LET'S COMPARE

On this side, my wife has so far spent 381 days assisting in the liberation of 25 million people.

On that side, a woman the same age shows her panties.

Elizabeth Eve never thought of herself as an exhibitionist. But these days, the 33-year-old history professor with the gold nose ring can barely contain the urge to lift her skirt and flash her skivvies.

"There is something so liberating and exciting about it, you've got to try it out," she said recently as she fidgeted, fully clothed, on the couch in her friend Tasha's Manhattan apartment. "I was teaching a class on imperialism, " she continued, "and I was delivering all this material that was kind of new and upsetting, and everyone was getting all worked up and upset, and I was getting all worked up and upset, and all of a sudden, all I wanted to do was flash my underwear! It was crazy," she said with a throaty giggle.

LATE THOUGHTS: Don't know which is most surprising. (a) One considers the content of one's message to be worthy of no greater platform than one's underwear. (b) A college professor finds "Bush" jokes hilariously funny. (c) A history professor, presumed to be an educated authority in her subject, finds material in her subject to be "upsetting" (what...has something changed?) Or finally (d), this professor teaching about imperialism found something in history she believes she can blame on President Bush.

Positively loopy.