NOTEBOOK

By DANIEL EISENBERG, TAM GRAY, ANITA HAMILTON, JANICE M. HOROWITZ, NADYA LABI, JAMIE MALANOWSKI, ALAIN L. SANDERS, JOEL STEIN

WINNERS & LOSERS

GETTING CALLED ON THE CARPET

[WINNERS]

RICHARD GERE Actorvist Jiang-les Bill's chain for supping with the tyrant of Tibet. Plus, good p.r. for new flick

LOU GERSTNER IBM honcho buys back $3.5 billion of stock, goosing the market. If only it were Intel

LISA KUDROW Happily married Friends star is having a baby

[& LOSERS]

BRUCE BABBITT Interior Secretary's Mr. Clean image turns into Bumbling Bruce at hearings. Off the reservation

BARRY SCHECK Dream Teamer risks it all at Nanny trial. But it didn't fit, and they didn't acquit. Au desPair

PHOEBE BUFFAY Perpetually single Friends character is having a baby

GIMME 500 IBM AND A CHEESE DANISH

Power, money, adrenaline, Maria Bartoromo--sure the New York Stock Exchange looks sexy. But the floor is actually a sloppy, paper-littered frat house. Here's a selective tour of what it's like:

GIFTS Among the items at the visitors' gift center: a brooch of interlocking bulls and bears ($189.95) and a bib with block letters IPO ($5.95).

But WHAT DO THEY WATCH? Though both CNN and CNBC have a station booth in the main room, the 34 televisions there are all tuned to CNBC. Why? CNBC offers closed captioning. And Maria Bartoromo.

STUNTS The cool new thing to do is stage a flashy stunt for your IPO. A cow meandered onto the floor the morning of Gateway 2000's new listing in May. Can-Can girls kicked their way onto the floor for French Telecom last month. The most famous stunt was staged in 1967--Yippies threw dollar bills from the visitors' desk, disrupting trading.

MEDICAL EMERGENCIES Who has time for a proper heart attack and a trip to the hospital? Nestled in the walls of the trading floor are several cardiac-arrest stations. There's also one in the calmer precincts of the sparsely decorated, depressing members' lounge.

HOW MANY? On average, there are about 3,000 people on the floor of the Exchange. About 30% are women, but only 169 of them are members.

AESTHETICS Traders decorate their own booths, which they do with all the elan of high school sophomores. Among the more common items: pictures of bikini-clad women, and fart spray.

SHOE CUBBIES Do you really want to stand around all day in your fancy wing tips? There are four coatrooms for traders to doff their dress shoes and change into comfier footwear (sneakers, mostly). Every morning, the exchange polishes the members' shoes.

WASTE Workers remove two tons of trash from the exchange each day. Electronic trading has greatly reduced the amount of trash, except for this past month, when it reached pre-electronic levels.

TOURISTS Chinese President Jiang Zemin's visit to the exchange last week was one of approximately 700,000 each year. Wall Street trivia: Who was the only sitting President to visit the floor? Archcapitalist Ronald Reagan.

BLAZERS Almost everyone wears a special-color jacket. Floor managers wear Kelly green lab coats, and runners wear light blue. The other brightly colored blazers are the set uniforms of brokerage firms.

ORIGINS The New York Stock and Exchange Board was founded in 1817 in Tontine's CoffeeHouse. Trading was restricted to members; a seat in those days went for $25. By the 1840s the cost was $400. This year one of the 1,366 seats went for $1.5 million. There are no actual seats, by the way. The brokers stand.

HEALTH REPORT

THE GOOD NEWS

A CLEAN BREAST OF IT Contrary to previous studies, a new report finds that exposure to the chemicals DDT and PCBs isn't linked to breast cancer.

A FASTER FIX The overwhelming majority of kids with early-stage non-Hodgkins lymphoma can be successfully treated with no radiation and just nine weeks of chemotherapy. That's instead of the usual six to eight months. Less chemo should mean fewer side effects.

FEELING NO PAIN Animal studies show delta-9-THC--the ingredient in marijuana that gets you high--may relieve arthritis and other pain. To work, the chemical is applied topically or injected--not inhaled.

Sources: New England Journal of Medicine (1,2); Society for Neuroscience meeting

THE BAD NEWS

TRAVELER'S ADVISORY Move those feet. A controlled study shows that sitting for long periods of time in planes, trains and automobiles can greatly increase the chances of having blood clots develop in the legs.

BETA MAKES BETTER Beta blocker drugs can reduce by 25% the risk of early death in older patients who have had heart attacks. But fully three-quarters of those who should have the lifesaving drug simply aren't given the prescription.

DIABETES DISASTER The number of Americans with diabetes has shot up sixfold since 1958, to 10 million people--the highest level ever. One reason: more and more people are overweight.

Sources: American College of Chest Physicians meeting; Journal of the American Geriatrics Society; CDC

SEX EDUCATION L'AMOUR = MORE Birds do it, bees do it, but the French (mais, bien sur!) claim they do it more often than anyone else. In a recent global survey of the frequency with which people have sex, the nation of Brigitte Bardot led the pack with an average of 151 times a year. Here are the top nations of love:

France 151 U.S. 148 Russia 135 Germany 129 South Africa 117 Poland 116 Britain 113 Canada 112 Australia 110 Italy 105 Mexico 98 Spain 90 Hong Kong 77 Thailand 69