Concept

NEW YORK - A new, posthumous story of science gone wrong is coming in November from the late Michael Crichton, with help by Richard Preston. Crichton, author of such blockbusters as Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain , died in 2008 having written one-third of Micro , a thriller about a biotech company in Hawaii and the graduate students who end up stranded and endangered in a rain forest. Preston, known for his best-selling nonfiction work about the Ebola virus, The Hot Zone , used Crichton's outline, reference materials, and notes to finish the book.

A friend reports having an epiphany of sorts on the Schuylkill Expressway not long ago. He was riding along, air-conditioner purring, his four-speaker car stereo tuned to an oldies station, when that Grand Old Hymn of the Sixties came on: For Me and Bobbie McGee. He and Janis Joplin belted out the chorus together with gusto: "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose . . . " But then, moments later, it hit him. Actually, freedom is not just another word for nothing left to lose.

The chances are that if you live in the counties surrounding Philadelphia, you are struggling with change. It's inevitable, for change has crept along on little cat feet for decades. If you didn't like what was happening in the city and suburbs, you moved farther out, into the country - that now rapidly vanishing country. "Go west, young man" doesn't work too well anymore. Rampant development appears where rolling fields once pleased the eye. Endless streams of cars clog not only the highways but the narrow, winding secondary roads as well.

It's no walk in the park, this Captain Kirk business. Beaming down from the Enterprise to 23d-century Earth - just think what that does to your molecules. Jet-packing through deepest space, with only a thin metal suit and a helmet protecting you from imploding into the nothingness - try that sometime. But for Chris Pine , who returns as James Tiberius Kirk, the maverick skipper of Star Fleet's storied ship in the sequel to J.J. Abrams' 2009 mega-successful reboot, the toughest task on Star Trek Into Darkness was just running.

After seeing children with and without disabilities play baseball on a rubber, wheelchair-friendly field in Sewell, Ed McDonnell began thinking that Camden County needed such a field of its own. "I really loved the idea," said the Camden County freeholder. "The real focus is to go beyond just having a place for disabled kids to play . . . to not just watch, but play with them. " McDonnell, the longtime chairman of the board of directors at the Larc School, a nonprofit special-education school in Bellmawr, has been talking about building the field for five years, he said.

Bernie Mason spent World War II moving Army tanks, sometimes picking them up and setting them down with his bare hands. He's not superhuman. And the tanks weren't some ultralight secret weapon. It was combat trickery. As a 21-year-old lieutenant, Mason helped lead a handpicked unit of artists and creative thinkers who deployed and arranged highly detailed, inflatable rubber tanks - and trucks, jeeps, and artillery - to fool the Germans into thinking the Americans had more firepower than they actually did or that the equipment was somewhere other than where it really was. Officially, the unit was the 23d Headquarters Special Troops.

Perhaps you're one of the 5,000 people who volunteered to clean up Germantown Avenue on Sunday as part of the Presidents' Summit for America's Future - and you're wondering what else you might be able to squeeze in between collecting trash, scrubbing graffiti and sweeping dirt. (Then again, maybe you're not a volunteer and your intention is to stay as far away from Germantown Avenue as possible until the dust settles and everybody goes back home.) You should know, if you don't already, that the Avenue is lined with scores of stores, shops and eateries that are as varied as the neighborhoods it runs through.

TOKYO - Tokyo is known for being densely populated and crowded. Living space is at a premium; hotel rooms are small or expensive or both. Enter the capsule hotel, where a tubelike pod barely bigger than a coffin offers a bed for the night at low cost. The capsule concept has been around for at least 30 years, starting out as lodging for businessmen working or partying late who missed the last train home and needed a cheap place to crash. And judging from the dark suits and ties of the patrons entering and exiting the Capsule & Sauna Century Shibuya in Tokyo, the cramped beds remain largely a businessman's special.

Philadelphia didn't need Bicycling magazine to confirm that it is one of America's best biking cities (No. 17 on its 2012 list). You can see it every day on the streets: The steady stream of commuters sluicing down Center City's bike lanes. The tangle of bikes hitched to U-shaped racks and bike corrals. (More, please.) The proliferation of neighborhood bike shops. Philadelphia probably could have ranked higher in the magazine's esteem if it had a bike-sharing program, like most of the list's top 20 cities.

Ralph C. Reedman Jr., whose used-car business in Langhorne mushroomed over five decades into one of the largest and most innovative new automobile dealerships in the country, died Thursday at St. Mary Hospital in Middletown, Bucks County. "He was a legend and innovator in this business," said Bob Ebert, who worked with Mr. Reedman for 39 years and now is the firm's operation manager. Mr. Reedman began operating the mall concept of selling cars - several showrooms in close proximity - decades before it was successfully imitated by others.