Sound

Thank God for Joan and Don. Without their lunchtime escape from the office, replete with witty, sexy banter, this episode, the worst of the season, would have been pointless. Nothing else quite worked here, in what clearly was a transitional throwaway leading up to the final few episodes this season. I, for one, do not care about Lane's financial issues (though, surely him forging Don's signature on a check to pay debts will come back to bite him). Anything involving Harry is sort of blah, even though his subplot this week brought back and old friend, Paul Kinsey, who has, ahem, gone through some changes.

The delegate from the city's northern suburbs is sounding off again about Baltimore crime, calling for the mayor to resign unless she convenes a "solutions summit" and demanding a "citywide curfew" be put in place. Of course, the city already has a curfew, and a curfew center, which not only holds wayward youth but links staff with parents to determine why the children are out later than allowed. The Sun's police reporter, Justin Fenton, visited the center back in August.

If all goes as planned, sometime this morning a spacecraft will blast off from its launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and ride a fiery plume of contrails upward through the pre-dawn darkness to begin a two-week journey to the International Space Station and back. But the flight won't be just another NASA resupply mission. Instead, the Falcon 9 rocket and its unmanned Dragon cargo capsule built by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation - SpaceX for short - will be the first commercially owned and operated vehicle ever to rendezvous with the station's orbiting astronauts.

"Rock 'n' roll will never die," sang Neil Young in 1979. Lately, though, it seems to be in a coma. How else to describe the sad state of rock? The Billboard charts are filled with pop acts, rappers and country singers. Even sugary boy-bands have re-emerged. But search for a rock band - the kind that peels the paint off garage walls and leaves ears ringing - and you won't find many. One of the only exceptions is the Black Keys, the blues-rock duo of Ohio natives Dan Auerbach (guitar, vocals)

Find the SoundListening to words said clearly in isolation sharpens a child's ability to attend selectively to sounds. The activity below will help your child understand that sounds have position in words. Help your child learn to listen attentively to everyday sounds, too (the wind, a telephone ringing, footsteps in the hall). Ability to listen helps your child in getting ready to follow oral directions and develop the phoneme awareness skills needed in learning to read.To PlayTake three paper cups and label one with the word "beginning," one with the word "middle" and the third with the word "end."

Marketers around the world are using innovative audio technology that sends sound in a narrow beam, just like light, making it possible to direct messages right into consumers' ears while they shop or sit in waiting rooms. The audio spotlight device, created by Holosonic Research Labs Inc. of Watertown, Mass., has been used to hawk everything from cereals in supermarket aisles to glasses at doctor's offices. The messages are often quick and targeted - and a little creepy to the uninitiated.

Use a shopping catalog such as J.C. Penny or Sears. Tell your child you are going on a shopping trip. Have him select an item, such as a television, and ask him, "What sound does television begin with?"You can do the same with other items, and every time he gives the correct sound, he gets to cut out and keep that object. When he does not know a sound, tell him, "Television begins with the sound 't'." Try not to say a vowel after the sound, in other words say 't' not 'tuh.' Praise him for the sounds he does give correctly.

NEW YORK - Pedestrians hurrying over a grate in the triangular median where Broadway and Seventh Avenue converge in Times Square, just south of 46th Street, rarely seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. But Max Neuhaus hopes that, subliminally, their lives are being changed. Neuhaus is a sound artist, a trained musician and a former famous percussionist who now shapes what he calls intangible sound in space, rather than the tangible sound of a composer working in time. "Times Square" is, if not necessarily his masterpiece, then at least his only work still up and running in the United States.

There's almost something patriotic about the notion of Americana. Drawing from roots-oriented strains of country, folk, blues and rock, the sound is as American as apple pie.But you don't have to be American to play it.Indeed, some of the most interesting variations on the American approach can be found north of the border, thanks to bands like Cowboy Junkies. Like fellow Canadians Blue Rodeo, Spirit of the West and the Waltons, the Junkies are intimately familiar with Americana's musical vocabulary.

I'M SO HAPPY to be rid of this past winter, its cold and long nights, that I've been getting up at 5:45 in the morning. I'm not sure that I really have any choice in the matter. The birds are a potent alarm clock - but what a delightful way to be roused from sleep. Friends who don't know what it is like to live at 26th and St. Paul in the city are often surprised when I tell them how quiet the old neighborhood is. The other night, I was dropped off at my front door after the end of the game where the Yankees clubbed the Orioles.

