Hacker

With fall's youth soccer season starting up, Tony DiCicco and Colleen Hacker have two words of advice for coaches of female players: Play nice. "You have to ease them into it," DiCicco says of grade-school girls. "They may not be ready to mix it up on the field. You have to make it OK for them to compete and dominate." DiCicco and Hacker know a thing or two about getting female soccer players to perform. DiCicco coached the U.S. Women's National Team that won the 1996 Olympic gold medal and 1999 World Cup and now serves as commissioner of the WUSA, the women's professional soccer league.

A FUNNY THING happened during the tasting of this year's Oktoberfest beers. Some of last year's beers sneaked into the competition and won it. When expiration dates of the winning beers were checked, it turned out that this year's victors, Oktoberfest offerings from Paulaner and Hacker-Pschorr, were actually leftovers from 1997. The old beers had, according to the code on their labels, officially expired a month before last week's sipping session.I saw many morals in this outcome. One was that the old-and-out-of-it sometimes have more to offer than the young and the fresh.

Political scientist Andrew Hacker's best seller, "Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal," will be the subject of the fall semester's final "Books Sandwiched In" session at noon Thursday at Western Maryland College in Westminster.Dr. Charles E. Neal, associate professor of political science at WMC, will discuss the work during the lunchtime review in McDaniel Lounge. The discussion is free and open to the public."Two Nations," published this year, asserts that the racial attitudes of white Americans are responsible for the "disconsolate" state of black life in the United States.

John Weaver, operator of a Bethesda-based online lacrosse magazine, was among dozens of Web site operators who got a rude shock early yesterday when they found that a computer hacker had taken over their sites to post a bold message supporting Napster Inc., the online music file sharing company the recording industry wants shuttered. It's the latest twist in one of the most closely watched issues involving the Internet: the fate of Napster.com and whether the courts will rule that sharing music files over the Internet is illegal.

You don't need to play golf with the boss to get a raise. Just share a beer with her. Drawing on a large national data set, two economists argue in a study to be released today that social drinkers tend to have more charisma, a fatter Rolodex and more friends than those who abstain or drink alone. That garrulousness, they say, translates into higher income - 10 percent more for men and 14 percent more for women. The research, published by the libertarian Reason Foundation, based in Los Angeles, and the Journal of Labor Research, takes aim at efforts in several communities to crack down on college binge drinking as well as proposals to raise alcohol taxes.

"The Secret Parts of Fortune: Three Decades of Intense Investigations and Edgy Enthusiasms," by Ron Rosenbaum (Random House, 799 pages, $29.95) Rosenbaum for 30 years and more has been writing some of the very best nonfiction in the best magazines in America. There have been three previous anthologies, but none as inclusive or sweeping as this marvelous compilation of wit and wisdom, of exposure and revelation. Rosenbaum's introduction is a masterpiece on the subject of doing good journalism.

For 33 years, Charles O. Hacker was a motorman and conductor for Baltimore's streetcars, stationed part of the time on the "26" line operating from the old trolley car barn at Lombard and Grundy streets in Highlandtown.The one-, two- and three-car trains that were based there, known as "Red Rockets," have been out of commission since the 1950s, when they were replaced by buses.Starting next year, Mr. Hacker and his wife, Ruth, will take up residence inside the car barn, which is being converted to cooperative apartments for seniors.

Jewish experience, identity and history are explored in the 11th edition of the Jewish Film Festival, which begins tomorrow at the Gordon Center for Performing Arts in Owings Mills."

HOLLYWOOD -- There have been some staff changes of late on "The Dennis Miller Show.""Everybody's gone," Mr. Miller said from his office Monday. "I'm a complete psycho. I'm like Kurtz. There's heads strewn across the stairway."He was kidding, of course, brandishing some of the obscure humor that has made Mr. Miller's syndicated late-night talk show popular among men 18 to 34, despite remaining a low-rated enigma to larger audiences. (Kurtz was the mad Army colonel played by Marlon Brando in "Apocalypse Now."

John C. HackerNavy veteranJohn C. Hacker, a Navy veteran of World War II who worked for about six years as a guard at the former main Post Office on Calvert Street, which contains Baltimore City offices and courts, died Sunday of cancer at the North Arundel Hospital. He was 68.Services will be conducted at 10:30 a.m. today at the Singleton Funeral Home, 1 Second Ave. S.W., in Glen Burnie.The Glen Burnie resident retired as a guard in 1989. Earlier, he had worked for 17 years for the Maryland Glass Co.Mr.