Remembrances (Veterans, Arafat) and a Redux (Revs. Jerry & Bob Are Back)

Might as well mark a national holiday in honor of veterans with a little bit of poetry, which is exactly what bloggers did this week on Veterans Day. The poem Flanders Fields (which BlogPulse obviously interpreted as a name) showed up as Thursday's burstiest person, and its author, Lieut. Col. John McCrae, emerged as Nos. 2 and 3 on the list. References to Veterans Day also showed up in several contexts among key phrases.

For the first time in months, someone other than President George Bush or Sen. John Kerry took the top spot among key people cited in blogs, and that was the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whose first name probably has more spelling variations than most. Also being remembered is writer Iris Chang, who took her own life this week in California. She's best known for writing The Rape of Nanking.

And for political watchers who figured last week's election results just might trigger an American time warp, it's here. The Rev. Jerry Falwell is re-branding and re-marketing his 1970s Moral Majority with a new name: The Faith & Values Coalition. (Like last time, his faith, his values, of course; he also "outed" the purple Teletubby).

And out at Bob Jones University, president Bob himself is making sure Mr. Bush gets the message from the conservative right. Directly from his letter, this verbatim (ahem) example of uniting, not dividing: "Don't equivocate. Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ. Honor the Lord, and He will honor you." So much for separation of church and state. (Here's an interesting exercise: re-read those letters/mission statements and substitute the references to Jesus/Christ with "Allah" or any other religious figure from around the world. Hmmmm....)

Shift to the Internet world, and Microsoft's new MSN Search is being test-driven this week. It's trying to take on Google and Yahoo! for a share of the search engine market. And techie-geeks (we use that phrase with all due respect) got a kick out of a Carnegie Mellon student's hidden-message $1,337 wager on Jeopardy's college tournament this week. Seems the numbers 1337 in "leetspeak" stand for "elite."

TREND OF THE DAY: Keeping an eye on the Middle East's key players will be intriguing as Arafat's replacements emerge and assume control.