Babylon

I read with interest Michael Ross' article on Babylon (Jan. 16). Ross refers to the "bad reviews" that Babylon receives in the Bible, and cites the Iraqi musician, Munir Bashir, as referring to the biblical critiques of Babylon as "unfair." On that point I wish to set the record straight. The quotations in the article from the book of Revelation in the New Testament (Rev. 17:5; 18:21-22) speak of "Babylon," but in fact "Babylon" is a code name for Rome. In Jewish apocalyptic literature of the period after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple by the Romans in 70, Rome is often equated symbolically with Babylon, whose forces destroyed the first temple in 586 BC. This parallelism lies behind such apocalypses as 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, and the name "Babylon" is used specifically to refer to Rome in the Sibylline Oracles V.143, as well as 4 Ezra 15:46 (books belonging to the so-called "Pseudepigrapha" of the Bible)

BABYLON VILLAGE, N.Y. -- The Sea Baby's stuck. The storm surge from Hurricane Sandy tossed the 25-foot fishing boat into a pile of 40 boats at the Suffolk Marine Center on Sumpwams Creek, a slender finger of water that reaches into Long Island from the Atlantic Ocean. Jimmy Luttieri, the manager of the marina, and a crew of eight volunteers and stragglers are trying to hoist the Sea Baby out of the pile. This is what the cleanup looks like on the southern shore of Long Island.

A delayed-action charge lurks beneath the free-form flow of Jeff Key's "The Eyes of Babylon," and its reach is acute. By placing his account of being a gay Marine in Iraq and its aftereffects in the guise of confessional performance art, writer-performer Key disarms our defenses with considerable humor and lingering punch. Brick Williamson's bare set at Tamarind Theatre, twin drapes behind three simple cubes, suggests scores of Highways outings over the years.

Starz continues to expand its genre cred with two new series the cable network announced for development. The first is a science fiction action thriller from "Spartacus" creator Steven S. DeKnight and the other is a gothic horror thriller from "Babylon 5" creator J. Michael Stracynski. "Incursion," the series from DeKnight, is set in the middle of an intergalactic battle between humans and an alien race. Each season follows a squad of soldiers on a different planet as they continue the war. According to Starz, the series is expected to feature "grittily realistic combat" and "darkly complex characters.

Starz continues to expand its genre cred with two new series the cable network announced for development. The first is a science fiction action thriller from "Spartacus" creator Steven S. DeKnight and the other is a gothic horror thriller from "Babylon 5" creator J. Michael Stracynski. "Incursion," the series from DeKnight, is set in the middle of an intergalactic battle between humans and an alien race. Each season follows a squad of soldiers on a different planet as they continue the war. According to Starz, the series is expected to feature "grittily realistic combat" and "darkly complex characters.

It seems to me that NBC's "On Thin Ice: The Tai Babilonia Story" (Nov. 5) would have been more aptly titled "Tai Babilonia: Babylon Too Soon." Oliver Berliner, Beverly Hills

Re "Sweeping view of the past," Dec. 14 I was saddened to read about Babylon and wondered how could the different governments of Iraq over the course of their existence been so ignorant and nonchalant in failing to preserve one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. I wish a powerful entity could be created to protect and restore historic sites in Third World countries before they are completely obliterated and fall into eternal oblivion. After all, the hanging gardens of Babylon do not belong to Iraq only -- they belong to the world.

Your paper has recently been addressing the issue of sex and violence on television. There has been, and still is, some quality programming on television--you just have to know where to look. When I wanted an interesting, thought-provoking program, I used to watch "Babylon 5." There, I could get a dose of interesting characters dealing with real-life issues (no matter the alienness of the space setting), while forming complex relationships. It was interesting, intelligent and never gratuitous in dealing with sex or violence.

Not a short story, not quite a novella ? wasn't that a Britney Spears song? ? the oxymoronic long short story is an underemployed literary form. (For argument's sake, let's say the long short story ranges from 30 to 60 pages.) F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (1922) is a perfect example of the length's virtues: the story, covering the whole of a character's life, is ample enough to be divided into chapters, yet the execution retains an antic swiftness that lofts the bizarre premise.

