In important international health news, BBC News Online's Health division decided this week to cover an obscure article in an obscure academic journal which covers the important subject of the Arabic versus Hebrew language.
The findings? That Arabic is "hard for the brain" because the alphabet is so squiggly (or something scientific like that).
This begs the question not of why this article was accepted by an academic journal, or why the study was even carried out, but why BBC News online deemed it important enough to cover.
And who has taken on this hilarious scientific breakthrough? A popular online Japanese anime community. Why? Because, according to actual Japanese people, the various Japanese alphabets (there are several kinds including katakana, kanji and hiragana) are incredibly difficult to differentiate even for native Japanese readers. These Japanese anime enthusiasts want to know why their language wasn't included in this study of alphabets that are hard for brains.
It turns out that while Arabic is apparently "hard for the brain," Japanese is even harder. It also turns out that the BBC will cover just about anything, as long as it isn't bigoted, invalid, or generally ridiculous.