Origin

The possibility that the origins of HIV (Feb. 2), which is now devastating Africa, can be traced to a brutal colonial episode of the past adds horror onto horror. The colonial forced-labor system sanctimoniously imposed on Africa by the Western capitalist democracies was in fact a vast tropical gulag comparable to the worst crimes against humanity of the totalitarian states of the past century. GILBERT DEWART Pasadena

Geza Vermes was a graduate student in Belgium in the late 1940s when he was captivated by news sweeping the globe about a remarkable discovery in the desert east of Jerusalem. He quickly switched gears, penning his doctoral thesis on the Dead Sea Scrolls, the ancient manuscript fragments that would become a focus of his life's work. FOR THE RECORD: The headline on an earlier version of this article said Vermes had died at the age of 89. He was 88. Also in the earlier version, the first name of Mark Goodacre, an associate professor of religion at Duke University, was incorrectly reported as Martin.

Re: Debra Denker's review of "Afghanistan: The Great Game Revisited" (Book Review, Feb. 21). Please advise Denker that the "proverb" of the blind men describing an elephant appears in numerous Buddhist Scriptures, many of which already had been reduced to written form some 500 years before the birth of the Sufi poet Rumi. The true author or origin of the story probably is lost in the unchronicled history of India's oral literature. WILLIAM BODIFORD TARZANA, CALIF.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of two brothers accused of bombing the Boston Marathon, told investigators that the pair had originally planned to mount an attack on the Fourth of July, a U.S. counter-terrorism official said Thursday. Meanwhile, another counter-terrorism official said that Russian intelligence officials believe Tsarnaev's older brother, Tamerlan, may have met with militants while visiting Russia in 2012. Authorities have scoured the background of the 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev for potential sources of radicalization in the years leading up to the bombings that left three people dead and more than 260 others wounded.

Fire investigators hunched under a scorched, 20-foot-tall oak tree off Angeles Crest Highway on Wednesday afternoon, using wire mesh sifters to search through the ash in an attempt to determine whether the largest brush fire in Los Angeles County history was deliberately set. The intensified search for the cause of the Station fire came as the blaze pushed southeast to the mountains high above Pasadena, Sierra Madre and Monrovia and hand crews...

The reason Martin Bernal's "Black Athena" has been at best ignored and at worst condemned by the academic Establishment is not because it "has enraged many right-wingers," but because it is very poor scholarship. His charge that existing classical scholarship rests on anti-Semitism is completely unfounded, impossible to disprove (because it attacks motives rather than actions), and permits him to dismiss existing scholarship without having to refute it. History is molded by the cultural and political climate in which it is written, so it is natural that most European classical studies reflect a Eurocentric approach.

David Lazarus' March 30 column ("Is the medicine you depend on made in a place you trust?" Consumer Confidential) suggests that there should be a global tracking system to prevent tragedies such as the recent heparin deaths and allergic reactions. I agree with your objective, but not with the methodology. I'm not certain if the consumer would know what to do with information on where a drug was actually made. Quality control must be exercised before any product is distributed in the U.S. market, irrespective of its origin.

Question: My husband and I have wondered about the origin of oxtails. Lately, they have been labeled beef oxtails. Surely we don't raise oxen just for their tails, yet I have never seen any other part of the ox on sale in the market. Answer: Oh, yes, you have--you just didn't know it. Understanding the origin of oxtails requires a bit of knowledge of history as well as some understanding of sex as it applies to beef cattle.

"Point of Origin" is an arson mystery laced with violence and eroticism, but the biggest surprise is how little heat it generates. Ray Liotta stars as a Ray Liotta type, a firefighter on the edge, in this HBO movie inspired by a true story. He plays John Orr, a veteran investigator from the Glendale Fire Department who hunted a serial arsonist during a rampage that killed four and caused millions of dollars of damage across Southern California in the late 1980s.

Why do we have a surgeon general, and what does she do? According to John Parascandola, former historian of the U.S. Public Health Service, the office of the surgeon general has its origins in the Marine Hospital Service, a system funded by the federal government in 1798 to treat merchant seamen arriving in U.S. ports. In 1870, the federal government centralized the operation and tapped former Civil War surgeon Dr. John Maynard Woodworth to head the system as the supervising surgeon, a position that was later renamed surgeon general.

