Parallels

The title character in "Zero Effect," a certain Daryl Zero, fancies himself the world's best private detective. "I always say the essence of my work relies fundamentally on two basic principles: objectivity and observation," he says. To mystery fans, this may sound familiar. "You know my methods, Watson," Sherlock Holmes once said to his trusty assistant. "It is founded upon the observation of trifles. " An objective observer of "Zero Effect" will see that the movie is an attempt to modernize Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famed detective.

It has been a nine-year labor of love for Anthony Giacchino, 36, and he was showing off the near-finished product. His efforts got their first feedback Friday night: a standing ovation from an audience of about 500 who paid $28 apiece and jammed Gordon Theater at Rutgers University-Camden to see his new film, The Camden 28, about a group of Vietnam War protesters who were arrested and put on trial in the early 1970s. "I thought it was very powerful," said Camden Councilman Angel Fuentes, adding that he would try to have the film shown in Camden schools.

Among the guilty pleasure of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, for readers, are the many and richly varied literary references that have bubbled up over the last year from various commentators. These have built up gradually, and I regret I haven't recorded them by date and source. But I suspect there's at least one graduate student somewhere, already hacking into Lexis and Nexis to make a thesis project out of it. Thus far, the most common reference is to Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, with Bill Clinton cast as Jean Valjean and Ken Starr as the obsessive inspector Javert.

AS AN ISRAELI, I don't always feel I'm living in the same universe as the rest of the world. In my universe, Yasser Arafat has violated the Geneva Convention on Human Rights, which calls the murder of noncombatants a crime against humanity in scores of terrorist attacks over the last 18 months that have left hundreds of Israelis dead and thousands injured. In my universe, that makes him a war criminal. But in the parallel universe, it makes him a great freedom fighter who deserves visits from diplomats, sympathy and the offer to head his own state, where he can conceivably continue his activities with a formal cache of even more deadly weapons.

The resurrection of Christ is the most fundamental doctrine of Christianity. As St. Paul harshly warned the Corinthians, "If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. " There is no Christianity without the death and resurrection of Christ. There is also no Christianity without Judaism. Jesus traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, then and now the most important Jewish holiday. The story of Passover - death and renewal into life - is parallel to the story of Easter, death and resurrection.

North Penn's Jami Wilus and Hatboro-Horsham's Mary Ann Wade, both seniors, both reached basketball milestones Saturday by scoring their 1,000th career points. Each player achieved her goal on a free throw in the fourth quarter. Wade's 18 points in the Hatters' 59-28 Suburban One American victory against Springfield on Friday left her 18 shy of the mark heading into the next day's nonleague game at West Chester Henderson. An 80 percent free-throw shooter, Wade has made a huge portion of her points collecting rebounds with her quickness inside and either making the layup or converting the points at the line after being fouled.

It is a striking photograph of Reading Terminal, circa 1950, showing trolleys on Market Street, a Sun Ray drugstore at the corner and a Horn & Hardart automat next to the station entrance in the middle of the block. So it requires no bulging brain to figure out that the picture was made from the PSFS Building, diagonally across the intersection of 12th and Market. "The problem," Susan Oyama was saying Monday at the Library Company of Philadelphia, 1314 Locust St., "was to determine the vantage point from which it was made.

IAM NO fan of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld - or war, for that matter. But I am a fan of my country, its future and history. Iran is on the same path that Germany was on after World War I. Germany, a proud country, was in shambles. Poverty was everywhere. The people were looking for someone to blame and someone to make it better. They found someone to blame in the Jews, and Hitler promised to fix the problem and make Germany great again. We all know how that went. In the early '80s Iraq invaded Iran.

Consider this scenario: After a renegade nation defies an international peacekeeping body, it ignites a powderkeg that leads to war. Does that sound like the current Iraqi inspection saga? It also describes an earlier drama: the road taken by Axis powers toward World War II. The League of Nations, the predecessor to today's United Nations, failed to halt aggression in the 1930s. In 1932, the league censured Japan for occupying Manchuria and Japan withdrew from the weak organization.

Germany has decided to deport the Romanian Gypsies asking for asylum because the neo-Nazis don't want them. In 1941 the Germans decided to deport Gypsies because the Nazis didn't want them. It was part of the Final Solution. The Gypsies, like the Jews, were marked for destruction: 500,000 Gypsies perished in concentration camps. True, this isn't 1941. The Nazis are neo- and the Gypsies are not being deported to camps. They are being sent back to Romania. But Romania, for some, may be no better than a concentration camp.