It’s pretty grim stuff, but the National Institutes of Health has opened a Web site to help those with desperate medical problems to seek out last-chance experiments for their particular condition. The site, www.clinicaltrials.gov, lets users type in key words to search the National Library of Medicine’s archives.
HELLO, GIRLS
Intl. Business Men
The jury is out on whether today’s women will seethe with anger or savor with delight Ruth Leach Amonette’s riveting autobiography. It tells the story of the amazing sexism she overcame to become the first woman to rise to the office of corporate vice president at International Business Machines Inc.
She got hired in 1939 because Tom Watson Sr., Big Blue’s founder, thought she was cute. He made her a trainer for the “service women” whom IBM used to bring supplies to customers who bought IBM equipment from the all-male sales force. When the men left for World War II, IBM’s service women became high-tech “Rosie the Riveter” types and Leach became vice president for training. When the men came home, Watson decreed that all married women be fired and Leach remained until 1954 when she got married and left.
“Among Equals: The Rise of IBM’s First Female Corporate Vice President” ($23.50, Creative Arts Book Company) is a must-read, at the very least for the tens of thousands of women who followed her at Big Blue.
HONEY, I’M HOME!
WHERE’S YOUR NECK CHAIN?
Technophiles with housing budgets between $250,000 and $1.5 million should go virtually bananas over the 100 fiber-optic wired super-modern houses on the market 8 miles west of Janesville, Wis., called Grand Videre Estates (www.grandvidere.com). Each house has a security system that includes surveillance cameras wired to the Internet that could sound warnings if they see somebody not wearing “carry-around remote units on neck chains,” says the developer, Grand Videre Estates LLC.
In addition to ultra high-speed Internet connections 10 times faster than DSL, buyers get voice-controlled lighting and appliances as well as a bomb-resistant security room off the master bedroom. Just the place to hide if your computerized house crashes.
MOMMY, I WANT A SISTER
CLICK HERE, DARLING
You read it in this space first, but never before has a computer game caught on like The Sims, the electronic arts human-being simulation by the makers of Sim City where users create people one quirk at a time. Research firm PC Data says Sims has sizzled as the top-selling PC game since Feb. 2 and attracts an older (18-30) audience than other games and a huge number of women (25 percent).
