sri lanka tsunami
I am a cold-hearted, forked-tongued, sarcastic and callous bastard, but even I feel something for the poor people of Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, and everywhere else that were devastated by the tsunami on December 26th. The death toll is now estimated unbelievably at over 68,000 80,000 125,000. The UN is calling the relief/rescue effort “the biggest in history.”
I have heard rumors that the waterline receded more than 1000 before the wave hit, and some people ran out to investigate. If that’s really true, those people deserved to die, but the others I still feel bad for. Unless Moses himself was standing there with a staff above his head yelling, “Let my people go!” I would be found nowhere near a 1000 foot receding shoreline. Period.
Blog coverage has been amazing, and my primary source of information in the last few days. Boingboing has compiled a long list (look at the “previous posts”) and has been great since the news hit days ago. I found this link to these amazing satellite images of the Sri Lanken coastline before and after the tsunami. Stunning.
Here is 1.2MB animation (GIF) showing the spread of the tsunami from the epicenter of the earthquake. It’s pretty amazing. [via kottke.]
UPDATE: American “stinginess” is in full effect, as demonstrated by the millions collected via every possible web channel, with the exception of Microsoft:
- Amazon.com has collected $1.5 million via one-click donations.
- Apple.com dedicates its entire homepage to relief effort links.
- Google.com collects every available donation location.
- boingboing dedicates 80% of its recent energy towards the relief and news distribution since this disaster (the other 20% to DRM).
- tsunamihelp.blogspot.com springs up to collect information and link to donations.
[via boingboing.]
nasa earth observatory
more info about the tectonic plates
Hi,
I’m from S’pore. Regarding USA “stinginess”, I would sought to differ.
From start, USA was either 1st or 2nd in terms of monetary help. I think people are either comparing USA to Japan or EU or taking potshots at USA.
Standing from a neutral ground, I think USA has gave a lot of help. Other than monetary help (from government, companies & public), she gave a lot of physical assists such as food, medical, water relief & also transportation. Just take a look at how many warships, planes and carriers she had used. These are also cost
USA relationship with the rest of the world can be a love and hate relationship. So I deemed that the top brass may have taken this into consideration. If US were to provide too much help immediately, countries may get suspicious.
Japan has also offer a lot of help other than US. But there will always a niggering sound behind people mind that she just trying to improve her image, so that she had a better chance of getting into UN security council that she had been trying to enter for many years.