1. buddhism - sri lanka earthquake, Yahoo, from the Pacific Rim (Russian Federation Zone 5)
2. burma tectonic plate, Yahoo, from the U.S. Central Time Zone
3. buddhism tsunami, Yahoo, from Hong Kong
4. phuket tsunami, Technorati, from Central European Time Zone
5. hindu worshipers hit tsunamis, MSN, from the U.S. Central Time Zone
6. top ten world's deadliest tsunamis, Yahoo, from the U.S. West Coast
7. deadliest tsunamis last 100 years, MSN, from the U.S. East Coast
8. graph of deadliest tsunamis, Yahoo, from the U.S. East Coast
9. india/burma geological plate, MSN, from the Rocky Mountain States
10. india plate burma plate, AllTheWeb.com, from the U.S. West Coast
11. tsunami,aceh,picture, Yahoo, from the Pacific Rim (West Australian Standard Time)
12. buddhism tsunami and buddha, tsunami, Yahoo, from the China Coast (Russian Federation Zone 7)
13. indonesian earthquake msn, MSN, from the Alaska-Hawaii Time Zone
14. india burma tectonic plate, OptusNet Search, from Australia
15. tsunami picture sumatra, Yahoo, from the Pacific Rim (West Australian Time Zone)
16. missing tsunami, HotBot, from Germany
Sure, there was still one more Michael Crichton hit, a Shokai search, and, interestingly, an AltaVista search from Germany for the words Messner, Nanga and DNA which referred all the way back to my June 26 blog entry. But what I see today is that many people are searching the Internet for news, information, and spiritual guidance on the disaster in Asia. And if 16 of those searches led to this crappy little insignificant blog, I can only imagine how much traffic is out there at the useful sites.
So, it seems that in addition to Americans, there are Chinese, Australians and Europeans who have visited this site looking for information or opinion about the tragedy. And what do they find here? Pictures of Petra Nemcova! I hope that my readers realize that I did not single her out as the lone victim to discuss because my compassion is so limited that I only care about the hot supermodel victim, or that my sympathy does not extend to the now 120,000 Asians who have perished so far. I meant it more as an ironic statement about the American news coverage of the event, which has focused more on the tourists in Phuket and the European and American victims than on the vastly greater number of Asian victims.
In her blog "C'est What?," Paige points out that there is no great set of images to link us to this event, and quotes Guy-Ernest Debord: "In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation." She says, "The tsunami has become another 'Us' versus 'Them,' in which Western media and society doesn't care what happens to the 'others.'" In other words, the disaster is just plain bad television, and we've become so infatuated by the media that if it can't be represented in a single iconic image or a 10-second film clip, we get bored, and click the remote to the next channel.
This is Paige:
Blogger extraordinaire Tony Pierce, author of How To Blog, uses provocative pictures to lure horny guys to his site and to keep them coming back. "Men are easily distracted, visual creatures," he says, "therefore you need to make your page visually appealing to them. Especially if your content is so-so." And as I said, the single iconic image is more important in today's media than the content . . .
Things didn't work out very well for my Mom in the football pool last night - both of her teams lost, and she is now alone in last place, trailing the Witch Doctor by five games. I trail by three, but I'm hoping to pick up a game on the Witch Doctor with a North Carolina win over BC. Also, I'm the only one who picked Troy State over Northern Illinois (who are these guys?), so a win there would give me one-up on everybody else. Since there's four games today, a lot of smoke will have cleared by the end of the day.
Sent: Wed 12/29/2004 5:33 AM
Subject: RE: Quake Disaster - How you can help
Dear Colleaques,
Thank you to all who e-mailed to express their concern. All Singapore & Malaysia staff and their families are fine although we have not been able to contact a staff currently on leave.
Malaysia was less impacted by the tsunami compared to Thailand and Indonesia while Singapore was not affected at all. Nevertheless, we're all shocked by the scale of the tragedy and the locations affected - these are places that we would likely vacation at with our families.
A number of relief and humanitarian agencies such as the International Red Cross and Red Crescent are available in Singapore and Malaysia to receive donations as well. At the moment, at least in Singapore, the agencies have only asked for donations.
Take care,
Juliana D.
Singapore
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