Extreme

Amid a rebirth of conservative activism that could help Republicans win elections next year, some party insiders now fear that extreme rhetoric and conspiracy theories coming from the angry reaches of the conservative base are undermining the GOP's broader credibility and casting it as the party of the paranoid. Such insiders point to theories running rampant on the Internet, such as the idea that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is thus ineligible to be president, or that he is a communist, or that his allies want to set up Nazi-like detention camps for political opponents.

I'm nothing if not a futurist, so as we explore here the nuances of postmodern parenting, we look ahead to what kind of parents our own offspring will one day be: well-meaning pushovers or total tyrants? "I'm going to be such a Nazi," the daughter of a co-worker announces. "I'm going to be the perfect compromise of the two," predicts my older daughter, lovely and patient and - at 30 - eager to start a family of her own. Not even a mother yet, and you can spot my daughter's maternal instincts starting to kick in, softening her feisty, bossy-pants exterior.

Preparing for the big match in London, an English soccer fan runs down his mental check list. Ticket? Check. Supporter's scarf? Check. Toothbrush? What, did you even have to ask? An unnamed Chelsea fan has achieved YouTube fame by standing behind the Chelsea bench and brushing his teeth while the team was preparing to send in a substitute during its 1-0 victory over Manchester United. The fan, taking dental hygiene to an extreme that was previously unimaginable, can be seen in a blue top and dark sunglasses while chewing on a white toothbrush.

Come grilling season, expect your sirloin steak to come with a hearty side of sticker shock. Beef prices have reached all-time highs in the U.S. and aren't expected to come down any time soon. Extreme weather has thinned the nation's beef cattle herds to levels last seen in 1951, when there were about half as many mouths to feed in America. "We've seen strong prices before but nothing this extreme," said Dennis Smith, a commodities broker for Archer Financial Services in Chicago.

The idea of a woman giving out a bogus "loser's" phone number instead of her own is an old one ("Hey, Loser, Got a Message for You," Sept. 9). Some years ago I met an attractive young woman and asked for her number. She gleefully gave it to me. I phoned the very next day, only to hear a taped recording: "Thank you for calling the Los Angeles Zoo.... " My only solace was a good laugh because, even though the joke was on me, it was truly funny. Unfortunately, Jeff Goldblatt's "loser's" phone number is lean on humor and mean to the extreme.

Re "Tiny Congregation Weathering Zoning Battle," Dec. 31: Government is always imposing laws upon private citizens and organizations while conveniently exempting itself from such requirements. Extreme zoning laws make housing far more expensive than it should be. When Los Angeles wanted to reduce the number of people sleeping under bridges and inside cardboard boxes, it provided fiberglass domes and waived zoning laws. What is needed is more integrity and reality in government at all levels.

"Whitewater Roulette" (April 27) was media sensationalism cleverly cloaked in an analysis of psychological decision-making. Millions enjoy kayaking without playing roulette on extreme whitewater. The river section highlighted is the most extreme level of difficulty. Most river trips are on vastly safer and easier sections of whitewater. Matt Bare Two Harbors

Gail Buckley complains that "(Steven) Corbin's three black male characters are lamentable in the extreme. Two are more or less homosexual. . . ." This shockingly homo-phobic statement is an example of a biased and ignorant kind of thinking that is itself much more "lamentable in the extreme" than the sexual orientation of any person, whether fictional or not. SIBYL MARSHALL LOS ANGELES

It seems to me that President Bush is demonstrating exceptional leadership by refusing to sign a blank check that "could obligate the United States and other wealthy nations to provide unlimited financial support to help poor countries preserve endangered habitat." By signing such a treaty, he would be pacifying the extreme environmentalists at the expense of the great majority of American people. A strong leader does not bow to the squeaking wheel but has the stamina to oppose radical ideas coming from the extreme right or the extreme left.

Re "Canada Shifts to Right in Election," Jan. 24 You state that Stephen Harper was elected Canadian prime minister despite concerns that some of his social views are extreme. In fact, he was elected because the opposition has been pushing extreme left positions for years, and that finally resulted in Canadians being fed up. Anything short of full acceptance of the traditional definition of marriage being changed to include gays and other options is considered extreme. Any view that doesn't embrace abortion as morally just is considered extreme.

