Responsibilities

Mayor Ellen O. Moyer and two city council members are seeking a new ordinance they say would crack down on residential landlords who fail to adequately maintain their properties. The measure, prompted by concerns raised by a downtown community group, would clarify landlord responsibilities and tenant rights. "Many of these rental properties are old, and they are conjoined," said Jan Hardesty, a spokeswoman for the mayor's office. "That means when there is any kind of issue, it affects more than one property.

The recent letter writer critical of Israeli actions in Gaza ( "Israel committed war crimes during its invasion of Gaza, " Oct. 1) conveniently forgets the origins of the Gaza conflict and the effort that Israel made to reduce civilian casualties. Hamas for the last eight years has been firing rockets into Israel, traumatizing the inhabitants who seek shelter almost hourly. The situation was exacerbated by the murder of three Israeli teenagers by Hamas, admitted to by the spokesman for Hamas and claimed as a great victory.

NEW YORK -- She doesn't bother with a phone at home. She has never voted. She doesn't own a car, and wears shoes only when she must. When prime-time television is on, she is often fast asleep.Esther Dyson is a creature of the Internet. And while her name is unknown to the average American, Dyson's thinking is closely watched by the leaders of software and new-media companies, as well as by the government officials who seek to regulate them.Dyson publishes Release 1.0, a tech-industry newsletter obscure enough to have just 2,000 subscribers and important enough to command $695 a year for the subscription.

If historic tax bills are wrong in the future, at least city property owners will know who to blame. The City Council voted unanimously Monday to give Baltimore's government authority to do the appraisals that determine the size of historic tax credits - essentially stripping state officials of the duty in response to errors that left some property owners with wildly inaccurate bills. The plan, which is expected to get final approval next week, ends months of finger-pointing between state and city officials over who is to blame for the problems.

Top administrators in the Baltimore City school system were used to staff meetings with fluid agendas that left time for all to speak. But now, Andres Alonso was presiding. And class was in session. When I send you an e-mail, the schools' new chief executive told them on that summer day in 2007, I expect a reply within 20 minutes. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. This wasn't a conversation, but more like a lecture, one in which students keep quiet for fear of being admonished for falling behind on their homework.

Annapolitan Jean Jackson was able to balance career and volunteer responsibilities so well that she took on another task: president of the Annapolis Opera. "I surprised myself when I said yes," she said. Jackson replaced outgoing president Anna Marie Darlington-Gilmour last month, who served in that capacity for the past three years. The director of the Office of Program and Community Support, Jackson is employed by the Maryland State Department of Education, Division of Rehabilitation Services where she supervises the agency's staff responsible for planning, evaluation, community rehab programs, volunteer programs, client assistance programs, marketing, public relations and legislative liaison.

Start with a purpose: Is it a special occasion or just a friendly gathering? Sort out duties to avoid collisions: Communicate. Before divvying up responsibilities, figure out cooking strengths of each individual -- who's best at side dishes, hor d'oeuvres, main dish and desserts. If holding a get-together for friends, it's fine to be more restrictive on invitations and invite only friends who know each other. Have a menu in mind and ask guests only to bring wine or beer. Keep in mind, the more formal the occasion, the less helpful it is to share responsibilities.

Mark Smolarz, the Baltimore school system official who had become the lightning rod for criticism of the district's financial problems, resigned yesterday saying he was "worn out." The system's chief financial officer, Smolarz had assumed many responsibilities over the past three years and is considered by some to be the schools' most effective problem-solver. He said yesterday he was not asked to resign by either a board member or the interim schools Chief Executive Officer Bonnie S. Copeland.

The whirlwind hit Chris Chester hard and fast. When the Ravens selected the offensive lineman from the University of Oklahoma in the second round of April's draft, Chester was suddenly confronted with - among other responsibilities - learning a new playbook, developing a rapport with his new teammates and becoming familiar with a city that is much different from his former home of Norman, Okla. Ravens@Browns Sunday, 4:05 p.m., Ch. 13, 97.9 FM, 1090 AM Line: Ravens by 6 1/2

Skidding halt can't stop red-light ticket In response to Jack Fogarty's Aug. 24, 2001 Letter to the Editor entitled "Cameras Are for Safety Not Highway Robbery," I agree that red-light cameras have improved traffic safety in Howard County. However ... [it is] incorrect ... that screeching to a halt before an intersection will prevent the wrath of a red-light ticket. The county's policy is if a car's back tire is over the white stop line and you were going at least 18-miles-per-hour when crossing the magnetic strips, which are located before the stop line then you get a $75 ticket, apparently, no ifs, ands or buts.

