NEWS LITE : PINK OR BLUE OK FOR SUPERMODEL.

Cindy Crawford is keeping the mystery in her pregnancy.

The supermodel doesn't want to know if she's having a boy or a girl.

``I don't have an inkling, don't care and don't know,'' Crawford says in the May issue of US magazine. ``I thought, what would I do differently if I knew? I'm not decorating the nursery in blue or pink, anyway.''

Five months into her pregnancy, Crawford says morning sickness has helped her avoid gaining a lot of weight. So far, the 33-year-old beauty has put on just 10 additional pounds.

``I was sick all day long for three months,'' she said. ``It was awful.''

Still, she wonders whether the experience will alter her figure permanently.

``Frankly, I prefer nonpregnant bodies,'' she said. ``I look at myself now and think, I hope the best isn't over.''

Crawford, once married to Richard Gere, is now married to former model Rande Gerber, 36, who runs chic saloons on both coasts, Skybar in Los Angeles and New York's Whiskey Park.

Jewel told ivories may need a tune

Yes, folks, singer Jewel is quite aware there's a certain part of her body that some people think is not too pretty and may need a fixer-upper. ``My teeth,'' she says in Seventeen mag.

``When I was younger, my dad couldn't afford to pay for dental work.'' So now that she's rich and famous, she clearly can afford the smile of a supermodel. But gee, says she, ``now I don't really mind the way they look - I'm so used to it. But dentists tell me that I could do further damage to my mouth if I don't fix them.''

Judd spends week in Amazon jungle

Ashley Judd took a break from the glamour of movie stardom to live out her longtime dream to become a Peace Corps volunteer.

The actress with credits including ``Heat'' and ``Kiss the Girls'' spent a week in a remote Amazon jungle village in Surinam, where she lived without electricity and running water.

``I woke up once during the night to go to the bathroom,'' Judd says in the May issue of Marie Claire magazine. ``Using facilities outside was not an uncomfortable adjustment for me. I grew up using an outhouse whenever I visited my great aunt and uncle on their farm.''

The Hollywood beauty enjoyed her time among the friendly residents of Asawai on the banks of the piranha-filled Saramacca River, and didn't have too many difficulties with local wildlife.

``I'm not intimidated by nature and I found nothing fearsome, despite the jungle's reputation,'' she said. ``The only encounter I had was being chased back to the hut by a mosquito which seemed to be the size of my hand.''

Goldberg golf gadget takes prize

Trying to make the simple ridiculously complicated, a team of student engineers built a contraption that puts a golf ball on a tee by way of a crashing miniature skier, a crossbow and a toy boat.

In all, the machine took 54 mechanical, electrical and fluid dynamic steps to tee up a regulation golf ball. It won first place in the 11th annual National Rube Goldberg Machine contest at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., on Saturday.

The event gets its name from the famous cartoonist known for drawing vastly complicated machines that performed simple tasks.

Every year, student teams from schools across the country keep Goldberg's spirit alive by designing well-oiled models of immense inefficiency.

This year's champion was the Purdue student chapter of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers.

The machines were judged based on the completion of the task, creativity, number of steps involved, and Rube Goldberg spirit.

The winning machine began when a toy gopher was hit on the head in a nod to the irreverent golf film ``Caddyshack.'' That closed a switch that energized a solenoid that released a miniature downhill skier, who promptly crashed into a tree and knocked it over. That released a weight that raised the Purdue flag.

As the flag rose, it pulled a pin that released a ramp, which moved into position, causing an eight-ball to roll down and fall into a pocket. That turned a set of gears that pulled a lever, which then pulled a pin on a small catapult, launching a miniature basketball up a ramp into a plastic cup.

Then a crossbow fired, toy boats raced across a pan of water, a hockey player shot a goal and finally, mercifully, a tee was put in place and a ball plopped on top of it.

Log may help solve Miller mystery

A military logbook that sheds light on the mysterious disappearance of American bandleader Glenn Miller during World War II will be up for auction this week, offering bidders a chance to own a clue to one of aviation's most captivating puzzles.

Miller was en route to France to organize concerts for Allied troops when his plane disappeared over the English Channel on a foggy December day in 1944. No trace has ever been found of the single-engine aircraft or its passengers.

Bad weather had been blamed until the flight log was produced. It suggests a more haunting theory, now largely accepted: Miller's plane was blasted out of the sky by bombs jettisoned by a Royal Air Force squadron returning from an aborted raid.

The logbook, which belonged to the late RAF navigator Fred Shaw, will be auctioned by Sotheby's on Tuesday, along with a letter from Britain's defense ministry bolstering the theory, a bundle of newspaper clippings and other materials.

It wasn't until the mid-1980s that Shaw, after seeing a film about Miller, dug out his logbook and noted an entry: ``Ops. Siegen Canceled. Jettison Southern Area.'' It confirmed what he suspected: Miller's plane disappeared on the same day Shaw's squadron aborted a bombing raid on Siegen, Germany, and let loose its 4,000-pound bombs over the English Channel.

The bombs had to be discarded before the bombers could land safely.

News Lite is compiled from Daily News staff and wire reports.

CAPTION(S):

4 Photos

PHOTO (1) A navigator's log may help shed light on the 1944 disappearance of bandleader Glenn Miller.

Sotheby's

(2) Getting the cold shoulder

This bull might want to be a social butterfly, but he'll be waiting a long time for a response from this gaggle of concrete lawn ornaments at Southern Exposure Farms near Battle Creek, Mich.

Kevin Hare/Battle Creek Enquirer 

(3) CRAWFORD

(4) JUDD