Guilt

Just because a federal judge dismissed all charges Tuesday against former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens doesn't mean he's not a crook.

On two separate occasions over the last nine years, Olen Steinhauer has brought a thriller series to a close. The first was the end of a five-novel series set in an unnamed Eastern European bloc nation. Focusing on a People's Militia homicide unit and stretching over a 40-year period, the historical sweep and breadth of those novels catapulted Steinhauer's work from the mystery to spy genre in a spectacular and satisfying manner - and created high expectations for the series that followed.

Dear Amy: When my husband and I divorced more than two years ago, I gave him nine months to move out of my house. He's still here. He claims that he has no money, and he doesn't. He gambled it all away in the stock market after our divorce. My ex-husband is rude. He belittles me and trashes me. He is manic-depressive. He wakes me at 3 a.m. to berate me about my shortcomings. He pays very little in living expenses; he just buys some groceries and pays the cable bill.

The night before New Orleans played at San Francisco in an NFL divisional playoff game in January, Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams gathered his players for a pep talk at the team hotel. In a 12-minute, obscenity-laced diatribe, Williams instructed them to injure specific 49ers, urging them to aim for the head of quarterback Alex Smith and the surgically repaired knee of Michael Crabtree, saying the star receiver "becomes human when you [expletive] take out that outside" ligament.

Staying motivated to lead a more healthful life can be difficult, what with fattening foods, television and laziness always tripping people up. But there may be another way to keep us on the right track: guilt. Used for centuries by parents to keep their children in line, researchers wondered how guilt would factor in to inspiring people to stick to a more wholesome lifestyle. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine surveyed 100 male and female cardiology outpatients on their feelings about guilt, which was defined as "a negative feeling linked to a particular action and is viewed as separate from the individual; in other words, someone can see themselves as a good person who has done a bad action.

The little girl who got away is 32 now, with two teenage sons. She likes to camp and fish with her family, and she helps her husband remodel their vintage house. But she rarely goes out alone, and she hates getting into her car after it's been parked outside overnight. She is haunted by guilt, dating from when she was 8 years old. On June 2, 1985, Opal Horton and her friend Melissa Ackerman were riding bicycles on a gravel road in Somonauk, Ill., when a man stepped out of a blue AMC Gremlin and asked for directions.

We have reached the zenith of absurdity in our society when four teenagers allegedly steal a van and crash it, killing one of them as they were being pursued by the police ("Youth Killed as Van Chased by Deputies Crashes," July 7). The article in The Times almost apologizes that the police had to get involved. Then the same article seems to give society a "guilt trip" that somehow it was our fault that the teenagers stole the van in the first place. To begin with, at this time of the night why weren't the teenagers at home?

She was quite a sight in her proper business attire, stuffing a pinball machine in the overhead luggage compartment. "It's for my son," she said weakly, as the flight attendant helped her cram the large toy into the small space. "He called me yesterday and said he really wanted one." For the flight attendant, the only variation on this theme was the object purchased by the anxious, absent parent. "You felt guilty because you were out of town," she said.

Re "Feeling Guilty Can Be Good" (May 2): I do not think instilling guilt does any good whatsoever, especially in the young. Occasionally I recall some piece of cruelty inflicted by me as a young immature person. I could wallow in guilt, but I don't. The past is past and I can not change it or atone for it by word magic. I simply recognize that I was certainly doing the best I could at that immature stage in dealing with the host of problems that confront youth and dismiss it from my mind as a natural event that happens to all sometimes.

So you didn't eat your vegetables yesterday and you really overdid it with the double-chocolate cake. Don't torture yourself with guilt. Just try to do better in the next few days. That recommendation comes from the American Heart Assn., which has issued reduced-guilt guidelines aimed at getting people to eat right over several days or a week, instead of obsessing over every day or every meal.

Prosecutors in the murder trial of former LAPD Det. Stephanie Lazarus made their closing argument Monday, and Lazarus' attorney delivered much of his, leaving jurors to mull over conflicting interpretations of testimony and evidence on which the detective's fate hinges. Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul Nunez led the jury steadily through what he called "the overwhelming evidence of guilt" against Lazarus, who is on trial in the 1986 beating and shooting death of Sherri Rasmussen, the wife of a man Lazarus had dated.

