81.1% support Arafat?
So says IMRA, reporting the results of a poll of 720 Palestinian adults on Saturday.

(81.1%) support Yasser Arafat.
(60.8%) support the initiative of the Saudi Crown Prince .
(76.8%) do not trust General Anthony Zinni.
(47.6%) support the right of both Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and security.

Heck, I support their right to live in peace and security. There's a lot of straightening-out to do over there, and before it's over Washington is going to say a few things that Israel would rather not hear. But by the time that happens, there are going to be a lot fewer Palestinians left to agree with it.

On the other hand, this poll was taken during the Israeli siege on Arafat's compound, which might have affected the respondents' attitude. Duh. You think?

An experiment
I opened a second blog. I made a few posts there. Encouraged by comments received, I've concluded I really don't need two blogs. So here's what I posted there, and from now on you need only check this one: Soon I'll delete the other one.

Tuesday Too
1.) New evidence suggests expansion of the universe is speeding up. Your time is now limited. What unfinished personal business would be your highest priority? Hug my wife and kids. I don't do that nearly enough. I work an odd shift, so I rarely see them awake.

2.) Because you are an expert, you are asked to give a lecture at Harvard. What is your field of expertise (real or imagined)? Reversal of rectocranial inversion among the academic elite.

3.) This is your midnight or midday confession. Do you have an embarrassing vice to share? Only Buffy.

Thursday Threesome
Onesome. Bed. You spend a few hours a night there, so tell us about your bed - size, favorite sheets, comforter...oh, and do you make it or leave it unmade? My bed is a king size futon mattress on an Anderson frame. (Which means, yes, I've slept in apartments smaller than this bed.) Sheets are, well, whatever's clean. Flannel in the winter, cotton in the summer. My wife, who is always cold, has found an electric blanket that eschews the traditional 1-10 scale: Its top setting is "22". Fortunately, it has two controls: My half is usually off, except on the very coldest days of winter, when I will grudgingly turn it on at "1".

It is often left unmade, because with our wildly differing sleep shifts, one of us is usually in it.

Twosome. Bath. OK. How much time does it take you to get "ready" on the average day - from first step into the bathroom to stepping out fully dressed.... About an hour. But that is because I enjoy stretching out (some would say "languishing") in the bathtub. We have an antique (you're supposed to say that about old things, it makes them feel better) claw-footed iron tub in which even a 5' 10" male of *ahem* significant cubic displacement can stretch out. Because of the odd schedule I work (see previous comment), I rarely inconvenience anyone when I do this. Most workdays it's the best part of the day.

Threesome. Beyond. What is your favorite room / area of your home? Tell us all about it... I like my computer area. There are things I could change about it, certainly -- the desk is a modified folding table of the "banquet" variety, designed to be used as a computer desk, with a separate keyboard platform slightly lower than desk height. A swivel work chair sits in front of it (I'd prefer one with arms, but one takes what one can get), and software / book storage is behind me as I sit and type. The window is to my right. This, more than any other place in the house, is Mine.

The Friday Five
1. If you could eat dinner with and "get to know" one famous person (living or dead), who would you choose? Arrgh, what a choice. My first answer is Orson Welles, but I would be too awestruck to say anything. I'll bet Teller (of Penn and...) would be a ball to hang around with.

2. Has the death of a famous person ever had an effect on you? Who was it and how did you feel? Steve Allen. Everything he did, he made it look like any normal, reasonably-intelligent person could have done it -- but of course that isn't true. I was saddened to hear of his death: I was troubled to learn, later, that it might have been prevented had he seen a doctor immediately after the automobile accident, instead of going home.

3. If you could BE a famous person for 24 hours, who would you choose? Which 24 hours? Oh, maybe Garrison Keillor, just to say and do things on his radio show for which he would be apologizing for the rest of his life...

4. Do people ever tell you that you look like someone famous? Who? *Sigh* When my hair is long and straggly, I look like Jerry Garcia. When my hair is short and neat, I look like Santa Claus.

5. Have you ever met anyone famous? Thanks to the radio theater company I participate in, I have met several famous people. The high point was appearing on stage with Harlan Ellison, Anthony Daniels, and Brinke Stevens. (Tapes and CDs are available for sale in the lobby...)

I will also never forget my experience with Himan Brown...

The Web is complete
Anyone who knows me will know why I love CowBlog. As for the rest, well, some things you just can't explain.

The experiment is complete
The one I meant was whether I really needed two blogs. The answer is no. You needn't check the other one again: It will go away soon. Thanks for your indulgence. If this had been an actual schizophrenic episode, you would have been instructed to run like hell. No, you wouldn't. Well, maybe.

