November 26, 1995

As the Dow Jones industrial average smashed through 5,000 last week, it was the cyclical stocks -- the ones most vulnerable to a weak economy -- that were leading the way. That was a sharp reversal of recent months, and a repudiation of the growing suspicion among economists that the economy was sliding toward a recession next year or the year after. It was not just that the cyclicals did best. They were virtually the only movers. Most major indexes other than the Dow were having a blah week. The Standard & Poor's 500, the most-watched indicator of large stock performance, fell a bit. Smaller stocks suffered more, and technology stocks -- the erstwhile leaders -- fared poorly. After hitting amazing highs on Monday, even the Internet stocks turned south.

TWENTY-FIVE years ago, in an unheated former firehouse on West 20th Street in Manhattan, a group of women and a few men were seated talking about rape. They were huddled in their heaviest coats, for it was winter, when a scout from Channel 13 came to say that they were going to do a documentary. Bill Moyers, who was very sympathetic to the issue, would do the narration. They were looking for a victim.

Half of the 600,000 Americans who have heart attacks each year have no symptoms beforehand. As many as 30 percent of heart disease patients do not even have any obvious risk factors, like high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, diabetes or a family history of heart disease. In fact, only a minority of such patients have a clear-cut risk, like greatly elevated cholesterol levels. Sergei Grinkov, a two-time Olympic gold medal skater who collapsed and died of a heart attack on Monday in Lake Placid, N.Y., had a family history of heart disease, and may also have had high blood pressure. In the later stages of his disease, standard tests would have picked up the danger to his life. But researchers in cardiology say that a new generation of predictive tests might have helped him by finding his disease even before his arteries became clogged.

With chaos surrounding him, Patrick Ewing took a seat at the press table near midcourt and began laughing uncontrollably. He slapped the hand of a statistician and looked for all the world like someone who had the answers the day before a midterm exam. His rival, Hakeem Olajuwon, had just been ejected with 4 minutes 13 seconds left in yesterday's game at Madison Square Garden. Olajuwon's coach, Rudy Tomjanovich, would follow moments later. In an often homely affair that featured 3 Rocket ejections, 61 personal fouls, 2 flagrant fouls and a near fistfight, the Knicks ended Houston's seven-game winning streak with a 103-88 victory.

THE New England Brewing Company, having traded in a cramped location on Commerce Street in Norwalk for a remodeled 22,000-square-foot building near the city's Maritime Center, is poised to take on new challenges, hoping to ride a nationwide wave of exploding popularity for microbrewed beers. While there were once 64 breweries in Connecticut, there are now only two microbreweries, the New England Brewing Company and the Elm City Brewing Company in New Haven. (The Hartford Brewery also makes beers, but only for on-site consumption in its brewpub.)

AS the Long Island Power Authority prepares to present a plan to lower electric rates, costs and controversies linked to the Shoreham nuclear power plant continue to reverberate. For the authority, which Gov. George E. Pataki ordered in August to find a way to cut rates at least 10 percent, the $4.5 billion debt for the former plant of the Long Island Lighting Company has been a major stumbling block.

STOPPED at an intersection the other day, I came face to face with an immaculate little Volkswagen Beetle, the kind you used to see everywhere and hardly ever see now. I pointed it out to my children as if it were a museum piece on wheels. It is hard to believe it has been 25 years since Volkswagen's heyday in America. In its prime, the Beetle outsold the best-selling cars of today, like the Ford Taurus and the Honda Accord.

IT was widely assumed, in the aftermath of the cold war, that America's commitment to European security would diminish. What the United States had done for Western Europe after World War II with the Marshall Plan and the creation of NATO, the European Union would do for its neighbors in Eastern Europe in the aftermath of Communism. The notion had a certain intellectual allure, as well as obvious financial benefits for America. But it was finally laid to rest in Dayton, Ohio, last week by the Pax Americana that put a stop to the slaughter in Bosnia. The peace, hammered out over 21 days of sometimes burlesque negotiation, is inevitably uncertain because it is an attempt to build a Bosnian state of no obvious cohesion on a terrain still raw with the wounds of war. The shouting and maneuvering in Ohio could easily degenerate into shooting and mayhem in Bosnia.

WHEN it comes to business ethics, few American corporations have a better image than the H.B. Fuller Company of St. Paul, a leading manufacturer of industrial glues, coatings and paints. Awards, honors and inclusion in various socially conscious mutual funds attest to its standing as a good corporate citizen. But that reputation is being clouded by the company's handling of a stubborn image-staining problem: the illegal abuse of its shoemaker's glue by homeless Central American children, who have become addicted to the product's intoxicating but dangerous fumes.

SODOM AND GOMORRAH WITH NEON: FOR decades Las Vegas has thrived on that image. Promising instant wealth and endless sex, the city offered a short cut to the American dream in its glitziest, least noble form. Las Vegas was also a perfect match for the movies. The place where the Rat Pack roamed, it was the only city to rival Hollywood as a dream factory, built from the ground up on manufactured images. But recently much of Las Vegas has become tame and homogenized enough for a PG-rated family. Even the staid Smithsonian magazine last month caught up with the fact that Las Vegas now resembles a theme park, with a life-size pirate ship, a sphinx and the MGM lion standing guard.

MAKING IT WORK 3 In Marty Glickman's day, broadcasting a game was like being in the game. These days, it's often like being Marty Glickman. Tips from the guru of glib.

INDIAN Season is over. "From Columbus Day through Thanksgiving, kids make little headdresses and talk about us in the past tense," said Tonya Gonnella Frichner, the president of the American Indian Law Alliance. "Then we're invisible again. Did you know there are between 30,000 and 40,000 Indians in the boroughs, representing 67 different native nations? That we suffer from AIDS, homelessness, drugs, vicious landlords, breached contracts, just like you do? And now, block grants, which are really going to hurt us."