Update: You can donate to help victims of the tsunami. Skip your next DVD purchase; they need it more than you need season 5 of Sex and the City.

Jesus fuck. 46,000 dead, and they're nowhere near done counting the casualties yet, and we're not including all the ones who are going to die of hunger and disease in the next few weeks and months. It's twenty-three times more than those who died in 9/11, an incident which spawned two wars and counting. People are yelling about the 1000 dead soldiers in Iraq, people are moaning that smoking kills 500 people a year, that too much salt in their diet is killing 50 people a year, and then the Earth tells us all to get a sense of fucking perspective and wipes out entire communities, a population greater than the entire capital of the country where I was born. There is a group of islands belonging to India called the Nan Kauri islands, which have a population of more than 18,000, with which communication has been completely lost. Some of the islands are now entirely underwater. It's not known what on earth is going on with 18,000 people, and it's not even news because everything else is so fucked over there right now.

We aren't lords of this planet. We aren't even welcome guests. We are an irrelevant eyeblink between ice ages.

Update: I shouldn't blog when I'm sleepy. As a friend has pointed out, those numbers for those other causes of death are totally pulled out of my ass. In fact, both smoking and salt kill many more than 50,000 people a year. I should have picked a smaller cause over which much more fuss is made, such as rail accidents (combined crashes and level crossing incidents are less than 100 people per year).