Medics Get New ‘Boning Up’ Aid

Perhaps no one knows more about what makes a man than Leon Schlossberg. The assistant professor of art at Johns Hopkins University is the Pygmalion behind the best-selling Mr. Bones, an 18-inch model of the human skeleton that medical students come to know intimately. Now, more than 20 years after he fashioned the first metacarpi and femurs from which generations of orthopedists have sprung, the 74-year-old Schlossberg is selling a bigger and much improved model, L. L. Bones. The new, 35-inch plastic model, named in jest for the Maine sporting goods supplier L. L. Bean Inc., is more realistic than its predecessor. “It has all the detail that anyone could need, except for an anatomist or medical specialist dealing in, say, the inner ear,” said Schlossberg. L. L. Bones was introduced last fall at $195--more than three times the price of a Mr. Bones--and more than 600 of them have been sold. Nearly 50,000 of the Mr. Bones series have been sold, almost exclusively to schools.

--The smartest man in America is Dr. Richard P. Feynman, the Nobel physicist who was a member of the Challenger commission, and the smartest woman is Marilyn vos Savant, according to Gentleman’s Quarterly. Vos Savant made the top of the list because of her 230 IQ and despite the fact that TV Guide is the only magazine she takes. Others named on GQ’s roster of the 100 smartest people in America are David Byrne of the rock group Talking Heads, Johnny Carson (“look at his salary”), his ex-wife Joanna Carson (“look at her alimony”), media magnate Rupert Murdoch, playwright Sam Shepard, film producer Woody Allen, consumer advocate Ralph Nader and Judge Joseph Wapner of television’s “The People’s Court.”

--A shipyard worker laid off from his job six months ago hid a $100 raffle ticket from his wife because she said they couldn’t afford to gamble. It won the couple a $130,000 condominium. “I couldn’t let my wife know I’d bet $100 or she’d kill me,” said Michael J. Farrell, 37, of Weymouth, Mass. Farrell, a former shipfitter at General Dynamics Corp.’s Quincy Shipyard Division, bought the ticket from Boston’s Carney Hospital raffle. The prize was a two-bedroom condominium in Mashpee, on Cape Cod.

--River Phoenix, one of the young actors in the coming-of-age movie “Stand By Me,” comes from a family inclined toward unconventional monikers. He has sisters named Rainbow, Liberty and Summer, and a brother named Leaf. River, 16, says that his father, John Phoenix, “wanted something different. I guess he didn’t want his kids to be named John, too.”