BlogSouth
I may have to take back some of the things I've said about the local newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In today's edition, Phil Kloer has produced an intelligent look at blogging in general and Atlanta bloggers in particular.

Ranging from narcisstic rants to astute political commentary, they can link to communities full of caring people or degenerate into "bitchy little snipe wars," says Kalina McCreery, an Atlanta actress and journal keeper.

So, in short, they are pretty much like people are IRL -- In Real Life. OK, I'll buy that.

If you're interested in reading any of the bloggers mentioned, though, good luck: AJC.com doesn't link them. Photodude does, though, in his comments on the article. But then, he was mentioned and quoted, I wasn't... (A fact the Dude generously points out when he lists other Atlanta-based blogs Kloer missed. Reid even corrects the URLs that Kloer gets wrong.)

Oh, I'm a little dismayed that their list of non-Atlanta "Blogs of Note" is limited to Wil Wheaton, Andrew Sullivan, Tom Tomorrow, and William Shatner (?). I mean, it seems to me that if you're trying to present the Wonderful World of Weblogging to a public largely unaware of it, and you're trying to make bloggers look like People Just Like You rather than extremists and nerds, why would you start with two columnists (both well represented in print media) and two Star Trek actors just shy of "Whatever happened to..." status?

Oh, stop it. I know Wheaton's blog is lively, clever, thoughtful, and nothing you'd expect from "Wesley", and I even enjoy Shatner's musings from time to time (makes him look a little more like a regular fellow), but I'm already here. You have to start somewhere, and the name recognition alone might entice people into the tent. As I said, I'm only a little dismayed. Overall, I'm quite pleased with the presentation.

More about the Academy Awards?
Yes, I intend to make a dishonest man of myself and say even more, even though the previous item on the subject is headed "The only thing I'll say..."

Why? Well, in part it's because I said some wrong things, which have been dissected in the comments to the previous item. In part it's because I wanted to draw your attention to this soaring article by Peggy Noonan.

But mostly it's because I had an epiphany in this past week. I finally realized -- it isn't the first time I've thought this, but perhaps this time it will stay with me -- that the Academy Awards really have nothing to do with me. It's a private function for the motion picture community, intentionally and proudly self-congratulatory, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Dropping in uninvited (via television) and complaining that the "do" wasn't done to my tastes is, well, rude.

Ayat al-Akhras was a lovely girl.
Only Thursday, she was talking about her upcoming exams, and her future plans.

Friday, the 18-year-old was making very different plans. She made a videotape in which she read a statement that criticized Arab leaders for not being willing to do what was necessary to reclaim her homeland. Then, as directed by the Al Aqsa Brigades (an arm of Arafat's organization), she wrapped a bomb around her body, traveled to the SuperSol supermarket in southeast Jerusalem, and blew herself up.

From the ancient perspective of forty-seven, I discover in myself a surprising bias: I tend to assume that young people can see through old people's bigotry. I am saddened to be reminded that this is not true.

Both the Israelis and the Palestinians have legitimate claim to the lands over which they fight. For a time I found it possible, even valuable, to consider the Palestinian perspective. I wish that I still could.

Instead I'm reminded of the Biblical story of Solomon, who offered to divide a child in half in order to satisfy two women who both claimed it. One woman agreed: the other said no, let the other woman have the whole child. Solomon recognized that the first woman was thinking only of herself, but the second was thinking of the child.

Anyone who would wrap a bomb around a teenaged girl does not deserve to lead a nation. A nation that would endorse such a thing has no right to exist.

LATER:

Never has the blood of so many Israelis been shed in such a brief period and never have the Palestinians been subjected to such harsh conditions of occupation as they are now. So now, of all times, it has to be stated clearly once again: Interwoven with them as we are, as long as their holiday is ruined, ours will be, too.

From Ha`aretz.

LATER YET: The NY Times (link requires registration) profiles a suicide bomber and her victim.

World War IV
That's what the Wall Street Journal calls it ("III" having been the Cold War, in recognition that war doesn't always involve shooting things and blowing them up). I think I agree with the nomenclature.

It's also fairly evident to even the most simple-minded of us (hello) that it has started. Despite the first blow having been struck from somewhere in Afghanistan and landing in New York City and Washington, the epicenter of WW4 is the Middle East, specifically Palestine (wherever you consider that to be, these days).

Looking around the area, it's hard to locate any good guys. Everyone agrees that everyone should stop shooting, but no one does. Unless the international press is completely blind, Israel is at least attempting to target military placements, where the Palestinians do not acknowledge there is any such thing as a non-combatant. (That "dancing in the streets" footage cost them my sympathy.)

