Silly Season

Two bits of silliness from the Pakistani media today.

The first comes from Geo Online (thanks to Huma Imtiaz for pointing it out). Please note the illustration to go with a factual report about a European study that shows that "Further education helps reduce memory loss."

Yes, that would be Homer Simpson. I wonder if the graphics guy is the same who passed off a map of Tolkien's fictitious Middle Earth as a map of Waziristan on Geo News for ages...

The second bit of silliness is from the Express Tribune which carries on its back page a potentially very interesting report about a Pakistani scientist who analyses forensic data from suicide blasts. I say 'potentially' of course because ET's reporter and/or subeditors manage to turn the story into a bit of a funny farce.

For example, this is how they present one aspect of the findings graphically:

Yes, that caption reads: "Just by changing the way a crowd of people stand near a suicide bomber can reduce deaths by 12 per cent." Lovely. I'm sure people would just love to be arranged properly around a suicide bomber.

But wait, there's a slight problem. According to the article:

"The analysis also shows that announcing the threat of a suicide blast in a crowd could result in higher casualties."

...Mainly because people tend to stampede "in one direction", ostensibly away from the suicide bomber, instead of waiting to be arranged in the right formation, stupid gits.

Oops. So the trick would be to get the people to arrange themselves in the correct formation without really knowing that some of them (those not in the 12 per cent) were about to be blown to smithereens. Hmmmm. The actual substance of what the scientist is saying is far more nuanced I can assure you.