How is it that TMZ, the celebrity gossip website, got its hands on the Ray Rice assault video before the National Football League did? Does TMZ pay more? Maybe so. But maybe the answer is even simpler than that, lying within the nature of each entity: The NFL wanted this disturbing story of domestic violence by one of its most popular players to go away, and TMZ did not. The NFL wanted to get past the Rice episode — an assault on a woman by a brawny, young running back — as quickly as possible.

I see nothing wrong with all voters having a photo ID ( "Double voting? Not necessarily," Sept. 2). I show my driver's license when I vote although not asked to. When my mother was 86, she stopped driving and told me to take her to Motor Vehicle Administration to get a photo ID card. I am an 80-year-old veteran having arrived in Korea when I was 18. So far, I am also a registered Democrat who has not missed a vote since 1956. To me, this is all part of being a citizen. John DuBree - To respond to this letter, send an email to talkback@baltimoresun.com . Please include your name and contact information.

City Councilman James B. Kraft says he's hired two investigators to help complete a City Council probe of Baltimore's troubled speed camera system.   Two paralegals - - who are paid $32 and $26 per hour, respectively - - from the Robert Half Legal staffing firm began work last week reviewing thousands of documents that the Rawlings-Blake administration turned over to Kraft's committee.   “The mayor has approved the money for two full-time investigators for up to three months,” Kraft said.

Gov. Martin O'Malley has imposed strict new rules to limit when the state may hold immigrants in Baltimore's jail at the request of federal authorities, dealing a new blow to a national program intended to catch people who are in the country illegally. The governor's policy, which was made public Friday by immigration advocates, comes in response to a recent opinion from the Maryland attorney general's office, which found that detaining immigrants in local jails beyond their scheduled release without probable cause is likely a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Like the arrival of a Medieval plague, alien invaders are knocking on Baltimore's door. No, we are not talking about foreign armies storming the beaches or bug-eyed creatures from outer space bent on global domination. But it's almost as bad. We are referring, of course, to the recent appearance in Baltimore of the emerald ash borer, a species of voracious Asian beetle that since 2006 has killed millions of white and green ash trees in its relentless march across North America. In June, city arborists trapped a couple of the critters in Druid Hill Park, a sure sign that more are on the way. If nothing is done, some 290,000 ash trees on city owned property could be at risk of being wiped out over the next few years.

Erin Sharp arrived at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport a little less than two hours before her 9:40 a.m. flight to San Diego on Sunday, timed so that her 11-month-old son would zonk out on the plane and they would arrive home with the afternoon to spare. Instead, Sharp wouldn't leave the Anne Arundel County airport for another nine hours, she said, after an enormous ticketing line for Southwest Airlines caused her and other passengers to miss their flights and the airline couldn't immediately get her onto another.

Issue: -- The Anne Arundel County Health Department recently sent a warning to public high school students after four teenagers contracted a rare and hard-to-treat skin infection while getting tattoos in a tattoo artist's home. Two of the teens were hospitalized for several days. According to the Health Department, tattoo artists aren't required to have licenses in Maryland, and their establishments aren't routinely inspected. Last week, The Sun asked Anne Arundel readers whether regulations regarding tattoo artists and where they work were too lax. Here is a sampling of responses: Lax parenting, not regulation It's unfortunate when we have to punish free enterprise in this country because our children's parents are not stepping up to their responsibilities of parenting their kids.

"The nose knows," goes the old saying. But does it?In a breath-taking discovery, Stanford University researchers are reporting that your left and right nostrils perceive smells slightly differently.The difference is probably too subtle for you to notice most of the time. But it's significant enough to be detected in careful lab experiments, researchers Noam Sobel and John Gabrieli reported this past week in the science journal Nature.For decades, scientists have known that the human brain allocates different responsibilities to the left and right halves of the brain.

As an Army officer in the late 1960s, I was trained in riot control, responding to the race riots in Washington, D.C. after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and just before my departure to Vietnam. I have a simple solution. You see the use of tear gas frequently. Did you know that you can mix with tear gas an element called DM, which is a vomiting agent? No need for bullets. No need for heavy armament. Just deploy a few canisters of a mixture of CS and DM. No one will die, but it won't be a pretty sight.

While the roles of depression and addiction in Robin William's suicide were the focus of most news stories about his death, perhaps the headlines should have focused on his recent diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, highlighting the intricate relationships between neurological diseases and mental health conditions. The U.S. health care system is woefully inadequate at addressing the overlap between the body, mind and soul in these patients. The anatomical, physiological and neurochemical changes in the brain associated with neurological disorders - such as stroke, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease - can exacerbate or worsen previously existing mental health conditions including depression and anxiety.