January 1, 2005
Happy New Year!I've barely written in the past 6 weeks, but I'm alive and kickin'. I can easily drop the "I've been very busy" excuse, but if I really wanted to post something I could have. In those six weeks, I've probably spent more time away from home than at home, and the weekends turn into "get back to life" sessions for bills and such. Work is crazy, which is good and bad, i.e. no life but I do have job security in that they can't fire me if I'm not there :).A lot has happened, especially given the enormous tragedy in southern Asia. I've been keeping up quite a bit on the news during my sabbatical, and I feel like there's so little I can do. However, I would encourage you to donate something to a reputable charity if you haven't done so already. Go here to see several good charities. I look at the victims and see how much I/we have in America, and I find myself fighting off guilt. That said, this tragedy transcends borders, race, and religion, with the death toll now predicted to top 150,000. It makes 9/11 seem pretty inconsequential, huh? I have one picture from the paper version of the USA Today that forces lucidity. Unfortunately, I can't find it online, but it shows a bunch of debris puddled up against a beach, and in the debris are dozens and dozens of human corpses. It's unbelievable.
Posted by charr at 12:52 PM
Reader Comments
I don't know about the tsunami making 9/11 seem inconsequential. I don't think that the two envents can be fairly compared or contrasted. The tsunami was an act of nature; there was no harmful intent on the part of the earthquake that caused the tsunami. 9/11 was a willful act of violence against people by people. Sure the tsunami killed more people. But it's a bit like comparing deaths resulting from the actions of a serial killer to deaths resulting from cancer. I think you've got some apples and oranges here.
Jan, thanks for your correction. I actually commented on Heather's blog about 9/11 not being inconsequential, yet here I went and used that same word. Oops. What I was getting at with that adjective here was purely the scale of numbers of dead and how in the tsunami disaster we're looking at 50 times the number of dead.You're right that they are completely different though, with one being murder and one being an accident, so to speak.
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I don't know about the tsunami making 9/11 seem inconsequential. I don't think that the two envents can be fairly compared or contrasted. The tsunami was an act of nature; there was no harmful intent on the part of the earthquake that caused the tsunami. 9/11 was a willful act of violence against people by people. Sure the tsunami killed more people. But it's a bit like comparing deaths resulting from the actions of a serial killer to deaths resulting from cancer. I think you've got some apples and oranges here.
Posted by Jan at January 7, 2005 6:27 AM