case with Joan Erbe, native of Baltimore and veteran of more than 50 museum and gallery shows in the past 40 years, from Massachusetts to California.Erbe's figural paintings exist on several levels. With their vivid colors and bright patterns they can be seen as extremely decorative, in the good sense of the term; Erbe's acrylics, sometimes in combination with drawing and with collaged, patterned paper or fabric, produce vibrant works that pulse with life and display the evidence of an unfaltering hand.

THE DAY AMERICA TOLD THE TRUTH. By James Patterson and Peter Kim. Prentice Hall. 270 pages. $19.95. IS AMERICA really the mom-and-apple-pie country it is made out to be? Not according to Messrs. Patterson and Kim, who set out to take the "moral pulse" of America in the "largest survey of private morals ever undertaken."The authors based their interviews on the premise that most people want to tell someone what they really think -- without consequences. In the questionnaires and interviews, anonymity was guaranteed; hence, we're to believe, the participants let down their BarbaraSamsonMillsguard.

An article in yesterday's Business section incorrectly reported that Pulse One Communications Inc. will be signing up customers for Bell Atlantic Mobile Systems Inc. and Cellular One. Pulse One is working with a reseller of cellular services that has the capability to sign up customers for either company, but Pulse One will be selling only for Cellular One.&The Sun regrets the errors.Pulse One Communications Inc., an Owings Mills-based cellular phone dealer that filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, plans to reopen for business later this week, a company executive said yesterday.

PULSEPink Floyd (Columbia 67065)Although it's billed as a live album, it would probably be more accurate to describe Pink Floyd's "Pulse" simply as a concert recording. "Live," after all, suggests a certain amount of chance-taking and vivacity, and neither of those qualities are much in evidence in this double-CD set. Recorded in Europe during the group's last tour, "Pulse" is as stately and well-recorded as the group's last concert album, "The Delicate Sound of Thunder," and just about as boring.

If I've learned one thing from living in six different towns in six different states in 13 years (and I wasn't even in the military), it's that the best way to get the pulse of a new place is to pay attention to what the community does for itself: to check out the benefit events, and the celebrations, and what kind of things the high schools raise money for.These are always indications of the heart of the community. I think that what we love and work for, outside ourselves and our immediate family, is as important as what we "do," and the collective energy of working for others defines a community as much as its economic statistics and demographics.

Pulse One Communications Inc. lost a critical court battle yesterday when a jury ordered it to pay more than $5 million in damages after finding it breached its contract with Bell Atlantic Mobile Systems Inc.The decision, handed down in Baltimore Circuit Court, represented a major setback for the Owings Mills-based cellular phone dealer. A one-time, high-flying business that rose spectacularly in the late 1980s with more than 230 employees, the company filed for bankruptcy protection last year.

Last month hundreds of people walked into Jones Junction in Bel Air and bought Chryslers, Hyundais, Jeeps, Subarus and Nissans. Even Toyotas! They were not herded in at gunpoint. Nor were they financed by subprime lenders heedless of repayment. Many were staked by real banks with trained lending officers inquiring about their income and jobs. Nobody from government bribed these folks to buy cars. The $3 billion cash-for-clunkers program ran out almost a year ago. The buyers made rational decisions based on their needs, their private wherewithal and their appraisals of the economy.

Workers at the city's main post office on Fayette Street were prepping Thursday morning for the annual late-night Tax Day rush, albeit a more casual version than that of a decade ago. On April 15 back then, the hours leading up to midnight took on a carnival-like feel. "Years ago, when there was only mailing, we'd have IRS people in the lobby helping people fill out forms," said William Ridenour, postmaster of Baltimore. "We'd have people coming in with a box of receipts doing their tax forms at 11 at night.

Classic film screenings continue at the Senator Theatre this weekend with Carol Reed's magnificent The Third Man, starring Joseph Cotten as a pulp novelist visiting postwar Vienna, where he learns that his good friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles), has died. Or has he? Gorgeous (Robert Krasker won an Oscar for his stark black-and-white cinematography) and witty, the 1949 movie includes a great monologue from one of the principals in which we learn the connection between Western morality and the cuckoo clock.

In the early years of the last century, Ocean City's commercial fishermen had to launch their boats through the surf and drag them and their catch back onto the beach with horses, ropes and pulleys. It was colorful but inefficient. If only the government would dig a cut through the barrier island, they argued, they could keep larger boats in the shelter of a bay, gain direct access to the ocean and inject new life into their fishery. No one guessed that a storm born in the tropical Atlantic was about to intervene and do the work for them, at a heavy cost.

Sixteen years ago, Steve Zatuchni was a computer sales manager, making a six-figure income. Then all hell broke loose in his brain. He became severely depressed, to the point that he could no longer work. He slept up to 18 hours a day, and when he was awake, felt so miserable he wished he were asleep. He tried dozens of medicines, in myriad combinations. Nothing worked. Distraught, he tried to kill himself several times. Then, in 2004, he enrolled in a study of an experimental therapy called transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS -- a noninvasive treatment that sends magnetic pulses into the brain.

Lars and the Real Girl is the darndest thing. Starring Ryan Gosling as the romantically challenged Lars, this is a film whose daring and delicate blend of apparent irreconcilables will sweep you off your feet if you're not careful. For what screenwriter Nancy Oliver, director Craig Gillespie and a top-notch cast have done is construct a Frank Capra-style fable, a throwback tribute to the joys of friendship and community, around a sex toy. Taking one of the most salacious items modern culture can provide as their centerpiece, they've created the sweetest, most innocent, most completely enjoyable film around.

Unless you knew better, it would be easy to mistake Joe Public's "Joe Public" (Columbia 48628) for a rap album. It starts like a rap recording, after all, with a churning fatback drum pulse and a wash of familiar samples (James Brown and all the usual suspects); even the singsong chorus sounds like the sort of thing you'd expect at the beginning of a rap jam.Joe Public isn't a rap act, though -- it's a singing group. And despite its reliance on rap and rap-derived rhythmic ideas, the heart of Joe Public's sound isn't rhyming, but harmonizing.

A FEW YEARS AGO, Samuel T. Redd Jr. says, he noticed a change in his family's mortuary business. "Four days out of a seven-day week," he says, "you'd see nothing but kids between the ages of 14 and 25 in the funeral home, dead." The young mourners came around so regularly they began to look familiar. Over time, some became the faces in the caskets.That's when Mr. Redd, director of People United to Live in a Safe Environment (PULSE), got angry. "This is everybody's problem," he says. "You can no longer go in your house, close the doors, close the blinds, sit in the living room and say, `This isn't my problem.

BOSTON -- In retrospect, it was probably not the best way to reassure the faithful. When James Dobson, child psychologist turned political kingmaker, rose to speak at the Values Voter Summit dinner, he first complained about media reports that the religious right was dead. Then he cheerily announced, "Welcome to the morgue." Yes, well, not yet. The much-reported news from last weekend's gathering was that the honchos of the religious right are still wanted by the Republican candidates.

Walking the grim city streets after football practice, the youngster glanced over his shoulder. His pulse raced. His pace quickened. His route had landed him on enemy turf, and the Raw Dogs weren't a Detroit gang to mess with. Just a few more blocks, Bart Scott thought. RAVENS@BENGALS Season opener, tomorrow, 7 p.m., ESPN, Ch. 13, 1090 AM, 97.9 FM Line: Bengals by 2 1/2