A number of things:

If radical Muslims could find time to pause in blaming America, they might ponder a statistic that speaks of the real, inner problem: if you subtract oil from the picture, the total exports of all 22 Arab nations, population 280 million, is equal to that of Finland, population 5 million.

Why do TV interviewers frantically tell a guest there’s only 30 seconds left, and then proceed to take up 28 of those seconds asking a final question?

Cad of the year: The ex-boyfriend of the first Miss North Carolina who cratered her chances by telling the local pageant board he had topless photos of her.

Apparently, the latest thing is getting implants in your rear end. Is it unfair to suggest that anyone obsessing about getting implants in their rear end has too much time on their hands?

During the Cold War, with its messy threat of nuclear weapons, and no “front,” I sometimes thought how much clearer and simpler World War II must have been. Now, in the age of terror, I miss the clarity and simplicity of the Cold War.

If you don’t want to read the time through scratches, never buy a watch without a recessed face.

Would anyone be talking about tennis player Anna Kournakova, who has never won a tournament, if it weren’t for her looks?

Is there anything a child loves more than watching a sibling get chewed out by their parents?

I guess if you’re a teen-ager without your own cell phone these days, you’re nobody.

And what’s so urgent about teen-agers’ lives that they can’t walk through even 10 yards of a mall without making or receiving phone calls? Doctors don’t get called as often.

I was in the ethnic section of the grocery store, bought a jar of sweet-and-sour sauce, and left with a question. Isn’t “Ah-So” a politically incorrect name for a line of Chinese foods?

Line of the week heard from another parent: “My son doesn’t eat anything with a shelf life under 5,000 years.”

Wasn’t America supposed to still be in ruins from the Y2K collapse?

If other frustrated players slam and break ping-pong paddles as often as my eldest son and I, then I suggest buying stock in ping-pong paddle companies.

I got an inquiry from a female admirer on my e-mail the other day. “Hallo,” it said, “I wanting to meet man from West Europe/North America/Asian? Men in mine Country not so well. Catreena.” I clicked on the link and found a Russian mail-order bride service. Made me feel real special.

Whatever happened to Tamagotchi?

Not to mention Andrea Thompson, who jumped from “NYPD Blue” to CNN, to oblivion?

Speaking of which, I have a suggestion for a T-shirt to be worn by all anchors of national cable news shows: “Help, I’m chit-chatting between stories, and I don’t know how to stop.”

I saw that writer Clive Barker just sold not only the movie rights to his next book, but the theme park rights. As Time magazine observed, that never happened to Faulkner.

So former General Electric CEO Jack Welch offers his soon-to-be-ex-wife 5 percent or so of his worth in divorce court, and then is miffed that she reveals his obscenely lucrative retirement deal. Duh.

What does it say about the corrupting influence of big money when an admired icon like Welch, worth over half a billion, works a deal so that he doesn’t even have to pay his satellite TV bills?

Of course, Welch has since “nobly” asked GE to stop paying millions each year for his private expenses, but how noble is it to only do so after you’re caught?

A final question: What kind of spineless kiss-ups are the board members who OK these deals? I thought boards were supposed to be watch-dogs, not lap-dogs. Perhaps they will be now.