WEEKLY WHINE

Reduction in complexity

Which events are important to you? All of them, or none of them?

Your answer was probably something along the lines of “some of them”. If so, you apparently believe that ours is a complex and nuanced world, one where there are no easy answers to any question and where the most simple problems can often have the most complicated solutions.

If that is an accurate description of the way you feel about the world, you are clearly not watching enough news coverage on television. So you should go watch various other television news stations, and then come back when you are ready to shout your simplistic opinions at anyone and everyone who may disagree with you.

If you are still not ready to shout your simplistic opinions at anyone and everyone who may disagree with you, you are clearly not watching the right news coverage on television. So you should go to India and watch their television news stations.

Back already? How was India? Did you learn how to be a television pundit?

Okay, you can stop shouting now.

No! Wrong! You see, you have committed the fatal flaw of actually complying when somebody asks you to stop shouting. The correct response is to continue shouting the same thing you were just shouting, only louder. You are also encouraged to accuse the person who asked you to stop shouting of trying to stifle your voice, followed by insisting that the truth will come out and that the person who asked you to stop shouting will soon regret it.

Good. Well done.

Okay, but we really do need you to stop shouting now.

Oh, forget it. Whenever you’re ready to stop shouting, please look at these continuing stories that are being covered on the GoobNet Satellite Programming Live Using Television network.

WAR FOR IRAQ
Kurdish forces reclaim dam, invite IS to go away

LIVE FROM COMET 67P/​CHURYUMOV-GERASIMENKO
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CENTENARY OF WORLD WAR I
World remembers war by forgetting just how disastrous it actually was

WAR FOR FERGUSON, MO
Liberals, libertarians suddenly have more than five letters in common

ALS ICE BUCKET CHALLENGE
Famous people are all wet; also, famous people are all wet

YOUTH OLYMPICS BEGIN IN NANJING
Events include rugby sevens, basketball threes, baseball zeroes

EUROPEAN FOOTBALL SEASON BEGINS
Suárez’s biting days over; you won’t believe what he’s going to do when he returns

ROBIN WILLIAMS: 1951-2014
This morning not so good in Vietnam, all other nations