Proof

The best things about Dick Francis' books are their familiarity - and their surprises. Consider his latest in paperback, Proof (Fawcett, $4.50.) You figure that there's going to be something about horses and/or horse racing. And you wonder what the surprise will be. The title is a clue (if you're a writer, you'll guess wrong; a drinker, right). The cover spells it out: a bunch of grapes with an automatic lying in the midst of them. Wine seller Tony Beach - well, he sells other spirits as well and even soft drinks - is asked to cater a posh affair for race-horse trainer Jack Hawthorn.

The U.S. Mint has begun accepting mail orders for its 1993 silver proof sets and the Benjamin Franklin Firefighters silver medallion. The silver proof set includes a dime, quarter and half dollar struck in .900 fine silver. It will sell for $18 and be delivered in black packaging. After Sept. 1, the price will go up to $21. The medallion celebrates Franklin as the founder of the first fire company in Philadelphia, and honors firefighters everywhere. It will be available in proof at $33 and in uncirculated condition at $29. After Sept.

Most experts believe movies do not cause violence, but "Proof of Life" could be an exception. I fear that after seeing it, many women will arrange for their husbands to be kidnapped, on the off chance that an insurance company will send a live-in companion and rescue guy who will turn out to be Russell Crowe. This is the fantasy premise of "Proof of Life," and it has considerable appeal, thanks to Crowe's growing popularity as an actor and star. Crowe became a marquee commodity earlier this year with "Gladiator," a movie in which he had to appear with digital lions because the real lions were reportedly afraid to go near him. He's surly, threatening, he's thickly built, he looks like he might smell bad, and yet he's still somehow handsome - all of which sets him apart from dainty boy stars like Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise.

The Badlands doesn't look quite so bad now. Yesterday, under a tent in a manicured courtyard off a busy barrio corner, the Hispanic Association of Contractors and Enterprises (HACE) showed off its biggest achievement yet. Villas Del Caribe is the largest Latino housing development in North Philadelphia. Eighty-one three- and four-bedroom town houses were built on a lot that had stood vacant for 20 years at Allegheny Avenue and Mascher Street. The project took 13 years, and help from the state, city and others.

Proof is a play I enjoy more while I'm watching it than afterward, when I'm thinking about it. I felt that way when I saw the Broadway tour of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama in Philadelphia earlier this year and, even though the plot and characters were familiar, I reacted pretty much the same way to the very sound production now at the Delaware Theatre Company. The principal character of David Auburn's play is Catherine, the 25-year-old daughter of a once-brilliant mathematician at the University of Chicago.

The University of Memphis said it should keep the victories from the 2007-08 season that ended in the national title game after an internal investigation turned up no proof that a former men's basketball player cheated on his SAT exam. A report detailing the school's investigation into NCAA allegations, released to news outlets yesterday under a public-records request, details Memphis' internal probe into accusations that a former player allowed a stand-in to take his SAT. The report also looked into charges of grade-tampering on behalf of the player.

You don't have to drink General Lee 100 proof whiskey to know that it probably does not spend a lot of time gathering dust on the top shelf. You can tell by the name that, if a pint of The General won't make you surrender your sword, nothing will. By the same token, there is a time and a place for everything. A time for 25-year-old, single-grain whiskey, and a time for old General Lee. So, fans of General Lee 100 proof whiskey, White Tiger wine and Zapata White Tequila, rejoice: Kasser Distillers Products Corp.

David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Proof has found a perfect venue in the intimate Independence Studio on 3 at the Walnut Street Theatre. This luminous production, directed by Kate Galvin, invites you onto the porch and into the lives of four interesting people. Unlike so many characters in contemporary plays, these interesting people are all kind and all smart - mathematical-wizard smart; nobody is cruel or snide or selfish or violent. Makes a nice change. Another nice change is how coherent and moving the script itself seemed to me in this production.

Educators who worry that there aren't enough women in math and science, take comfort that in Proof and Flightplan, both opening today, Gwyneth Paltrow is a mathematician and Jodie Foster an engineer. Like A Beautiful Mind, whose real-life subject may have influenced it, Proof suggests the proximity of math and insanity, subset of the one between genius and madness. Adapted from David Auburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Auburn and Rebecca Miller, the movie unfolds in the Chicago home of Robert (Anthony Hopkins)

The first draft of the new constitution apparently has been written and sent by the Federal Convention's Committee of Detail to the firm of Dunlap & Claypoole for a limited and top-secret printing. A long document in the lacy, slanting handwriting of committee member James Wilson of Pennsylvania is believed to have been delivered yesterday under strict security to Dunlap & Claypoole, the printers of the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser. The printers, at Second and Market Streets, across from the main market sheds, would be the logical place for the convention's work.

