You think you know the news? Try this quiz.

A very popular cartoon has the caption, 'My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane.' The cartoonist says it dates from the Clinton administration, so the problem isn't new. But we know how the cartoon characters feel.

Particularly when you reflect that all of these headlines appeared in the last month. We can prove it.

Ouch.

1. Trump Adviser Repeats Baseless Claims of Voter Fraud. This one's from National Public Radio, but a lot of other news outlets had similar headlines. It's not just the New York Times that has taken to labelling official public utterances as 'false', 'baseless', or 'inaccurate' in their headlines. Forewarned is forearmed, we suppose.
2. Officials Order Evacuation for Residents Below California Dam. Also NPR. 'Run for your life, the dam's breaking!' isn't a blast from the past.
3. North Korea Conducts Ballistic Missile Test. We wish they wouldn't.
4. Yale to Rename Calhoun College for Computer Scientist Grace Hopper. This from New York Magazine, but it's causing general rejoicing. Why? Oh, John C. Calhoun was not only a former vice president of the U.S. He was a notorious racist and premature secessionist. Even Andrew Jackson couldn't stand him. Oh, and here's his photo. Naming a college after Grace Hopper is much more encouraging to students. Go, Yale!
5. Pig No Longer Harasses Residents of an Oregon Town. Piggy Smalls, or Notorious P.I.G., left a trail of damage in the wake of his trotters. He is now safely in custody by Animal Rescue.
6. Mein Kampf a Best Seller in Germany. It's an annotated edition. Wait a year, and ask everybody how far they got in that turgid prose. We're betting page 35 or so.
7. $60 Million Worth of Cocaine Washes Up on Beach. Near Great Yarmouth. The police asked people to watch out for more. Not take it. Just find it.
8. China Officials Punished for Dozing in Motivation Meeting. The offending officials had to write 'self-criticisms' and apologise publicly. Could we borrow this technique for the US government? Please? I want the Education secretary to write 500 times on a chalkboard, 'I will not misspell things on tweets. It makes the Department of Education look dumb.'
9. Very Old, Charming – er – Thing Goes on Display in Athens. It's 7000 years old, you can't buy one in the Plaka, and nobody knows what it is. Oh, oh: I know what you call something in Greek when you don't know what it is. You call it a τετοια. Really. This is experience talking. It's Greek for 'thingamajig'.
10. Hottest Cut of All – Gaza Barber Wields Blowtorch. For 20 shekels, you can trust your scalp to a guy with a blowtorch. Last time I saw a man with a blowtorch in the Mediterranean area, he was taking pinfeathers off a chicken. This barber wants to prove that Palestinian barbers are as 'professional as those out there around the world.'

Now that you have read all that, you are smarter than before. But are you saner?

Dmitri Gheorgheni

06.03.17 Front Page

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