Spin

This week, the designers were brought to Spin, a ping pong social club owned by Susan Sarandon. The challenge is for each team (same teams) to design five looks for the employees of Spin. Three for female servers, one for a male server, and one for a ball boy (the poor guy who has to run around Spin and pick up stray balls). I'm gonna spoil it for you right now: YES, lots of balls jokes are made. No, none of them are particularly good. Dream Team is confident with Platinum Aussie saying "I'm a natural born leader" again.

I got quite a chuckle reading "Hogan's rolling office raises eyebrows" (Sept. 7) regarding Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Hogan's campaign bus. According to the Hogan campaign spokesman, Adam Dubitsky, the campaign pays Mr. Hogan $683.77 a month as "office rent" to use a newly-purchased bus, which is equal to what Mr. Hogan pays to fiance the bus. Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown's campaign called Mr. Hogan's bus a metaphor for the Republican's wealth....

I was shocked and deeply disappointed that The Sun would broadcast Republican propaganda in a front-page headline ("GOP: Sen. Dems greedy," Oct. 14). The GOP spin on budget negotiations belongs on the opinion pages, not on pages purportedly reporting the news. If I want to hear this type of faux news, I can easily tune into Fox. And I would feel the same way if the paper put a Democratic spin on a headline. Neil Jensen, Catonsville

For all the revolutionary technological change rocking media these days, the TMZ video of Ray Rice punching Janay Palmer in a casino elevator is a stark reminder of the enduring and awesome power of the image. The two punches Rice delivers to his then fiancee take up only about four seconds of actual video time, yet they instantly blew away more than seven months of speculation, spin, damage control and image building from high-priced attorneys, fellow players, sports-media sympathizers, the Ravens organization and the National Football League.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Even before debating vice-presidential nominees Al Gore and Jack Kemp had finished here the other night, a host of high-profile Democratic and Republican politicians and political operatives surged into the huge anteroom where a small army of reporters sat watching the end of the debate on television monitors.Those who were writing against deadline stayed at their computers, keeping one eye on the television screens as they pounded away at their keyboards. Others, however, scrambled to the front of the room for ''the spin'' -- the partisan wisdom being imparted to anyone who would listen about who ''won'' the debate and who ''lost,'' and why.What was going on was a long-practiced exercise in unabashed propagandizing by the ''spinners'' -- cabinet members, governors, senators, pollsters, media consultants and other varieties of political hucksters putting the debate in the best light for their favored candidate and casting doubts on the performance of the opponent.

I'm still holding my head after reading your scurrilous diatribe regarding historians' assessment of the presidency of George W. Bush ("Misoverestimating Bush," April 28). How can you write such words with a straight face? Whatever happened to "objective" journalism? Yet when it comes to President Barack Obama, do you even know the stimulus plan failed because of all the pork? Or the trillions of dollars Obamacare will cost? Did you hear that members of Congress are trying to exempt themselves and their aides?

Most radio-controlled aircraft are such serious affairs that no youngster under 14 is allowed to get near one, and certainly only a few youngsters under that age build them. Thanks to Spin Master Toys, children who may be prohibited from playing with more expensive, super-sophisticated RC aircraft can take the Air Hogs RC Sky Patrol helicopter ($100) out for a spin. And "spin" is a pretty accurate description because this baby has to spin to turn. Using a trigger-controlled RC remote, the user has precise control over power to the rotors but limited control over turns.

Human Genome Sciences Inc. said yesterday that it would spin off its CoGenesys division as an independent company that will focus on the early development of the Rockville biotech's gene-based research and leave the commercialization of later-stage products already in clinical development to the parent company. Human Genome plans to lend CoGenesys $10 million as startup money, but the move to create two companies is still contingent on CoGenesys finding investors and partners to fund the new company by May 31. Craig A. Rosen, Human Genome's president and chief scientific officer, will become CoGenesys' executive chairman and chief scientific officer.

Keeping the washing machine happy is my responsibility.I care about its innards and its outards. Lately I've even had flashes of interest in its product, clean clothes. My curiosity in the clean-clothes area has been confined to strategic theories of fighting lint.I was recently introduced to the concept of classifying laundry either as "lint giving" or "lint receiving." These two groups must be kept apart.This concept has given me a whole new way of viewing the world. And it keeps me amused in my many idle moments.

Do you play "spin" nutrition?Did you panic when your produce department ran short of broccoli for a few days?Have you suddenly switched to red wine?Were you first in line for oat bran?Spin nutrition happens when nutrition science is reported with a RTC "consumer-y spin" that turns it into a magic cure.Don't get me wrong. It's about time we put some science behind nutritional recommendations.But context is crucial.There is no single food that can make up for a lifetime of continuing dietary indiscretion.

