SIN

Which moment would the Ravens like back? The timeout? The defensive holding call? Bart Scott's first unsportsmanlike conduct penalty? His subsequent game of flag football? The post-game whining? When the Ravens melted down like an icy sidewalk treated with rock salt in the final moments of their gritty game Dec. 3 against the New England Patriots, the potential for revisionist history was born. So many TiVo moments, only one poke of the replay button. Since coach Brian Billick gets to keep his job and cornerbacks Chris McAlister and Samari Rolle and wide receiver Derrick Mason only had to pay a total of $45,000 in fines to the sin bin, it seems only fair that we turn the remote control over to linebacker Scott, who ponied up $25,000 for the honor.

In the first scene of the most famous play set in New Orleans, the character Blanche Dubois neatly sums up the city's paradoxical allure: "They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, transfer to one called Cemetery, and ride six blocks and get off at Elysian Fields."There you have it: Sin, death and -- if you're lucky -- redemption, all for the price of a streetcar ticket.Not much has changed in the half century since Tennessee Williams wrote those words. Visit New Orleans at opposite ends of the year and the fascination with debauchery and demise still resonates palpably.

Pretentiousness and preposterousness are an uneasy mix, or at least an unentertaining one, which "Entrapment" goes to great lengths to prove.The pretense is obvious from the very first shot, when an annoyingly self-important computer readout appears on screen: "New York -- 16 Days to Millennium." The conceit will reappear throughout "Entrapment," which feverishly tries to instill viewers with high Y2K anxiety, even as it piles one absurdity upon another.Just when "Entrapment" looks like the movie that "Mission: Impossible" so desperately wanted to be, it self-destructs with a discordant piece of witlessness.

Quoting Bible, knowing its meaning are different"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Lately, I have heard this statement used many times to justify the actions of the president of the United States.Not one time did I hear this quote in its proper context and completion. Yes, Jesus did say, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." He also said to the woman in question, "Go and sin no more."Apparently, the president and a substantial number of people feel that no matter how many times a person commits a sin or crime all is forgiven by mere admission or confession.

If you make a mistake, you pay for it. That's how most of the world operates.But not Maryland basketball coach Gary Williams in the case of Tamir Goodman.If Williams erred in prematurely offering a scholarship to Goodman last winter, he's not going to pay. There'd be no consequences for him.Goodman, a high school senior, is the one who would pay.Swell, huh? The coach gets to wash his hands and move on, and the kid is left to try to pick up the pieces.It hardly seems fair, but Goodman already is paying in the wake of last week's Sun story about Williams possibly cooling on him after orally agreeing to offer him a scholarship when Goodman was a junior at Baltimore's Talmudical Academy.

SURELY the nation's moral water table has reached drought level when Gary Hart feels it's safe to declaim again about whether infidelity should be a factor in determining fitness for public office.Mr. Hart was a Democratic presidential candidate in 1988 who was forced from the race when reporters discovered him emerging from a house -- where he and a woman not his wife had been alone at suggestive hours and after pictures were published showing Donna Rice sitting on his lap aboard the deliciously named boat Monkey Business.

TANGIER, Va. -- The locals like to say that the first thing you can see on Tangier Island is the steeple of the Methodist Church, heart of this devout community of watermen and their families for 101 years.What's not visible from the tourist boats are the satellite dishes and the pickup trucks. Or the six-packs sneaked onto this supposedly "dry" place, slipped through an increasingly porous border between island and mainland, old and new.And in that tension lies a clue for those wondering how this tiny island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay could reject Paul Newman, Kevin Costner and a PG-13 movie they wanted to film here.

CounterpointRecently, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott sparked a controversy when he compared homosexuality to alcoholism, sex addiction and kleptomania. Richard L. Tafel, the head of a Republican gay rights group, criticized Lott in a Perspective article last week. Here's another view.Given the state of current discourse, in which honest observations that conflict with the Zeitgeist are zealously punished, I begin my column with this caveat: I harbor no hatred against homosexuals, am offended by anti-gay discrimination, in no way condone violence against them and really couldn't care less what sexual behavior adults engage in.I thought of this admittedly wimpy approach after following what Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott had to go through recently for making some seemingly innocuous comments about homosexuality on a TV talk show.

Ben Jonson revealed the comic dimensions of greed in his classic 17th-century satire, "Volpone." In the mid-20th century, Larry Gelbart set the plot and characters in the San Francisco of the 1880s and called it "Sly Fox."Near the end of the 20th century, the Colonial Players in Annapolis give us a production of Gelbart's play that finds all the humor in the sin of avarice.In the title role of Foxwell Sly, Frank B. Moorman delivers another first-rate performance.His expressive face and gestures display a wide range of emotions, even without dialogue, as Sly pretends to be terminally ill and ready to leave his estate to a deserving heir.

BOSTON -- So what do we have here? The economy is humming along, the country's at peace, even the battle of the sexes seems scattered along the Lewinsky Line, and suddenly the religious right is focusing on homosexuality as a threat to the republic.If 1994 was the Year of the Angry White Male, is 1998 being cast as the Year of the Angry Heterosexual?You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to see some political method behind the madness. First James Dobson of Focus on the Family goes to Washington to tell the Republican leadership to get with the program.

