To me, tragedy is like emotional novocaine. A force within myself far more primitive and with much greater priority than my consciousness will inevitably intervene, pulling the plug on my ability to feel anything. What I would like to do is to devote my life to ending the stupidity of man once and for all. The seriousness of matters like climate change is redefining my opinions on rights of property. Who knows what will come now? Though I am unsure of why, I feel it will be struggle, for supremacy, for control, for recognition. I have to go now; we will discuss later.

Something came to me today. If this was, as you submitted, "some sort of ritualistic cleansing, fashioned in the bowels of the Earth," and there was somehow some sense and meaning behind it, I would hope it would have targetted Western society instead. There is so little good here, anymore, and so much stupidity for every unit of progress.

Yeah, but if this was some sort of ritualistic cleansing thing, it would be more likely to strike there, there being

a) fault lines under sufficient cummulative stress to cause a 9.0 earthquake,

b) sufficient distance from shore, and suffcient depth, to cause tsunami's of such magnitude,

and c) if it was deliberately designed (by whom?) to decrease the population of the earth, there are just simply more people in that area of the world than in the entirety of the Western world. Or, at least, there was.

For myself, I'm still trying to grasp the sheer size of the numbers. And why it is that the talk show hosts care more about 55 year old women having hormone treatments to bear their daughter's children than the fact that so many people are dying.

b)

* GRAPHIC WARNING - NOT FOR THE WEAK *
Darryl's Stupid Pictures :: /tsunami
for those who like pictures... they certainly speak more than any article I could read.

Who took those photos?

a bunch of people.
here's a bigger archive
Waveofdestruction.org - Photos and Videos from the aftermath of the Indian Ocean Tsunami.

Wave, Goodbye - its not personal just plate techtonics: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/tectonics.html
Our planet does not know we are even here as we exist because of the 1 foot of topsoil and 20% oxygen, at the very extremety of its 8 thousand mile diameter. The Eastern portion of the Indian plate moved (the plate that is driving North and forming the Himalayas) and caused the tragedy, this plate is sliding by the 'ring of fire', the Pacific plate, whose Eastern edge is diving under the edge of the America plate causing intermittant quakes from South America (forming the Andes) through California (forming the Rockies) to Alaska. It will never end and as our planet warms and the North Pole ice melts costal areas, like those just devastated, will not be the places for human kind to live!

Suggest try this animation, refresh, and watch the Indian plate.

Sorry, forgot the link: Plate tectonics animation

Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I'm throughly embarrassed by our government. And not for the first time, either.