The headline on the news release out of Maryland's Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation yesterday sounded pretty great: "Private Sector Gains 18,700 Jobs Over-the-Year. " Read the body of the release, though, and you'll discover the actual news was not so great. In July, it says, Maryland actually lost 9,000 jobs, one of the worst performances in the nation and a distinct outlier in a month when 36 states and Washington, D.C., gained jobs. Not that the agency was dwelling on that.

As is inevitable in an election debate, the Democratic candidates for Maryland governor stated as facts some things that, to put it kindly, could use a bit more context. We'll parse three of them for you. Brown on the health exchange After being blamed by Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler for the failure of Maryland's health insurance exchange website, Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown accepted that he, along with everyone else associated with it, was responsible. He went on to say, "Nobody was more frustrated than me, and that's why I took the action I did. I reorganized the leadership at the exchange; the executive director left.

Unfortunately your browser does not support IFrames. Five years ago, I knew exactly how I felt about the tabloid website TMZ. It sometimes paid for news, and that put it outside the realm of trustworthy journalism. End of story. But last week, with TMZ posting video of Ravens running back Ray Rice dragging his apparently unconscious fiancee off an elevator at the Revel Casino in Atlantic City, I realized my attitude has been changing. Or maybe, as President Barack Obama says of his view on same-sex marriage, I should say it's evolved.

Chuck Foreman, meet Earl "The Pearl" Monroe. That's the how-de-do that Foreman, a former NFL star running back, wants to hear. "It would be a joy to run into Earl some day," he said. Foreman, who's from Frederick, played seven years with the Minnesota Vikings and led them to three Super Bowl appearances in the 1970s with mercurial moves that he borrowed from Monroe, a basketball Hall of Famer. "I grew up watching him play for the [Baltimore] Bullets," said Foreman, 63. "The Pearl could spin down the court, and the energy he brought to the game was unbelievable.

When a large company has to deal with events that might cast it in a negative light - outsourcing of jobs, embezzlement or bankruptcy to name a few - it's not uncommon for a public relations campaign to be mounted to minimize the damage to its image. Nor is it unusual for such "crisis" communications to extend to the Internet and for messages to be posted on talk boards, comment sections or blogs to help shape the public's view. And yet it's difficult not to feel a twinge of disappointment at the news that the University of Maryland was engaged in just such an effort to minimize the public hostility that school officials knew would accompany their decision one year ago to join the Big Ten Conference.

Since we're on the cusp of Halloween, better beware of the possible return of the dreaded snallygaster, which has periodically been scaring the dickens out of Marylanders since the mid-1700s. The what? The snallygaster is a half-bird, half-reptile creature that swoops down from the clouds searching for its prey of small game, farm animals, inattentive pets and even young children. I turned to Ed Okonowicz, the Elkton author who has written more than 20 books chronicling the ghosts, monsters, apparitions and other weird goings-on that have raised the hair on the backs of the necks of Marylanders and Delawareans since Colonial times.

Black & Decker Corp. plans to spin off PRC, its Virginia-based information systems and services business, in a public stock offering, the company said today. That move, combined with the planned sale of an additional 18 million shares of Black & Decker stock, would net from $331 million to $363 million, it said.Towson-based Black & Decker said it would use the money to reduce debt.Black & Decker acquired PRC, which is based in McLean, Va., as part of the 1989 takeover of Connecticut-based Emhart Corp.

AS A YOUNG and enthusiastic voter, I have listened intently to both political parties have told me that for myself and other young voters, this is the most important election in our history. But in my brief term as a politically conscious citizen, it seems that for all the talk of importance, this election has been so poorly covered and inadequately presented by the media that its relevance is veiled by a lack of substance. This election will not be remembered as the passionate struggle between two sharply different plans for America.

I was shocked and deeply disappointed that The Sun would broadcast Republican propaganda in a front-page headline ("GOP: Sen. Dems greedy," Oct. 14). The GOP spin on budget negotiations belongs on the opinion pages, not on pages purportedly reporting the news. If I want to hear this type of faux news, I can easily tune into Fox. And I would feel the same way if the paper put a Democratic spin on a headline. Neil Jensen, Catonsville

I have been writing a lot about Al Jazeera since the Qatar-based news operation bought Al Gore's wreck of a channel in January to gain access to some 50 million U.S. homes. When the purchase was made, I'm the guy who wrote: "Why Al Jazeera's purchase of Current TV is a good thing for media, country. " And before you start saying crazy, uninformed stuff about Al Jazeera and terrorism, read this piece: "Of course, Al Jazeera has a bias, but it's not what you might think.