I was just listening to an NPR broadcast (again, in the car) about the hostilities in Kashmir. It was a perfectly fine report but, as my wife will tell you, I have a bad habit of nickel-and-diming the writing in news broadcasts particularly about completely useless or wrong bits of information the reporter throws in. For example, in the NPR piece this morning the reporter briefly profiled a Pakistani widow she described as “a young woman in her thirties with dark hair.” Um, forgive me, but who among the residents of the Kashmir region doesn’t have dark hair? Isn’t this one of the least telling details possible? Oh and please spare me the anecdotes about the rare blond in Pakistan. The point is that as far as details go this is akin to saying a “young woman in her thirties with thumbs.”