Fifteen months ago, as the nation recoiled in horror from the massacre of 20 children and six adults by a mentally ill man armed with three semiautomatic weapons, there were firm proclamations that this time would be different. The violence at that Newtown, Conn., elementary school, it was said, would finally lead the nation to come together and embrace some reasonable gun control laws. Well, that didn't last long. If anything, the national gun frenzy, fueled by the irresponsible lobbyists at the National Rifle Assn., has intensified.

WASHINGTON - In recent years, the National Rifle Assn. has stepped into fights over judicial nominees it views as weak on 2nd Amendment rights, but its decision to oppose a surgeon general nominee takes the powerful lobby into new territory, expanding its campaign to a post that has no direct power to regulate guns. President Obama's nominee, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, a Massachusetts internist and former emergency room doctor, has called for more stringent gun laws. But he also testified at his Senate confirmation hearing last month that he would not use the surgeon general's office as a bully pulpit to push for them.

Clostridium difficile is a dangerous infection that, as its name implies, is not always easy to treat successfully with antibiotics. In many cases, the infection is actually triggered by antibiotic use during hospitalization; the medications kill beneficial bacteria that keep C. difficile in check. Now, some doctors are treating the infection with a procedure called fecal transplant, an unappealing but extremely effective approach that involves transferring filtered stool from a healthy donor to a patient afflicted with the disease, to reintroduce the helpful gut bacteria.

Southern California home building is stuck at historic lows, one of many factors conspiring against middle-class buyers in a recovery marked by high prices and low supply. Despite explosive price gains last year, builders and their Wall Street financiers remain hesitant to make big bets on the rebound. The slow construction is among many hurdles facing buyers seeking affordable homes. Cash-rich investors - many of them buying homes to rent out, rather than resell - have eaten into supply, especially at the lower end of the market.

The number of far-right militias, extremist patriot groups and hate organizations in the U.S. dropped last year for the first time since 1999, but the organizations are becoming "leaner and meaner," the Southern Poverty Law Center reported Tuesday. The center attributed the drop to, among other factors, an improving economy and a gridlocked Congress that made little progress on flash point issues like gun control and immigration.  The absorption of some radical-right ideas into mainstream legislative proposals also helped cut down on the number of far-right groups operating in the U.S. to about 2,035 in 2013, the civil-rights advocacy group said . That's down 14% from 2,367 in 2012.

SOCHI, Russia - What will be the secret to future Olympic success for the extreme-sports crowd? That's easy. Just keep adding new events and the medal count for U.S. snowboarders and freestyle skiers will probably stay at a high level. Setbacks in Sochi were offset by the new kids on the slopestyle rail and freeski halfpipe. There were opportunities for eight more gold medals that were not there in Vancouver in 2010. FRAMEWORK: Best images from Sochi And the United States took terrific advantage of the expanded program.

I recently read that Gregory Peck will be the grand marshal in the Rose Bowl parade next year. Does that mean that all the floats will be tilting to the extreme left? THOMAS JEBB Camarillo

Having spawned numerous successful screenwriters while teaching his UCLA screenwriting class, teaching those who wrote "Con Air," "Face/Off," "Batman & Robin" and "Jurassic Park," Lew Hunter advised his students to "be extreme" ("Blood, Guts and a Typewriter," by Ernesto Lechner, May 30). OK. Speaking for all of the struggling screenwriters in L.A. who actually believe that character development, dialogue, structure, subtlety and a damn good story really do matter, may I say with all due sincerity, however extreme--farewell, Lew Hunter; you've left behind a legacy of bombast and bluster, mentoring a generation of mediocrity, not genius.

SOCHI, Russia - Improvements were made to the much-maligned halfpipe at Rosa Khutor Extreme Park but not enough to satisfy the leading Olympic snowboarders. The high-profile extreme sports stars had extreme reactions after a practice session scheduled for earlier in the day was moved to Monday night with the hope that conditions would improve. Sloppy snow and edgy riders were not an ideal combination. The men's event starts Tuesday and the women's on Wednesday. FRAMEWORK: Best images from the Sochi Olympics Two-time gold-medal winner Shaun White said that he had a "frustrating" practice.

William S. Burroughs' "Naked Lunch" stands with Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" and Allen Ginsburg's "Howl" as the seminal texts of the Beat Generation. With its harrowing scenes of junkie depravity, its view of postwar America was the most extreme of all the Beats. Yet few American literary figures have enjoyed more second acts than Burroughs. He was spokesman for the countercultural movement in the '70s, begrudgingly bore the label Godfather of Punk in the '80s, and was a spoken-word performer and visual artist until his death in 1997.