Hack

Want to know how to tell an author is really successful? The jacket photo gets bigger, while the writer's biography gets smaller.For one thing, there is no day job to detail. And as the volumes grow, it becomes unwieldy to list them all by name. Better just to tote them up and give the number, maybe mention how many are best sellers.Author James Lee Burke's bios have gotten pretty darn terse over 32 years of publishing.His first novel told of his odd jobs, his teaching job, the fact that he was an honors graduate from the University of Missouri.

Most of the Orioles had cleared out of the clubhouse after last night's game when Rafael Palmeiro and hitting coach Rick Down strolled in. The first baseman was soaked with sweat and dragging along a couple of bats, better to lift himself out of a slump that has grown waist-deep and tiresome.Palmeiro spent about 30 minutes in the cage, seeking the timing that has eluded him for going on two weeks. He went hitless again last night, and the Orioles went into their first three-game skid of the season after a 5-2 defeat to the Toronto Blue Jays at Camden Yards.

I admit I did not greet the arrival of preview cassettes from The Learning Channel for a four-hour series on the human face with the same enthusiasm as I did, say, an episode of The Sopranos or Six Feet Under from HBO. But what a pleasant surprise The Human Face - a provocative and amusing exploration of physiology as culture and possibly even destiny - turned out to be. Maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised given the huge visage of the fabulous John...

AS I make up my mind about the worthiness of the U.S. government paying reparations to the descendants of slaves, I am fascinated by the debate that arises when the issue is brought up.A new round of emotion was triggered on this by a long article that was published in the Washington Post late last month, which was pegged to the effort of Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, to prod Congress to act.The tone and shrillness of the reaction, from comical to...

Not selling drugs but hailing hacks One of the letters offering a suggestion for "A better Baltimore" (Readers speak out, March 23) displayed a bit of ignorance. Those "people allowed to stand on main streets waving their fingers" are not selling drugs. They are trying to hail a cab or a hack (unlicensed taxi driver). Having lived in various parts of Baltimore for most of my life, I have known several cab drivers, hacks and people trying to hail a ride. If the writer of the letter had simply spoken to a few of the folks "waving their fingers," she would have realized that most Baltimoreans are just going about their business getting from A to B. John Williams, Towson Unlicensed cabs still pose a danger A writer recently asked "why people are allowed to stand in the road on main streets and wave their fingers to traffic as a signal that they are selling drugs" (Readers speak out, March 23)

For more than a decade Dr. Gary Hack, a researcher and professor at the University of Maryland School of Dentistry in Baltimore, toiled in his lab on a vexing problem: how to stop the pain of hypersensitive teeth, a condition that affects up to 20 percent of the population.Today, Dr. Hack and a colleague, Dr. Leonard Litkowski, are perched on the cusp of fortune, if not fame, for a pivotal discovery they made while laboring on this mystery. They found that Bioglass, a microscopic material made by USBiomaterials of White Marsh, appears to help the body restore the loss of dentin in tooth enamel, a condition thought to cause the chilling pain of hypersensitive teeth.

Fats Drobnak, my somewhat ancient friend, was pensively munching a burger when I stopped by Winterling's last weekend.What's happening? I asked.''What' happening,'' Fats replied, ''is that it never ends.''Oh, that's an overstatement. I'm aware that hot weather troubles the obese, but Labor Day approaches.''I'm not talkin' about the heat. I mean namin' the football team which gettin' it is a maybe at best.''No, Fats. That's been settled. The fans have spoken loud and clear and it will be the Ravens.

If Bill Murray cracked a joke about "the Wood-man" these days, how many people would get it? In Hollywood Ending, Woody Allen's response to the marginalizing of his career is to acknowledge it, exaggerate it and turn it into slapstick. His alter ego here, director Val Waxman (note to Murray: now he's the Wax-man), lost touch with his times 10 years ago. Playing Val allows Allen to ventilate his familiar outrage over the dumbing-down of America - and Hollywood's role in the process - while also going after laughs so broad they can only be called yocks.

I HAVE several guesses why young people don't read newspapers as much as young people used to. One, because newspapers no longer print the kind of news most people want to read.How about the condemned man's last meal, for instance? The other day I read a news story about a murderer eating a steak before being dispatched. It was the first such story I'd seen in a newspaper since the Supreme Court revived capital punishment by popular demand.When I was one among millions of young and avid newspaper readers, the papers always reported the final meals consumed by people about to walk the last mile.

THE INTERNECINE disputes at the Baltimore Board of Liquor License Commissioners have reduced the agency to a bunch of political do-nothings. Citizen complaints of noisy, unruly bars and taverns have been ignored. Inactive liquor licenses have been left to molder with some holders continuing to pay yearly fees in violation of the law. And now the state prosecutor has launched an investigation - at the request of two former commissioners who were accused of wrongdoing by the board's chief inspector.