Winnie Cooper Says Math Rocks!

ONE HOT NUMBER McKellar

• Nerds, prepare to crush on Danica McKellar all over again. The former child star, best known as obsession object Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years, is mounting a crusade to transform girls into numbers-crunching mathletes. In August, she'll publish a book, Math Doesn't Suck: How to Survive Middle School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail. "Not only is middle school a time in life when girls are dealing with so much emotionally, it's also when math gets harder," McKellar—who studied statistical mechanics at UCLA and has a theorem named after her—tells Good magazine. "Math doesn't have good PR. I'm going to do my best to do great PR for math."

• Is Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) pulling out of the '08 presidential race already? Following two lackluster performances in the initial Democratic debates (prompting the Dodd camp to claim he was not getting his fair share of airtime), sources close to the campaign say the senator may be preparing to withdraw. As the rumor goes, Dodd would then throw his support behind Sen. Hilary Clinton. Asked about the possibility, Dodd's spokeswoman Christy Setzer laughed. "There is absolutely no truth to that rumor," she says.

• Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), a rising star within the Religious Right, is mulling over a run for president, the American Spectator reports, with backing from the Swift Boaters who helped take down John Kerry in '04. But wait! "Senator Coburn has never mulled running for president," a Coburn spokesman claims. So who will he endorse? "At this point, he's not prepared to endorse any of these candidates," his staffer says. Cryptic.

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