Taking Risks

I don't have time for a full review, but I do want to alert viewers to the premiere tonight on HBO of director Martin Scorsese's "George Harrison: Living in the Material World. " This is one of the most ambitious and daring biographical films that I have ever seen on TV. I am not a big Beatles fan. And of the Beatles, Harrison was my least favorite. But Scorsese helped me understand, appreciate and ultimately care more than I expected to for Harrison and the challenging journey the guitarist chose to make of his life.

Five-year contracts stink.Give a position player five years, and you proceed at your own risk. Give a pitcher five years, and you'll probably get what you deserve.That said, Scott Erickson's five-year, $32 million contract extension is not as outlandish as it might seem.In fact, it could prove a bargain if Erickson stays healthy -- not an unreasonable expectation for a pitcher who has avoided the disabled list since 1994.Erickson, 30, is a workout fiend, a nutrition freak, a 200-inning horse with a .618 winning percentage since joining the Orioles nearly three years ago.If ever a pitcher merited a five-year risk, he's the guy.His new $6.4 million average salary is even less in present-day value when you factor in the $1 million deferred each season.

So many folks in my generation (Gen Y) are going out on their own after college or after short stints in corporate America. Instead of thinking about how to get along with the boss, they're becoming their own boss, tackling all sorts of issues associated with running a business. So it's not entirely surprising that colleges and universities are seeing the entrepreneurial ambitions of their students and trying to help. I spent a lot of time reporting on the increase of entrepreneurship education, including in Maryland where many colleges and universities are offering courses and activities and expanding other opportunities, such as providing internships at startup companies and providing seed money for new businesses.

WOONSOCKET, R.I. -- During a reprieve from the escalating battle over the pharmacy benefits provider Caremark Rx Inc., CVS chief executive Tom Ryan was keeping his cool. Leaning back in his chair at the company's headquarters, Ryan insisted he was confident that CVS Corp. would fend off a higher, unsolicited bid from rival Express Scripts Inc. for Caremark. The company's board had just reaffirmed its commitment to the CVS deal, hatched over dinner at the University Club in Providence, R.I., in 2005, to create a drug distribution powerhouse.

Edward B. Hutton Jr. wends his way through a gray maze of office partitions, turns into a hallway and strolls straight into an ambush.An enthusiastic subordinate blocks his path to breathlessly deliver some news: A business associate of Mr. Hutton's has phoned with a hot idea for a joint publishing venture on aging and Alzheimers.Welcome to the world of Waverly Inc.A Baltimore-based, closely held firm that maintains a low local profile, Waverly has a lofty reputation in the field of medical and scientific publishing and printing.

The current resolution of The Favre Dilemma (soon to be made into a major motion picture) - that Favre will not play for the Packers ever again - creates still another dynamic that will seek its own resolution. And that dynamic is this: The fates of Packers coach Mike McCarthy and general manager Ted Thompson will hang by the thread that is Aaron Rodgers' right arm. Regardless of what they say, the actions of McCarthy and Thompson indicate they made a deliberate and irrevocable decision that Rodgers was going to be the team's starting quarterback.

When a man loses money in the stock market, says Olivia Mellan, he tends to shrug it off to bad luck or bad advice and figures he'll make it back.When a woman loses, says Ms. Mellan, a Washington, D.C., psychotherapist and financial author, she blames herself and is apt to have nightmares about losing everything."

The conflict between Gov. Martin O'Malley and Constellation Energy Group over the $4.5 billion sale of half its nuclear assets to Electricit? de France ratcheted up a notch this week with the filing of a legal brief calling on the Maryland Public Service Commission to force the company to make all the concessions the governor has been seeking in private talks for months. That isn't how the PSC will necessarily see things - one hopes the agency remains the independent regulatory body it's supposed to be - but there are some troubling aspects to the administration's effort that look no better when viewed on the printed page.

From Rosemont Elementary School's perch at the end of Dukeland Street in West Baltimore, the tallest structure on the urban skyline is the high-rise classroom building at nearby Coppin State College.That seems appropriate. Coppin, in assuming management of Rosemont last fall, has become the first college in Maryland to run an off-campus public school."It's a tremendous risk," said Calvin W. Burnett, the Coppin president who was taking one of his daily walks through the neighborhood last year when he decided to help Rosemont.

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- His presidential candidacy at stake, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton went on national television last night to deny that he had an affair with a woman who claims they did."That allegation is false," Mr. Clinton said on CBS' "60 Minutes."Mr. Clinton appeared tense as he repeatedly refused to say whether he had ever had an extramarital affair. He and his wife, Hillary, acknowledged problems in their 16-year marriage but refused to specify them, drawing a line of privacy around their personal lives and criticizing the news media for intruding.