Trial And Error

Some climate researchers say the Earth is getting hotter, and others say that's only a mirage. Some experts advise women to have mammograms at age 40, and others say don't bother. The late Nobel Prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling said vitamin C prevents colds, but the American Medical Association said it doesn't. No wonder people are confused. What seem like retreats or reversals are in fact an essential part of the scientific method. From astronomy to zoology, researchers grope along zigzag trails through unexplored territories.

Tonight, CBS premieres two new sitcoms: Trial and Error (Ch. 10, 8 p.m.) and Coming of Age (Ch. 10, 9 p.m.). Trial and Error is another variation on The Odd Couple. In this case, lawyer John Hernandez (Eddie Velez) is roommate to T-shirt salesman Tony Rivera (Paul Rodriguez). What they have in common is that they're childhood buddies, raised in the same Latino neighborhood in Los Angeles. In tonight's introductory episode, Hernandez joins a prestigious law firm, only to learn that the primary reason he was hired was to fill the company's minority-hiring quota.

It's got a buffoon in a suit and funny shoes representing the defense. It's got a small-town judge who's practically venting steam from his ears at the affront to justice happening in his court. And it even has director Jonathan Lynn, but no, this isn't My Cousin Vinny. It's Trial and Error, in which a bumbling, out-of-work actor (Michael Richards) takes over for his temporarily incapacitated corporate-lawyer pal (Jeff Daniels) in a case that should have been a cinch - and turns it into a fiasco.

Nancy Putnam Howard, 72, a noted horticulturist and a past director of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, died Thursday after a long illness. Formerly of Wayne, she had lived for the past year in Beaumont at Bryn Mawr, a retirement home. "For the last 25 years or so, gardening and herbs were really her only outside interest," said her husband, Walter. "She was fascinated by herbs and wanted to promote knowledge of them. That's how she spent her spare time. " A life member of the Herb Society of America, she was honored by that group in 1986 when an annual award for horticultural achievement was given in her name.

ALL WEEK LONG, Charlie Manuel answered the same question about his Game 3 starter the same way. "We don't know yet," he said on Tuesday, and again on Wednesday and again yesterday. For the first time, I believe him. I don't know if J.A. Happ's knee will be all right in time. Neither does Charlie. I don't know if Joe Blanton threw too many pitches yesterday. Neither does Charlie. I don't know whether Pedro Martinez has been off too long to throw the 90 to 100 pitches that Manuel said yesterday he could throw, if needed.

A DJ gave it to me," Monica Peters said with a laugh as she explained her "Mama Wit Da Drama" moniker. "It was kind of fitting for my personality - how I handle some issues. " Quite a stretch for listeners who know Mama as the little-girl voice that rescues them every Sunday from commercial-radio overkill with her "Cool Like Dat" show on WKDU-FM (91.7) from 3 to 6 p.m. Saturday, though, Mama will take a reprieve from the acid jazz, hip-hop and soul format to host the live segment at the Orange Moon party at Transit - a fitting appointment since she is also a performance poet.

Lewis Haupt Conarroe, 88, a former advertising executive and author who later made a living calling square dances and sing-alongs at dude ranches, died Sept. 3 at Chandler Hall Hospice in Newtown, Bucks County. Mr. Conarroe grew up in Philadelphia and graduated from Germantown High School. After graduation in 1929 from Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., he landed a job with N.W. Ayer & Son in Center City, then one of the largest advertising agencies in the world. "He had lots of talent," said Walter Weir, a longtime friend.

It was the rip-roaring Wall Street 1980s. Women were stuffing shoulder pads into power suits for a workforce on stock market steroids. The J. Geils Band was striking it rich with a more traditional spin: "Centerfold," a chart-topping ode to a classmate-turned-nude model. And in home-economics class, public school, Delaware County, Generation X was being prepared for the next two decades of boom-to-bust financial Darwinism by learning to make trail mix. I also learned to embroider purple thread onto the white felt teeth of a stuffed mouse with floppy ears.

Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show and an occasional film actor, didn't set his sights on comedy early on - even though he was voted the student with the best sense of humor at his high school in Lawrence, N.J. "There's a definite distinction between class clown and having the best sense of humor," Stewart said proudly. But even with that reputation, he went on to four years at William and Mary College in Virginia, where he majored in psychology. Then, he became a bartender.

When I moved to Philadelphia after living in Los Angeles for many years, I knew exactly what I'd miss most - my hairdresser. And for good reason: I have yet to find a replacement. I know how important a good haircut is; in a special category with shoes and bags, it's what separates the women from the girls. I finally may be closing in on a good salon, through a process of trial and error that has been painful, frustrating, and expensive. During my first and last visit to one fancy salon in Manayunk, I was told to head for the shampoo chair before even meeting the stylist.