Standing before some 30 activists and Union Square neighbors Saturday in a neon orange T-shirt with the words "I am Baltimore," 16-year-old Antonio Ellis recited a gritty poem about how the city appears through his eyes. "Born and raised in the city, where youth are always misunderstood. / Being judged based on skin color or because they're from the 'hood," the Reginald F. Lewis High School sophomore said in a lyrical rhythm. "Living in the city, where there is little chance to succeed.

Gov. Martin O'Malley, House Speaker Michael E. Busch and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller are making the best of the embarrassing situation caused by their failure to pass a balanced budget when the legislature adjourned in April. The special legislative session due to begin on Monday will focus only on the budget and taxes — not casino gambling or any of the other issues that were still on the table when time ran out — and will follow closely the compromise worked out by House and Senate negotiators on the regular session's final night.

If you have ever spilled a cup of coffee onto your computer keyboard, you need to listen to this recording of 98 Rock's morning team as it reacts to Mickey Cucchiella after he knocked a cup of coffee onto the console in the station's studio Friday morning. The station was off the air for 20 minutes, according to the show hosts. I called Dave Hill, program director for 98 Rock and WBAL-AM, Friday afternoon about 3 p.m. in connection with another story -- WBAL's coverage of two big trials this week.

Rudolph James "Rudy" Redd Sr., an engineer who spent his nearly 40-year career with the Army's Research, Development and Engineering Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground and was an advocate for the mentally ill, died April 27 of a cardiac arrest at his home in the Versailles Apartments in Towson. He was 88. Mr. Redd was born in Charlottesville, Va. After the death of his mother when he was very young, he moved to a home on Druid Hill Avenue, where he was raised by Irene Scott, a close friend of his mother's.

The Golf Boys finally got some much needed street cred. It was right before last year's U.S. Openwhen a bunch of young Americans who called themselves “The Golf Boys” took quite a bit of criticism for the silly video spoof they did. At a time when their European counterparts were dominating the sport - including a blowout victory by Rory McIlroy in the Open at Congressional - “The Golf Boys” seemed to lack style and substance....

Peter Morici attacks President Barack Obama for pursuing an energy policy which seeks to develop alternative energy sources ("Obama's bad bet," April 3). He brings up the Solyndra debacle, begun under theGeorge W. Bush administration, as evidence that we should just "drill, baby, drill" and deal with the environmental risks engendered. The problem with Solyndra was ultimately a political one, and it certainly should not be taken as evidence that we should stop seeking alternative energy sources.

Part of the problem with contemporary rock is that it has come to include such a wide range of sounds that the term itself has become an almost meaningless description.Consider, as an example, the Cocteau Twins' performance at the Towson Center last night. Given the band's instrumentation and orientation, it seems accurate enough to refer to their music as rock. But it's kind of like calling a butterfly a bug; it gets the general idea across, but misses all the important details.This, after all, is a band like no other.

Alienation is a funny thing. When New Order first came to prominence in the mid '80s, it owed most of its audience to a shared sense of estrangement. Some of that had to do with what the songs said, but mostly it was a reflection of how they sounded -- of the emptiness evoked by their affectless vocals, thrumming guitars and insistent beat.At first, New Order's all-tension/no-release approach made it an anomaly on the dance music scene. But as time passed, not only were New Order's ideas absorbed into the mainstream, but the group itself was beginning to cross over, cracking the Top 40 in this country and topping the singles chart in its native Britain.

University of Maryland University College was academically sound on the day President Susan Aldridge resigned, according to the chancellor of the state university system. That assurance, conveyed by Chancellor William E. Kirwan in an interview last week, is the closest Maryland higher-education officials have come to answering questions about the sudden departure last month by the leader of the nation's largest online-focused public university. Aldridge's decision to step down has drawn notice across the national higher-education community because neither she nor the university system has offered an explanation.

Baltimore MayorStephanie Rawlings-Blake's preliminary budget proposal for the next fiscal year displays some encouraging signs that, after three rocky years, city finances are stabilizing. Income tax revenues are ticking slightly upward in conjunction with an improved jobs picture in the city, and some of the mayor's controversial pension reform efforts are beginning to hold down costs. The plan calls for an end to employee furloughs and will result in few layoffs, if any. It even includes a small reduction in homeowners' property taxes.