NOTEBOOK

By ELIZABETH L. BLAND, LISA GRANATSTEIN, TAM GRAY, ANITA HAMILTON, JANICE M. HOROWITZ, MICHAEL KRANTZ, NADYA LABI, DANIEL S. LEVY, ALAIN SANDERS, JOEL STEIN

WINNERS & LOSERS

PATIENCE, PATIENCE

[WINNERS]

BILL GUTHRIDGE Longer apprenticeship than Prince Charles. After 30 years, he succeeds the King, Dean Smith

HAROLD ICKES Thompson too scared to have him testify a second day. Cast him for the tough guy in Die Hard IV?

PRINCESS DIANA Can't win Nobel Peace Prize posthumously but comes close

[& LOSERS]

ELLEN DEGENERES Yep, she's a prima donna. She comes out, lip locks a gal pal on air, and wants the kids to watch

SGT. MAJOR GENE MCKINNEY Army, planning his court-martial, gives him desk job. Maybe he can get active duty in the Navy?

EDDIE BAUER Company loses plaid shirt in discrimination suit

NARCISSISM 102

How do you display your self-regard on the cover of your memoir--a field already crowded with books such as Claudia Schiffer's Memories and almost 20 celebrity bios called My Life? Apparently, the next wave is minimalism, as demonstrated by Whoopi Goldberg's new, boldly titled Book. Some of the genre's classics:

--Me: Stories of My Life by Katharine Hepburn --My Early Life: 1874-1904 by Winston Churchill --My Life & the Principles for Success by Ross Perot --My Life in High Heels by Loni Anderson --My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber --History of My Life, Volumes I-XII, by Giacomo Casanova

ASK DR. EXECUTIONER

Q. Why is Arizona changing the time of its executions from midnight to 4 p.m.?

A. Well, they're just following the Lone Star State, the nation's execution capital, which so far this year has put to death 132 inmates. Once, most executions took place at midnight, the better to avoid the crowds that congregated at daylight hangings. But with Texas' hectic killing schedule, a lot of folks were forced to miss a lot of sleep, so in 1995 the Texas department of criminal justice moved the time to the dinner hour, 6 p.m. Prison officials got to go to bed early, and judges did not have to be wakened with last-minute appeals.

HEALTH REPORT

THE GOOD NEWS

LISTEN UP Inexpensive antibiotics like amoxicillin may clear up kids' ear infections just as well as pricier ones do.

TREATING TREMORS The benefits of surgery for Parkinson's may last for at least two years. The surgery, in which overactive brain cells are cauterized, helps control the trembling and stiffness brought on by the disease. It also helps temper the involuntary arm and leg movements triggered by the Parkinson's medication L-dopa.

INTESTINAL RELIEF Injections of an experimental antibody may greatly improve hard-to-treat cases of Crohn's disease. Crohn's is a painful chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract.

Sources: Pediatrics; New England Journal of Medicine (2,3)

THE BAD NEWS

A HAIR RAZER Though researchers can't explain why, vaccinations in very rare instances seem to have a disturbing side effect: hair loss. Usually the locks return, but in a few cases patients are left nearly bald.

AND I MEAN IT! Kids can't sleep? It may be your parenting. Research shows a link between sleep disturbances in kids--they won't fall asleep or they have frequent nightmares--and parents who don't set limits or are otherwise permissive.

PINT-SIZE SMOKERS Pediatricians are calling it an epidemic: 10% of eighth-graders and nearly 25% of high school seniors smoke daily. Many took their first drag in sixth grade or earlier.

[Sources:] Journal of Amer. Medical Assn.; Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics; Amer. Academy of Pediatrics

THE SUPREMES (POP-UP VIDEO VERSION)

They're back! Last week ushered in the first Monday in October, the traditional starting date of the Supreme Court term. Yes, the Justices may seem remote in their black robes, but they all list hobbies on their resumes. A Supreme Court sampler:

RUTH BADER GINSBURG She's the only Justice to have chambers on the second floor of the Supreme Court building. It's sunnier and roomier there.