Sin taxes may not prevent sinning, but they do slow it down. That's the beauty of vice; whatever drives people to smoke and drink alcohol is mercifully price-sensitive. But it's not just economists and clergy who can rejoice in the power of basic economics to improve our lives. Doctors see the advantages as well. High cigarette taxes have done wonders for keeping kids away from smoking, and that's saved lives. Might a sin tax prove just as helpful in the fight against the nation's epidemic of childhood obesity?

You know it's a bad recession when even investments in sin, war and debauchery aren't holding up. The Vice Fund, which trucks in alcohol, tobacco, gambling and defense stocks, advertises that such businesses benefit from "steady demand regardless of economic condition." Not this economic condition. The fund is down 40 percent from a year ago - more than the S&P 500. While cigarette maker Philip Morris has held up pretty well, rival Reynolds American has plunged, and so have other tobacco merchants.

"For the first time in my adult lifetime I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change." Michelle Obama, Feb. 18 I always thought I understood what Michelle Obama was trying to say. You are familiar, of course, with what she did say, which is quoted above. It provided weeks of red meat for her husband's opponents, who took to making ostentatious proclamations of their own unwavering pride in country. But again, I think I know what the lady meant to say. Namely, that with her husband, this brown-skinned guy with the funny name, making a credible run for the highest office in the land, she could believe, for the first time, that "we the people" included her. It is, for African-Americans, an intoxicating thought almost too wonderful for thinking.

It's hard to resurrect the party-all-the-time vibe of yesterday's rock 'n' roll if you're feeling lightheaded and can barely make it to the stage. But Michael Grant, the swaggering front man of the metal-pop band Endeverafter, found the energy somewhere. The first part of the band's national tour this month was especially tough for him. "I was sick for about a week and a half - the flu," Grant says. "I was throwing up, could hardly stand. But other than that, the crowds have been great.

Which moment would the Ravens like back? The timeout? The defensive holding call? Bart Scott's first unsportsmanlike conduct penalty? His subsequent game of flag football? The post-game whining? When the Ravens melted down like an icy sidewalk treated with rock salt in the final moments of their gritty game Dec. 3 against the New England Patriots, the potential for revisionist history was born. So many TiVo moments, only one poke of the replay button. Since coach Brian Billick gets to keep his job and cornerbacks Chris McAlister and Samari Rolle and wide receiver Derrick Mason only had to pay a total of $45,000 in fines to the sin bin, it seems only fair that we turn the remote control over to linebacker Scott, who ponied up $25,000 for the honor.

As my wife will attest, I often suffer from futterneid. This is the term Germans use to describe the envy we feel when, for example, someone orders a better meal than ours. I'm also prone to schadenfreude, the tendency to take pleasure in the misfortune of others. So if I get the braised short ribs and you get stuck with the snail tartare, your futterneid will fuel my schadenfreude. Perhaps it's no coincidence the Germans have so many words for the chillingly petty emotions that run like cold streams through the human heart.

How would Jesus drive? A Vatican commission issued guidelines yesterday reminding drivers not to ignore Christian principles and to respect life - and the rules of the road - as they shift into gear. The Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People acknowledges the prominence of the automobile in society with its warnings against the use of vehicles in the "occasion of sin," such as road rage, prostitution and trafficking of people. "Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road" is a four-part document that also addresses the needs of prostitutes, street children and the homeless.

Draft could corrode our resolve to fight What Lawrence J. Korb and others who advocate reinstating the draft fail to recognize is that emotions should have nothing to do with fighting wars ("Burden should be shared," Opinion Commentary, Jan. 9). Mr. Korb suggests that forcing 18-year-olds into the armed forces will cause families and friends of those forced into service to be so "emotionally involved" that they would advocate for an immediate cessation of violence. Mr. Korb paints this as a good thing.

"Fight the good fight of faith." --1 Timothy 6:12 She mounts the stage in a theater full of kids, some as young as 6, and holds up a cuddly, stuffed baby lion for all to see. Becky Fischer, pastor in the Kids in Ministry evangelical church, tells her doe-eyed listeners that sin -- when it first tempts us as children -- can seem as sweet and harmless as the toy cub in her hand. "It looks kind of cute, in fact," she coos, pressing it to her cheek. "Warm and fuzzy." Then her tone sharpens, her eyes narrow, and Fischer -- the charismatic central figure in the controversial new documentary film Jesus Camp, which opens at the Charles Theatre tomorrow -- swings the lion over her head as an Olympic athlete might throw a hammer.

U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Florida, said this week that God did not intend for the United States to be a "nation of secular laws" and that a failure to elect Christians to political office will allow lawmaking bodies to "legislate sin." The remarks, published in the weekly journal of the Florida Baptist State Convention, unleashed a torrent of criticism from political and religious officials. U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, said she was "disgusted" by the comments "and deeply disappointed in Representative Harris personally."