YOKOHAMA, Japan - Toshiba Corp. has developed a robot it says can withstand high radiation to work in nuclear disasters, but it's not clear what the robot would be able to do if and when it got the go-ahead to enter Japan's crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. The four-legged robot can climb over debris and venture into radiated areas off-limits to humans. One significant innovation, Toshiba said, is that its wireless network can be controlled in high radiation, automatically seeking better transmission when reception becomes weak.

Virginia Cleary never gave up. In the 43 years since her older brother, Marine Cpl. Robert Daniel Corriveau, a decorated Vietnam veteran, went missing from the Philadelphia Naval Hospital and was declared a deserter, she never stopped searching for him. She wrote countless letters, pestered senators and congressmen, traveled from her New Hampshire home to Philadelphia to search news archives, scoured faces in crowds, battled with military and...

SO DOES A TV SHOW that's filmed entirely in Philly look different from one that only pretends it's here? We won't be able to see how we look in our latest closeup until NBC's "Do No Harm" premieres in early 2013. Until then, there's always "Hack," the 2002-04 drama starring Philadelphian David Morse and Andre Braugher ("Last Resort"). Its 40 episodes are now available for streaming on Netflix. Also on Netflix (as well as on Amazon Instant Video): Steven Bochco's "Philly," a legal drama starring Roxborough's Kim Delaney that mostly filmed in southern California, on a set with surprisingly realistic City Hall interiors, including one of its massive staircases.

The first are the last and the last are the first in the AFC East, or AFC Least, if you prefer. The Jets, Patriots, Dolphins, and Bills are all 3-3, a rare logjam this far into the season that has coaches and players unsure if they should be happy or concerned. "It's good news, bad news," Jets coach Rex Ryan said. "Let's face it, we're tied for first in our division, so that's great. We're also tied for last. It's a little depressing. " Since the NFL merger in 1970, this marks only the fourth time every team in a division has the same record after Week 6 or later, and first since the AFC East was knotted up at 5-5 after Week 10 in 1987, according to Stats L.L.C.

The nation's professional sports leagues may have to dig deep to come up with proof of their opposition to sports betting through the years. Major League Baseball, the NFL, NHL, and NBA, along with the NCAA, are suing New Jersey to try to block the state from offering legalized sports betting in defiance of a federal ban. But court filings show that as part of that lawsuit, the leagues may have to turn over 10 years' worth of documents regarding...

IF MAYOR NUTTER needed proof to back up his claims that Philadelphia could use more federal infrastructure dollars, he got it Sunday when a 100-year-old water main erupted in Southwest Center City, sending rivers of water gushing through the streets, forcing a massive evacuation and flooding many homes. "This is a little bit of a larger story. When we talk about infrastructure … it's all the stuff you don't see," Nutter said Monday, standing just feet from the gaping hole at 21st and Bainbridge streets.

It was shocking enough to hear this week that median American family wealth in 2010 had plunged to 1992 levels. But imagine this equally alarming detail that didn't get headlines: Generation Xers — those who hit the workforce in the late 1980s and early 1990s — got more scorched than any other group. Before laying out the ugly numbers, let's think about what this portends for anyone who ascribes to America's promise that kids can do better than their parents: If Gen X is failing, we all should be worried.

THE PHILADELPHIA Parking Authority is spotlighted in an A&E cable TV show titled "Parking Wars. " If A&E were to do one on the Philadelphia Police Department, I suggest the title "Fireproof. " Just what do you have to do to get yourself fired, if you're a Philadelphia cop? Just how bad to the bone must you be? The latest awful example is Officer Michael Paige, 45, driving a patrol car marked with the words "Honor, Service, Integrity" — the Philly cops motto — but his honor is besmirched, his service suspect, his integrity questioned.

Joseph Alsop and his brother, Stewart, were kingpins of the opinion pages after World War II, when syndicated columnists meant fear and respect in an era before the Internet empowered everyone to be a publisher. David Auburn's new historical drama "The Columnist" illuminates the different sides of Joseph Alsop, who went on to write the column alone _ and in about 200 newspapers — after Stewart became a reporter for The Saturday Evening Post. In "The Columnist," which packs a tidy punch in a down-to-earth telling, Alsop is a mercurial know-it-all who was a curmudgeon long before he reached the age when such crankiness is tolerable, if not excusable.

WASHINGTON - President Obama is embracing an unlikely group of political icons as he tries to paint Mitt Romney as extreme: He's praising Republican presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. The Democratic president typically offers up GOP leaders of the past as evidence of how both parties can work together in Washington to pursue big ideas and rebuild the economy. With Election Day seven months away, Obama hopes to persuade voters that he, like his Republican predecessors, is a reasonable moderate.