ANTONIN SCALIA Can't keep quiet even when he agrees. Wrote the most concurrences last term: nine.

JOHN PAUL STEVENS Likes tennis, competitive bridge, and is partial to bow ties.

DAVID SOUTER The bachelor Justice. If he married, he would be one of few Justices to wed while on the bench. First to be divorced (three times): William Douglas.

WILLIAM REHNQUIST Only current member with no prior judicial experience. The last Justice with no previous judicial experience was Lewis Powell.

CLARENCE THOMAS Often called the "silent Justice" because he asks few questions at oral arguments.

SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR First Justice to wear a dress. Closest precedent: Chief Justice Roger Taney was the first member to wear trousers instead of knee breeches.

STEPHEN BREYER One of three former Supreme Court clerks on the present bench. The first former clerk to return to the court was Byron White.

ANTHONY KENNEDY Key swing Justice together with O'Connor. Delivered the fifth vote in all but four of the past term's 5-to-4 decisions.

Source: Voting statistics from the Harvard Law Journal

FEUD OF THE WEEK

ELTON ("Sad Songs") JOHN

Age: 50

Occupation: Accompanist to Bernie Taupin

Best Punch: "He's so pathetic. It's like a monkey with arthritis, trying to go onstage and look young."

KEITH ("Make Me Run") RICHARDS

Age: 53

Occupation: Accompanist to Mick Jagger

Best Punch: Describes John as a Vegas act and says his career now consists of "writing songs for dead blonds."

EXCUSE DEPT.

THE DOG ATE IT? After lamely suggesting that the White House originally was unable to locate videotapes of President Clinton's coffee klatches because researchers punched "fund raisers" into the computer instead of "coffees," White House special associate counsel Lanny Davis outdid himself. He explained that Rosh Hashana delayed his group for two days from delivering the tapes to the Justice Department. Mazel tov, Lanny!

TIME CAPSULE

Hillary Clinton, in her fifth year as First Lady, has had her share of growing pains. So did another controversial First Lady, as reported in the TIME cover of April 17, 1939:

Six years ago, the tall, restless character who moved into the White House with Franklin Roosevelt was viewed by large portions of the U.S. public with some degree of derision, if not alarm. They caricatured her, joked about her, called her "Eleanor Everywhere." They couldn't believe that any one woman could sincerely embrace the multiplicity of interests which she added to being a wife, mother and White House hostess. Today enough people have met Mrs. Roosevelt, checked up on her, to accept her for what she is...Everything she says, everything she does, is genuinely and transparently motivated. Sophisticates who used to scoff now listen to her. They read with measurable respect her books, magazine articles, daily column. Since developing from a painfully shy, homely gosling and an inhibited, inferior-feeling wife and daughter-in-law into a self-confident swan of a woman with the nation for her pond, she has learned to sail through life with serenity.

NOBELS

STANLEY PRUSINER, Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. A maverick neurologist from the University of California at San Francisco, Prusiner is honored for his work on a whole new category of disease-causing agents: infectious proteins called prions. Unlike the usual suspects--viruses, bacteria and fungi--prions carry no genetic material. These misshapen proteins multiply, according to Prusiner, by passing on their aberrant form to nearby proteins. Prions, insists Prusiner, are the culprits that cause brain maladies such as mad-cow disease. Skeptics suggest that unidentified viruses are responsible, and not even the Nobel Prize will convince them otherwise.

DARIO FO, Nobel Prize for Literature. The Italian comedian, actor and playwright has combined slapstick humor and biting social commentary in more than 40 plays. Fo is ardently unconventional, and invented a nonsensical language in his masterwork Mistero Buffo (Comic Mystery), a savage retelling of the Gospels. One inflammatory joke pokes fun at the Pope's assassins. Fo's success is perhaps best measured by those he targets: the Italian government routinely censors him, the U.S. has denied him two visas, and the Vatican despises him. "I can just see the faces of some of the judges and politicians I know," said a gleeful Fo.