All these years later, Frances Kroll Ring can still see it, the afternoon she filled out an application at Rusty's Employment Agency on Hollywood Boulevard and drove to Encino to meet a writer who was looking for a secretary. It was April 1939, and she was 22, a Bronx transplant with typing and dictation skills. She'd been in Southern California for a little more than a year, coming west to help her father, a New York furrier, set up shop on Wilshire Boulevard. "Everybody said, 'You're a furrier?

Not a short story, not quite a novella ? wasn't that a Britney Spears song? ? the oxymoronic long short story is an underemployed literary form. (For argument's sake, let's say the long short story ranges from 30 to 60 pages.) F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (1922) is a perfect example of the length's virtues: the story, covering the whole of a character's life, is ample enough to be divided into chapters, yet the execution retains an antic swiftness that lofts the bizarre premise.

The subject of women's rights in the Middle East is contentious. Sensational media coverage of honor killings and child brides equates religious conservatism with gender inequality, incensing Western feminists on the one hand and provoking regional backlashes on the other. The reality is far more nuanced, according to the 2009 Global Gender Gap Report released in late October by the World Economic Forum, which ranks countries based on women's economic participation, educational attainment, health and political empowerment.

Guy Graham Babylon, 52, a Grammy Award-winning musician who played keyboards with Elton John's band for more than 20 years, died of arrhythmia Sept. 2 at Los Robles Hospital and Medical Center in Thousand Oaks. Babylon, an Agoura Hills resident who swam competitively during his youth in Baltimore, was stricken while swimming and later pronounced dead at the hospital. "I am devastated and heartbroken at the death of Guy Babylon," John wrote in a tribute on his website. "He was one of the most brilliant musicians I ever knew, a true genius, a gentle angel -- and I loved him so much."

Religious edicts are generally not fodder for beauty salon gossip, but as soon as Shiite cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Fadlallah issued a fatwa allowing women to pray wearing nail polish, word spread through Beirut faster than knockoff Prada bags. "All the girls in the Dahiyeh are talking about it," said 29-year-old Nadine Dirani, a veiled mother of two living in the Dahiyeh, Beirut's heavily Shiite southern suburbs. "I think it's an important step, and why not?" she said. "It makes our lives easier."

Pineapple Express Sony, $28.96/$34.95; Blu-ray, $39.95 The Judd Apatow comedy factory cranks out another wildly uneven but mostly enjoyable comedy with this shaggy-dog story about two potheads (played by the hilarious James Franco and the movie's co-writer, Seth Rogen) who inadvertently cross a local gangster and end up running for their lives.

Re "Sweeping view of the past," Dec. 14 I was saddened to read about Babylon and wondered how could the different governments of Iraq over the course of their existence been so ignorant and nonchalant in failing to preserve one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. I wish a powerful entity could be created to protect and restore historic sites in Third World countries before they are completely obliterated and fall into eternal oblivion. After all, the hanging gardens of Babylon do not belong to Iraq only -- they belong to the world.

One OF the most notorious crimes of Jazz Age Los Angeles began quietly enough with a lost boy. But the Walter Collins case would end up becoming the O.J. Simpson drama of its day, a horrifying crime that inspired a media frenzy and captivated the Southland. What started as the real-life tale of a missing child would eventually take on a much larger significance in the then-burgeoning city.

Up all night? Been chowing down on rare steaks? Trying to land a job at your local blood bank? If you answered yes to any of these queries, then you might possibly be a vampire. Or, at least, a vannabe. For starters, you're in the right place. The City of Angels is Vampireville to slightly more than 50 vampires, claims the VPR, or Vampire Research Center, in New York, another favorite haunt.

Catherine, a well-off widow who has kept her figure, hires Arturo, a sexy day laborer with a soulful stare, to clean up her overgrown garden. OK, everyone, you have two minutes to write in the rest of the plot. The only ground rules are that it can't cross the line into porn or use too many metaphors from the world of botany.

Demian Bichir refers to it as "the theater connection," and it sure can lead an actor to some intriguingly unexpected places. Like scaling the summit of the Mexican box office, staring into the mirror and seeing Fidel Castro or spanking Mary-Louise Parker, Bichir's partner in crime and, lately, passion on Showtime's "Weeds."