[lbo-talk] A tale of two cities

George Scialabba scialabb at fas.harvard.edu
Thu Jul 13 12:28:26 PDT 2006


Highly misleading. You've forgotten to apply the well-known HowLikeUs Casualty Significance Scale. Taking only the most familiar measures:

Distance from us: London, 3000 mi.; Mumbai, 6000 mi. (discount significance by .5) Closeness of victims' language to English: London, identical; Mumbai, distant (discount by .25) Closeness of victims' religion to Christianity: London, identical; Mumbai, distant (discount by .25) Victims' comparative educational attainment in years (estimated): London, 14.3; Mumbai, 8.9 (discount by .33) Victims comparative income level in $US (estimated): London, $60K, Mumbai, $20K (discount by .67)

It will easily be seen that, by these virtually universally-accepted criteria for how seriously to take the sufferings of others, the Mumbai bombings actually shrink to negative significance. It was actually rather thoughtless of you to bring them to our notice at all.

At 01:56 PM 7/13/2006, you wrote:
>London bombings 7/7/2005:
>
>Posts on on LBO talk on first three days (7/7 to 7/9): 26
>Number of posters: 23
>Death toll: 52
>
>
>Mumbai bombings 7/11/2006:
>Posts on on LBO talk on first three days (7/11 to 7/13): 3
>Number of posters: 1
>Death toll: at least 200
>
>Thought this was an interesting statistic.
>
>- Sujeet
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk



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