Recent weeks have brought good news about the criminal-justice system in this country. Despite hard times and dire predictions to the contrary, crime continues to decline. And the Pew Center for the States reports that the prison population has actually shrunk for the first time in more than a generation. As is often the case, however, the closer one looks, the more complicated the picture becomes. Crime may be down in lots of places, but there are many urban, low-income neighborhoods that remain fundamentally unsafe.

ALL WEEK LONG, Charlie Manuel answered the same question about his Game 3 starter the same way. "We don't know yet," he said on Tuesday, and again on Wednesday and again yesterday. For the first time, I believe him. I don't know if J.A. Happ's knee will be all right in time. Neither does Charlie. I don't know if Joe Blanton threw too many pitches yesterday. Neither does Charlie. I don't know whether Pedro Martinez has been off too long to throw the 90 to 100 pitches that Manuel said yesterday he could throw, if needed.

It was the rip-roaring Wall Street 1980s. Women were stuffing shoulder pads into power suits for a workforce on stock market steroids. The J. Geils Band was striking it rich with a more traditional spin: "Centerfold," a chart-topping ode to a classmate-turned-nude model. And in home-economics class, public school, Delaware County, Generation X was being prepared for the next two decades of boom-to-bust financial Darwinism by learning to make trail mix. I also learned to embroider purple thread onto the white felt teeth of a stuffed mouse with floppy ears.

'In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police, who investigate crime, and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders. " Well, at least that's what the narrator says when Law & Order comes on TV. But what happens when the district attorneys don't prosecute? Well, you might get seven accused murderers being ordered freed from prison because Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham took too long to bring them to trial.

The nation risks executing the innocent with its flawed system of capital punishment. Not only that, it looks the other way on the terrible inequities in who faces the death penalty. Poor and minority murder defendants run a greater risk of landing on death row - in part, because they're often saddled with lawyers who can't mount a credible legal defense. That should be an affront to Americans' expectation of fairness. So how can the playing field be leveled, as long as the death penalty remains the law in 38 states and at the federal level?

A DJ gave it to me," Monica Peters said with a laugh as she explained her "Mama Wit Da Drama" moniker. "It was kind of fitting for my personality - how I handle some issues. " Quite a stretch for listeners who know Mama as the little-girl voice that rescues them every Sunday from commercial-radio overkill with her "Cool Like Dat" show on WKDU-FM (91.7) from 3 to 6 p.m. Saturday, though, Mama will take a reprieve from the acid jazz, hip-hop and soul format to host the live segment at the Orange Moon party at Transit - a fitting appointment since she is also a performance poet.

As president and chief executive officer of Delaware Valley Financial Services Inc., Lois E. Haber said she had come a long way since she was a timid 28-year-old trying to land the company's first deal. Haber, now 50, and chairman Andrew C. Alloway Jr., 58, founded the Berwyn firm in 1978 on a shoestring budget after the annuity company they worked for closed. Today, Delaware Valley Financial administers $12 billion in annuities and life insurance products for insurers such as New York Life Insurance Co. and Allianz Life Insurance Co. of North America.

Hope is what drew Jesse Gelsinger of Tucson to the University of Pennsylvania's Institute for Human Gene Therapy last fall to participate in a clinical trial of gene therapy on his 18th birthday, the very first day he was eligible. Gelsinger suffered from ornithine transcarbamylase (OTC) deficiency, a genetic liver ailment that causes ammonia to build up in the blood, resulting in coma and sometimes death. Traditional drug therapies haven't been successful for many genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis, hemophilia and various forms of cancer.

Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show and an occasional film actor, didn't set his sights on comedy early on - even though he was voted the student with the best sense of humor at his high school in Lawrence, N.J. "There's a definite distinction between class clown and having the best sense of humor," Stewart said proudly. But even with that reputation, he went on to four years at William and Mary College in Virginia, where he majored in psychology. Then, he became a bartender.

When I moved to Philadelphia after living in Los Angeles for many years, I knew exactly what I'd miss most - my hairdresser. And for good reason: I have yet to find a replacement. I know how important a good haircut is; in a special category with shoes and bags, it's what separates the women from the girls. I finally may be closing in on a good salon, through a process of trial and error that has been painful, frustrating, and expensive. During my first and last visit to one fancy salon in Manayunk, I was told to head for the shampoo chair before even meeting the stylist.