Quantum Leap

Howard Sosin, master of some of Wall Street's newest and most complex financial products, is "always doing things an order of magnitude more complicated" than anyone else, says a competitor. "As his business grew and rivals began to muscle in on the turf of AIG Financial Products, [he] always managed to push on to new territory," the Wall Street Journal reports.What's the big deal? Someone gets a hot idea. He makes big bucks. Others smell opportunity. They invade his newly won turf. He upgrades.

The ties between Maryland and Notre Dame in men's lacrosse already run deep. Both Dick and George Corrigan, uncles of Fighting Irish coach Kevin Corrigan, were All-American attackmen for the Terps . On the flip side, Maryland coach John Tillman once interviewed for a job at South Bend. The word Wednesday that Notre Dame will join the Atlantic Coast Conference, in all sports but football and ice hockey, takes things even further. Five times, the schools have met in lacrosse.

Scott Bakula, Dana Delany, Candice Bergen and Burt Reynolds are the best leading performers on series television, according to voters in the 7th Annual Quality Awards of the Viewers for Quality Television organization.And the best two programs on the air this season were ABC's canceled "China Beach" among drama series and CBS' "Murphy Brown" among comedies, say members of the Virginia-based advocacy organization.There was remarkable consensus about what constitutes quality programming on TV. For while the recent mail balloting asked for voting in 13 categories, all the awards ended up encompassing just seven shows.

In a random moment that a physicist might appreciate, a Russian Ph.D. named Katya Denisova suddenly found herself revealing the secrets of the universe to students at a troubled Baltimore high school. She offers energetic proof of the power of teaching Ninety minutes can be a long time to sit in physics class, but Katya Denisova's students don't stay in their seats for long. They walk clockwise around the room, stopping at different stations to see what everyone else wrote about why humans can only see one side of the moon.

ON AND OFF THE AIR:* Arsenio, meet Jonathon. That's the introduction happening at 11 o'clock tonight, as WNUV-Channel 54 debuts a new talk-show rival to WBFF-Channel 45's "Arsenio Hall Show" occupying the same time frame.The new half-hour show is "Johnny B. . .On the Loose," and stars Jonathon Brandmeier, a Chicago radio deejay who has been trying for some time to translate his audio humor into a late-night television form.Viewers may remember him from "Friday Night Videos," "Later. . .With Bob Costas" and from a one-shot NBC special last August.

Washington -- What's a nice guy like him doing in a film like this?That's a question Scott Bakula hears more and more these days. After five years as one of TV's quintessential Nice Guys, on the cult hit "Quantum Leap," which still shows up on cable 19 or 20 times every 24 hours, here is Bakula as a gun-crazed private detective Harry D'Amour in the blood-drenched freak show "Lords of Illusion."But he's so cute. He's so sweet."I like to do different things," says Bakula with a winning shrug and a grin that suggests he's a few beats behind in his attempt to establish a no-more-Mr.

OK, now I think I've got the trick to this Emmy picking. Last year -- my first attempt at this game -- was pretty dismal, I admit. One right, in some forgettable supporting actor category.But what are you going to do in the year that they don't give the best movie/miniseries acting award to Robert Duvall for "Lonesome Dove?" You're going to get a lot wrong, that's what you're going to do.The problem was that I didn't factor in the absurd voting procedure. The Emmys are chosen by a bunch of essentially bored people, all members of the Television Academy, who have nothing better to do on a weekend in August -- heavy production season in network television -- than sit around in a hotel and watch screenings.

When actors have repeated success in one genre of entertainment, often they get typecast, stuck playing the same character again and again in different movies or shows. Scott Bakula, star of the late-'80s hit show Quantum Leap and the most recent Star Trek series, Enterprise, proves even a sci-fi master can find success in a myriad of genres and mediums. At 51, Bakula makes a leap back to his roots in theater, starring in the Tony Award-winning Civil War musical Shenandoah, running tomorrow through April 30 at Ford's Theatre in Washington.

ON AND OFF THE AIR:* Have a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T for Sam (Scott Bakula). In tonight's edition of NBC's "Quantum Leap" (at 10, Channel 2), he finds himself occupying the person of a talented black teen, a member of a singing trio in the early 1960s.The problem involves another singer in the group (Tammy Townsend), whose minister father wants the combo to sign with a crooked manager. (T'Keyeh "Crystal" Keymah, from the Fox series "In Living Color," is the third member of the trio.)The network also offers a hint at the origin of the idea, by noting series co-executive producer Deborah Pratt, who wrote the script, once was a member of the "Golddiggers" song-and-dance troupe of TV's "Dean Martin Show."

