statistically speaking

-- If, roughly speaking (and there are arguments), 10 percent of all human beings are left-handed, I wonder what percentage is ticklish.

-- Generosity seems to lie in the eye of the beholder, but to the extent that nations can be described as generous, I think I would cast my vote for Lebanon, which was portrayed yesterday as having notched up its one-millionth refugee from neighboring Syria's civil war. Whether this statistic had a bean-counting factuality to it or whether it was simply a number adduced as a means of getting the attention of those whose generosity was sorely lacking hardly matters: If the gods look kindly on those who are generous, Lebanon and its sacrifices have racked up some godly points.

-- Am I wrong or is there a strange disconnect between the richest corporation in the world (the Roman Catholic Church) and its CEO's wildly popular call to serve those who are least cared for -- the raggedy and wretched?

And, associatively, I wonder why the Roman curia -- the cardinals associated with powerful Vatican fiefdoms said to be agitated/angered by the direction Francis has chosen to publicly promote -- elected him pope in the first place. Surely they must have seen the handwriting on the wall: I can imagine the papal vetting process to be nothing short of CIA standards. Why vote for a man who might gore your ox unless you were either stupid or belonged to a group that was marginally less venal than it is sometimes portrayed? Or perhaps it was just a question of faute de mieux.