A lot more people are going to die soon. You don't have to be Miss Cleo to see that. Steven den Beste is probably right when he says Yassir Arafat's hours are numbered. As James Lileks said yesterday about Saddam Hussein, there's no longer any point in worrying about whether whoever replaces Arafat will be worse. It can't get worse. The Palestinians have given up on him. So, obviously, has Ariel Sharon. President Bush has almost said, in so many words, that he has too.

I do not envy the President and Secretaries Rice, Powell and Rumsfeld, trying to chart a course through rivers of blood. But it seems to me that if the President meant what he said about "If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists", he's going to have to act. Is he going to try to stop Sharon? Can he?

LATER: Craig Kilborn, 3-28-02: "There�s disturbing news from the Middle East today � it�s no longer there."

Last on the bandwagon
Interesting, that with so much else to talk about, the "top story" on AOL's splash screen now (4:00pm 3-28-02) is that the Treasury Department is considering changing the color of U.S. paper money, to make it that much harder to counterfeit. Well, all right, with 39 percent of counterfeit bills last year being computer and inkjet-generated, surely this is a problem that needs attention.

But surely it needs less immediate attention than the second item, in small print below: "Arafat Says Ready for Cease Fire".

Oh, wait, now (12:00 midnight) the big headline says "It's all about love: test your relationship", while the second lead is "Israeli Tanks Ring Arafat Compound". (Was that before or after he said he was ready for a cease fire?) And the money story is still there, too.

Why do I get the feeling that, if not the world, certainly a world is coming to an end in the Middle East, and AOL's biggest worry is will my hair look OK when it happens?

I know, this makes me about the last computer user in the known world to complain about AOL. I tried not to, really, but do they have to work so hard to look like a parody of themselves?

Call it what it is
Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times thinks that this is the final straw, Saddam Hussein is really in for it now, we should... sue.

No, really. He appears to be serious.

Pundit City and Blogopolis assembled have replied with one voice, but it took James Lileks to say it with just the right je ne se quois:

Now's the time. Let's throw the book at Saddam.
Agreed. Tape it to the nose of a thermobaric explosive.
...Extra credit for those who said �because we don�t know if the next regime will be worse.� Explain, in 50 words or less, how this is possible.

Have I mentioned that Saddam is paying a bounty to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers? Ah, I see I did.

Ready for the big time...
I've finally broken 4000 on the Blogdex list.

Inhuman Rights
I don't mention it much here, but I participate in a radio theater company in my spare time. Several years ago, one of our best writers (the selfsame Ron who has shown up in several comments here) turned in a parody of a talk show interrupted by various non-human rights activists. At the time, we felt it was so over-the-top that real life was unlikely to overtake it.

Smallpox is ... the most endangered viral species on Earth, existing only as two tiny, pitiful imprisoned colonies. Where once great tides of smallpox virus flourished within the bodies of Earth's mammals--

Now, nobody that I know of has actually suggested that smallpox has rights... but yeast?

In answer to Candy Sagon's question regarding whether vegans worry about such things as microbes in yeast [Food, March 13], the answer is yes. ... Being a vegan is more about protesting cruel treatment of living beings than about food choices.

I feel like such a... macro-scale chauvinist. What's left to eat, "circus peanuts"? And when I think of all the cotton that died so that I might have underwear, why, I am wracked with guilt.

Why there is no peace in the Middle East
Here it is, the website for the Country of Palestine.

Take a look at the outline map they use as a background graphic. That's what they want. That's what they're fighting for. That's the least they'll accept.

For those of you having a little trouble seeing it, it's *all* of the west bank, *all* of the Gaza Strip, *all* of the Golan, *all* of Israel as it now exists -- essentially Palestine as it existed pre-1948 (here's a better look at it), Palestine if the state of Israel had never happened.

But they say they'll let the Jews stay, unmolested, if they get that.

"The Palestinians are the only ones with a clear strategy," said NPR's Mara Liasson, on this weekend's Fox News Sunday. We keep forgetting that. It's not like they're being subtle about it. See yesterday's Fox Weblog from Ken Layne: Did you know that the families of the suicide bombers get paid off with $25,000 American? See also Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.'s column at Jewish World Review.

The only thing I'll say about the Academy Awards
Whoopi Goldberg: "America suffered through a great national tragedy but we have recovered. Mariah Carey has already made another movie.''

This is as close as anyone came to acknowledging that anything happened in New York last year.