A former Rosemead city official who made a run for state Assembly has agreed to plead guilty to soliciting and accepting more than $10,000 in bribes from a developer. John Tran, 36, an El Monte Union High School District board member and former Rosemead mayor and councilman, admitted shaking down a developer who was trying to build a mixed-use office and residential project in Rosemead while he was on the council, according to a federal plea agreement made public Friday. The developer, who was not named in the court documents, had bought a vacant lot for $1.1 million and planned to build offices.

They are calling it the death that awakened the conscience of China. A 2-year-old girl crushed by two vans last week and then ignored by 18 passersby as she lay bleeding on the street died at 12:32 a.m. Friday of systematic organ failure at a hospital in the southern Guangdong province. By midday, there were 2 million condolence messages flooding the Internet for the girl, whose name was Wang Yue, or Yueyue for short. "Heaven's roads have no cars. Go in peace, little Yueyue," wrote one woman.

Emily Zaler's business card should probably read "mad scientist. " When the personal trainer is not putting clients through their paces up and down the famed Santa Monica stairs or working out herself, she's making a mess in her Los Angeles kitchen. There, she modifies recipes that are normally filled with unhealthy fat, sugar and carbs using her favorite secret ingredient: Whey protein powder. Her recipe catalog includes fudge, blueberry crepes, almond butter cookies, sweet potato muffins and more.

It's a medical device that looks like a baby harp seal, and someday it just might be your best friend. Which leads to some interesting questions. Like, Why would you want to hang out with a medical device? And, Is this a good idea? The device is called Paro. It's cute and cuddly, with soft white fur, big bright eyes and - awww! - a pacifier to suck on. Casual observers could easily mistake it for a typical stuffed animal toy. But Paro is no plaything. It's a robot specially designed to provide comfort and companionship to the elderly.

I ate deep-fried butter at the Orange County Fair. And I'm not apologizing for it. Let's face it -- going to a county fair is like getting a free pass to junk food land. All bets are off, and no one gives you the admonishing finger if you follow a platter-size funnel cake with a deep-fried Oreo chaser. In fact, while carrying around the deep-fried butter I was bestowed admiring glances from other fair-goers. You have to love a place that offers something called a "Coronary Combo" of deep-fried butter and chocolate covered bacon.

Allan Sloan's story on Michael Milken, Ivan F. Boesky and Victor Posner ("How Milken, Boesky and Posner Gutted a Once-Productive Company," July 4) shows how easily we fall into the pit of reinforcing inhumane and criminal behavior in the name of humanity. In this apparently objective and concerned article, Sloan mentions his previous friendliness with Milken and comments, "I still wish (him) well." Well, Sloan seems perfectly (and appropriately) willing to judge Milken's most recent slimy courtroom behavior, but, by innocuously wishing him "well," ignores his resolute willingness to avoid responsibility (except under duress, of course)

There I was. Relaxing pool-side. With the sun directly overhead and several solicitous waiters hovering near me. I was sinking into a pleasurable stupor of sun block and mental slack when it hit me: I'd been on vacation in Australia for two weeks and I hadn't sent a single post card! To anyone. Friend or foe (pleasure or business). Kith or kin. Ma or Pa. Here I was, leisure-stoked and luxuriating--and the rest of my family, friends and associates were 3,000 air miles away.

Anytime a VIP gets caught with his (or her) pants down — Arnold Schwarzenegger or Anthony Weiner, for example — you can almost hear the collective "huh?" around the nation's water coolers, on its Twitter feeds and shared over its backyard fences. What in the heck were those guys thinking? Where were they when John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer, Bill Clinton and so many others crashed and burned? Why wasn't the very real risk of shame and humiliation enough to stop them cold? More than 2,000 years ago Socrates asserted in Plato's "Phaedrus" that two horses contend for our souls — one, unruly, passionate and constantly pulling in the direction of pleasure, and the other restrained, dutiful, obedient and governed by a sense of shame.

OK, so Sarah Palin probably isn't running for president. She may have told Fox News' Greta Van Susteren that she was "tempted" because she was "wondering who the heck is going to be out there with a servant's heart willing to serve the American people. " But evidence suggests there's not a lot to wonder about when it comes to her candidacy. Palin's approval ratings have never been lower. A CNN poll showed that among Republican and Republican-leaning voters, only 12% wanted Pain as the nominee.