The annual Academy Awards are still almost a week away (Monday on ABC), but the preludes have begun, as seen tonight on cable both seriously and with parody. Meanwhile, Fox is launching a sci-fi series with a movie-length premiere.* "Sliders" (8 p.m.-10 p.m., WBFF, Channel 45) -- In a twist on the always engaging "what-if?" game, -- as most recently practiced on "Quantum Leap" -- a young Mr. Wizard (Jerry O'Connell) invents a gadget in his basement that transports him and companions into parallel universes in which familiar figures from history have taken different paths.

When actors have repeated success in one genre of entertainment, often they get typecast, stuck playing the same character again and again in different movies or shows. Scott Bakula, star of the late-'80s hit show Quantum Leap and the most recent Star Trek series, Enterprise, proves even a sci-fi master can find success in a myriad of genres and mediums. At 51, Bakula makes a leap back to his roots in theater, starring in the Tony Award-winning Civil War musical Shenandoah, running tomorrow through April 30 at Ford's Theatre in Washington.

Drop in front of the television, thumb the remote control through the blizzard of images and odds are pretty good you'll find lots of biting sharks, enigmatic mummies, churning tornadoes or star-slurping black holes.Never, it seems, have there been more science shows. And never have more people watched them.Sure, American students score miserably in science and math tests, compared to the rest of the world. (In one recent comparison, eighth-graders in the United States ranked behind all but four of 41 nations: Lithuania, Cyprus, Portugal and Iran.

Thanks to DVD, the future of home video has never seemed brighter. Or sharper.Touted as the greatest breakthrough in entertainment gadgetry since the compact disc, DVD (which, depending on whom you ask, stands for either Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) makes VHS tapes or laser discs look positively antiquated. DVD delivers a crisper, more detailed picture than either of them. Moreover, DVD can fit an entire film on a disc the size of a CD, while offering features beyond anything offered on previous generations of video players.

When the doors of Enoch Pratt Free Library opened yesterday, the public saw the results of what Pratt Director Carla D. Hayden described as "a quantum leap into the 21st century."The Pratt unveiled a computer system that allows library patrons all over the city to reach the World Wide Web, search the library's collection of 2.1 million books and other resources, and find information from colleges, universities and 3,000 community information providers.Early reviews were positive."I like the new system," said Miguel Diggs, 18, of Rosedale.

A $300,000 gift from Lockheed Martin Corp. will support a new science center that Western Maryland College will begin building in the spring.The $12 million laboratory center will replace a parking lot behind Lewis Hall for Sciences, which was built in 1914 when scientists had only crude knowledge about the existence of DNA and the way an atom functions."

HOW MANY universities show more interest in their nationally rated chess club than the football team? That's the way it is these days at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, an institution that turned 30 this week, but which already has big ambitions for the next three decades.It didn't start that way. UMBC came into being through a political power play by Baltimore County's lone state senator in those days, James A. Pine, who needed to fortify his support in the west-end. Thus, a campus of the University of Maryland was planted in Catonsville.

More previews from The Weekend Watch:THE RACIAL QUESTION -- Blunt talk on touchy issues was the agenda of today's Baltimore Summit on Race Relations at the Convention Center, and WJZ-Channel 13 is doing a half-hour special on the event tonight. "Baltimore in Black and White" is scheduled at 7:30 p.m., with host Debbie Wright, the station's education reporter.A CULTURAL CONNECTION -- Who says entertaining television cannot also teach? Tonight's scheduled episode of "Quantum Leap" (at 8, Channel 2)

Once again it is time to be irked by the Emmys.The 43rd annual bestowal of television's Emmy Awards is taking place tomorrow night in Pasadena, Calif., and the show is scheduled to air live for almost 3 1/2 hours on the Fox network (Channel 45 at 8).Ho, hum. In keeping with the medium's regrettable tendency toward the status quo, the cast of characters seems pretty familiar.That would not be so terrible if all the excellent performers and shows were among the potential honorees. But the list of nominees manages to neglect some of the brightest fare on the tube we've seen over the past year.

Sixteen years ago, Ruth Donati went to work as a receptionist for a group of five pediatricians in Towson. It took the equivalent of one and half people to do the paperwork for the practice, using an old punch card machine.Since then, the office has modernized; Dr. Felix Kaufman, one of the pediatricians, says the doctors have spent $100,000 on computer systems. And the practice has joined Premier Medical Group, which is taking over a chunk of the administrative chores.So it doesn't take one and a half people to handle the paperwork any more.

Washington -- What's a nice guy like him doing in a film like this?That's a question Scott Bakula hears more and more these days. After five years as one of TV's quintessential Nice Guys, on the cult hit "Quantum Leap," which still shows up on cable 19 or 20 times every 24 hours, here is Bakula as a gun-crazed private detective Harry D'Amour in the blood-drenched freak show "Lords of Illusion."But he's so cute. He's so sweet."I like to do different things," says Bakula with a winning shrug and a grin that suggests he's a few beats behind in his attempt to establish a no-more-Mr.