LATER: Apparently not quite true. There were some comments in the acceptance speeches for the awards to Pearl Harbor and Black Hawk Down -- and at one point late in the show (after most of the country had gone to bed) Whoopi wore a caftan-like thing with "NYPD", "FDNY", and "PAPD" on the back. (I wonder how many people thought that last stands for "Pennsylvania Police Department"? Phil Hendrie offered that opinion on his radio show last night, but then so much of his show is put-on, what do you believe? It's "Port Authority Police Department", the jointly-held NY/NJ agency that had offices in the World Trade Center.)

More links
Jason Bougger just told me about his blog, Theme of Absence. It worked: It's cool. He's the newest of the new links to the left, which now include FoxNews Views (since the new "Fox Weblogs" feature doesn't have a home page of its own, a Major Oversight if you ask me, but who did?), as well as Sgt Stryker, Ipse Dixit, Linda Young, and Dr Weevil.

Hm. Soon I'll have to start weeding...

Absolutely not
I will not fly, if it means I have to walk through one of these new full-body airport x-rays and have my virtual nakedness inspected by off-duty burger-flippers. Ain't gonna happen.

On the other hand, if Jeff Jarvis' "Fly Naked" movement gets off the ground (har har), I might consider it. If the guards are naked too. (Not that I've seen any guards I care to see naked.)

You forgot my name, didn't you?
Susanna Cornett observes that the online Maxim makes no mention of the "Greatest City" survey. That is, extending the metaphor Maxim itself used -- "like a guy juggling different girlfriends, we told them all they were No. 1" -- this must mean they "must not have brought it home to meet the parents." Hee hee.

But if that's true, then when they shipped the New York edition to Philadelphia by mistake, they called out the wrong name in bed.

Life Lessons

My hometown newspaper printed an essay by recent Yale graduate Shawna Gale. The readers at Romenesco's MediaNews had plenty to say about it (as did the readers at Plastic.com, as did Moira Breen, Alice in TV Land and Neal Boortz), but somehow I can't resist taking my own shot.

Even a Yale pedigree could leave one unemployed
By SHAWNA GALE

I worked hard in junior high. I worked harder in high school.

I took home more straight A report cards than any kid in my class. I scored just shy of 1400 on my SATs.

1310 here, not far behind you. And I did it in the days before they recalibrated the scale.

I rode horses. I played tennis and basketball. I taught English as a second language.

I had no social life until I was 17.

How strange. Did you corral a wild horse? Did you play tennis and basketball alone? Did you teach English to an empty room? How could you possibly have done any of these things without interacting with other human beings?

Oh, I see. Those were not social activities. Those were merely boxes on a checklist, variables in an equation that was supposed to solve for some value for U greater than $100K/year. (That was a math joke, y'see... Never mind.)

But I got into Yale. Then I worked harder than I ever had.

You didn't say who paid for it. I'll draw no conclusions. If you earned the money yourself, congratulations. If your parents paid for it, tell them you love them.

I was sure the payoff would be a multitude of attractive, not to mention lucrative, job offers upon graduation. Then the bottom dropped out of the economy.

So far, my Yale degree has secured me an e-mail forwarding address and a lifetime of alumni dues notices. Not exactly what I expected.

I was an English major which, for most people, roughly translates into "I have no marketable skills." But that's not so. I have many valuable skills honed during my days with Dickens, my nights with Nabokov, those wee hours with Woolf.

First of all, you know I can read. And I don't mean read like "Hooked on Phonics" read. I can read long, wordy, small printed works with relative speed and what's more, I can remember what I have read and write long, wordy, papers about it without any trouble. I have developed impressive analytical skills. I am trained to think -- really think -- about everything I read. And I am accomplished at putting those thoughts on paper.

Surely someone who can read -- and not merely read, but read "wordy, small printed works" (like the back of a cereal box?) -- knows the difference between "valuable skills" and "marketable skills." Your confusion of the two, therefore, puzzles me, unless you are angling for a political career. I can't think in what other position the ability to deliberately obfuscate might be a "valuable skill". Law, perhaps.

I was similarly puzzled by the "impressive analytical skills" that nonetheless do not equip you to cope in a competitive world, the nature of which you might have deduced had you applied those skills to ongoing reports in any daily newspaper. I was puzzled, until I realized that the ability to analyze wordy works and put thoughts on paper about them does not translate into the ability to understand those wordy works, or the world they attempt to describe.

At what point did you decide what kind of work you wanted to do for a living? You neglected to mention it. And which of your faculty advisors told you that a major in English was the way to accomplish it? If I were looking for the point where It All Went Wrong, I'd start there.

So where does that all leave me? Unemployed.

