These past few days have been quite newsworthy in terms of statistical numbers. Those unseen and unheard wizards of figures and numbers quite often come up with amazing figures relative to our world.

For example, there was a piece in the news about 4,000 new schools being built. Exactly 4,000, I wonder? Or was it just a conveniently rounded figure? And then again, where would all the students come from to fill 4,000 schools in one go? And how about the teachers and school administrators to operate these institutions?

Then there was an item about 500,000 Indonesian guest workers here. But the actual figure was close to 600,000. Now which one is it? Where are the unexplained one hundred thousand. Because I know that a 100,000 is a very large number, and you certainly cannot toss that many people into oblivion, now can you?

And finally, from the guru of statisticians‚ came up an item that the rate of inflation here is ZERO, yes, zero and will continue to remain so until the end of the year. Now I’ve just received my electricity bill yesterday, and it has jumped five-fold from the previous month. Makes me ponder upon what structured formulas these geniuses of numbers were using to figure this out: scientific or psychic?

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The following piece has been floating around for some time, author unknown. It has its place in today’s world, and especially more so in and around this region.

There was an old man, a boy, and a donkey. They were going to town and it was decided that the boy should ride. As they went along they passed some people who thought that it was a shame for the boy to ride and the old man to walk. The old man and boy decided that maybe the critics were right, so they changed positions.

Later, they passed some more people who thought that it was a real shame for that man to make such a small boy walk. The two decided that maybe they both should walk.

Soon they passed some more people who thought that it was stupid to walk when they had a donkey to ride. The man and the boy again decided that maybe the critics were right, so they agreed that they both should ride.

They soon passed other people who thought that it was a shame to put such a load on a poor little animal. The old man and the boy once again decided that maybe the critics were right, so they decided to carry the donkey.

As they crossed a bridge they lost their grip on the animal and he fell into the river and drowned.

The moral of the story is if you try to please everyone, you will eventually lose your jackass.

Until next week, then.

Tariq A. Al-Maeena ([email protected])