Question: I have lived in my current apartment building for three years with no problems, but recently a new manager took over. I originally came to the U.S. on a work visa; I was born and raised in China and speak Cantonese as my first language. As a result, I speak with a heavy accent. I am also much more comfortable with written English than with speaking English. About a month ago, I got a notice of a rent increase from the new manager, which surprised me because I had just gotten a rent increase a few months earlier.

The name for college football's new playoff system is … "College Football Playoff. " "Brand X" and "Your Name Here" apparently were already taken. College football commissioners meeting in Pasadena this week were looking for simplicity in replacing their sometimes tainted "BCS" label. Mission accomplished. Commissioners actually paid a consulting firm to help come up with the new name. The Tuesday launch also included a website to house the new system: collegefootballplayoff.com.

HONOLULU - He's known as the Woody Guthrie of Hawaiian music, a virtuoso ukulele player who's helped to introduce new generations to music that might otherwise be lost. But on the autumn morning I met up with Eddie Kamae, few people seemed to recognize the octogenarian wearing Levis and a blue work shirt. It was just after 9 a.m., and Eddie was eating a bowl of vanilla ice cream at the Wailana Coffee House in Waikiki. He had risen before sunrise to pray, read the paper and watch the sky lighten from the nearby apartment building where he and his wife, Myrna, have lived for nearly half a century.

Amazon, the online retailing giant, is following Netflix and Hulu into the world of original online content. But unlike the other outlets, which have been selecting their programs the old-fashioned way (that is, executives putting their reps on the line to back a show), Amazon is going about things a little differently: It's asking viewers to vote on which shows will become full series. Call it the "American Idol"-ization of entertainment programming, but Amazon is letting the people be their own programming execs by putting 14 pilot episodes on its website and then letting the audience choose which should move forward.

Whether it's signing his photographs and his books, participating in a documentary or talking at all, Bert Stern can barely be bothered. Which is a flaw that "Bert Stern: Original Mad Man" never overcomes. It's not that Stern didn't take any memorable photographs or lacked for dramatic incident in his life. Quite the contrary. A creator of images who helped revolutionize the use of photography in advertising, he became celebrated for Marilyn Monroe's last sitting as well as the shot that became the celebrated poster for Stanley Kubrick's "Lolita.

- The fireflies in this coastal Ontario town had begun to materialize over the estate's sprawling lawn. Inside a macabre-looking residence, the actors Famke Janssen and Bill Skarsgard slipped through elegant rooms and chilly corridors, a bone-creepy tableau that might be described as "The Addams Family" meets Guillermo del Toro. Her voice musical but no-nonsense, Janssen issued an order to Skarsgard; he responded by trying very hard to look aloof. The location for the production of "Hemlock Grove" - a piece of small-town American Gothic about a murder, a shady company and rampaging werewolves - was quaint, even archaic.

If you're in the neighborhood of Carrie Bradshaw — raised under the influence of the 1970s — then you're not unfamiliar with the concept behind "Little Archie" comics, the Muppet Babies and Shrinky Dinks: Smaller, if not younger, is cute. And marketable. So when you first open Candace Bushnell's "The Carrie Diaries," which positions the author's iconic "Sex and the City" character as a high-school senior and fashions her for a teenaged audience, your generational cynicism may prepare you for the worst.

The exterior of this Italian Renaissance-style home in Windsor Square looks much as it did 100 years ago, when it was built for prominent developer Edwin Janss. The restored house retains its large French windows, iron balcony railings and arched entry. Location: 434 S. Windsor Blvd., Los Angeles 90020 Asking price: $4.45 million Year built: 1913 Architect: J. Martyn Haenke House size: Five bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms, 6,200 square feet Lot size: 22,000 square feet Features: View of the Hollywood sign, foyer, sweeping staircase, hand-painted floors in the updated kitchen and family room, paneled library with bar, sunroof, guesthouse, formal gardens, swimming pool About the area: Last year, 35 single-family homes sold in the 90020 ZIP Code at a median price of $1.8 million, according to DataQuick.

Albert Pujols was supposed to start Sunday's game at first base, but shortly after the lineup was posted Angels Manager Mike Scioscia changed plans, taking Pujols out of the field and using him as the designated hitter for the fifth time in 12 games. Scioscia explained the switch by saying that Josh Hamilton, the original DH, wanted to continue familiarizing himself with right field at Angel Stadium. But it's clear that Pujols' surgically repaired right knee and the plantar fasciitis in his left foot are bothering him. "He's battling some stuff that he's had before," Scioscia said of Pujols, who played with plantar fasciitis for parts of 2004, 2005 and 2006.