You are spectacularly well qualified to teach English. It should be relatively short work for you to satisfy certification requirements: You could be in a classroom by September.

I have taken that Yale degree to marketing firms, publishing companies, advertising agencies, and it has not worked any magic. If I leave the degree behind, I am hired on the spot to wait tables for $10 to $20 an hour depending on tips (and since I have well-developed public relations skills from that internship with the Commission on Human Rights, I will get closer to $20 an hour).

Erase Yale from my past and with little trouble I land a retail position helping rich ladies whose most prized degree is their "Mrs." find handbags to match the only type of investment they know how to make: shoes. Take that degree off my wall and I easily obtain a position at a local Starbucks, serving up nonfat lattes to busy professionals and harried college kids who don't know that the degree they are currently working their butts off for will be worth less than their stainless steel coffee mugs.

So I can earn $0 an hour not working at a marketing firm with my Yale degree, or potentially earn a couple of hundred bucks a night serving up fajitas at Chili's.

I can forfeit a paycheck while not employed with a publishing company, or I can earn seven bucks an hour plus commission folding sweaters at that boutique down the street. I can be broke while the ad agencies keep sending me letters beginning with, "Thank you for submitting your r�sum�. . . ," but you get the picture.

Oh, yeah, I get the picture. Despite everything you're learning about the real-world market value of a degree in English from Yale, you still believe that Yale is right, the rest of the world is wrong, and anyone who can't see that obvious fact is not worth your valuable time.

Find the person at Yale who promised you a cushy job when you graduated and sue. I wouldn't give you such loony advice if I weren't fairly confident that nobody made any such promise. But really, that's the only response your education has prepared you to make.

It is in Yale's -- any college's -- financial interest to keep you in school and continue paying tuition. Whether you're qualified for a job when you leave doesn't affect them at all. Perhaps you've seen those late-night commercials for training institutes promising you a lucrative future in dental hygiene. Compare and contrast with Yale's recruitment brochures.

Will someone please tell me where I went wrong?

Well, here are some suggestions:

Whoever told you that working for a living was beneath you didn't do you any favors.

You can shop your resume in the daytime while slinging fajitas at night, you know. I daresay most of the the waitstaff at my local Chili's are not working their way up the ranks to deputy assistant shift supervisor -- they're just paying the bills.

You have spent the last seventeen years (I'm assuming kindergarten through grade twelve, plus four years of college) being told that school will prepare you for Life. Unfortunately, that's true, but you don't get the biggest lessons until after you graduate:

School is not like Real Life. Education doesn't end when you get your diploma. Now that you're safely away from the halls of ivy, you can start learning something useful. You've just completed the "theoretical" portion of your life's lessons. Now it's time to start on the "practical". If all goes well, this phase lasts the rest of your life.

Education is the key to your future. However, sometimes the future doesn't drive a BMW. Try that key in a second-hand Chevrolet.

More Moore?
Michael Moore is spending an awful lot of time on Fox News these days, which seems like a courageous move given his politics, but even the contentious Bill O'Reilly wasn't moved to challenge him much.

This weekend he will make another appearance on Judith Regan Tonight. Is anybody going to point out that Judith Regan is his publisher?

War news
Look, I realize that it can be frustrating to cover the Pentagon, especially when it seems that they can't (or won't) get their facts straight. But...

[Victoria] Clarke [assistant secretary of defense for public affairs] rejects such criticism. "Everything you hear and see and read out there says the American people have an extraordinary understanding of this ... very unconventional war," she said.
"I think we've made lots of progress" in providing access and information, Clarke said. "I don't think we'll satisfy everybody completely, nor should we."

(Emphasis mine.) Translation: Don't you people know there's a war on?

Short takes
Sarah Brady bought a gun.

The Taliban were working on biological weapons.

The Democrats just set a soft-money donation record! (Is this their way of forcing President Bush to sign the Incumbent Protection Act? "Look what we'll do if you don't"?) (Link requires free registration.)

InstaPundit likes this column by Mark Steyn. So do I.

Short takes
In an interesting twist on the multiple-cover "collectors' issues" many magazines indulge in (knock it off already!), Maxim magazine released thirteen different versions of its current issue, each released in a different geographical region, each naming a different city as the "Greatest City on the Earth". The Freep blows the whistle, and the NY Press explains it. (Uh-oh: The "New York" issues got sent to Philadelphia newsstands. Oops.)

Look, I know that teachers sometimes show movies to their classes, but what were they thinking when they chose Mel Brooks' "History of the World, Part One"?

And what a relief it is that "Live" can go on without Regis or Kelly.