BEFORE AND AFTER PICTURES

I'm drawn to comparisons and when things are done to my house, I take before and after pictures...at least most of the time.  Had I not done that, I would not have noticed that workmen stole about twenty cobblestones and claimed they were under the debris.

Today, we have satellite pictures of the before and after of the tsunami taken from satellite.  Man is extremely resilient.  In a few years, Japan will have rebuilt just as Californians keep building their houses on hills that keep having mudslides or forest fires destroy them.  If before and after pictures were posted prominently in some of those areas, it would probably still not stop people from living and constructing their material lives in such insecure spaces.

Protest marches are 'before' pictures.  In Egypt, the 'after' pictures were happy.  Not so in Libya where Qaddafi has hired mercenaries and is killing his own people who are protesting.

We record so much before and after as we age, diet, change hairstyles and clothing, friends, and, most importantly, clean up after Nature has decided to visit us with disasters....hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes,  tsunamis, monsoons, lightning strikes, volcanoes, and all the other things that intrude into our lives.

NATURE'S TERRORISM AND VIOLENCE

From the News Tribune in Washington City, Missouri:  "A series of tornadoes in the south and mid-western US kills seven people, injures several others and causes power cuts for thousands"

 In Kansas, there were tornado shelters that I saw in movies and read about as I was growing up.  Our way of life no longer has us out on our farms where we can easily do that any longer.

We try to protect ourselves against the damage man can do but ar we doing enough to protect against Nature?  Should we be building homes on slopes that are known for mudslides?  Should we continue to build homes directly on the seashores?  Should we continue to ignore the lwarnings that Nature is giving us constantly?

It seems we invest vast amount of money on security from a human enemy, but is it not equally important to secure ourselves against Nature's destruction somehow?  There are, indeed, some things against we cannot protect but, for example, we have failed to protect ourselves from drug lords.  If drugs were legalized and the monies used to fight the 'drug war' were spent elsewhere, would it not be put to better use to save more lives?

Why is it that American priorities are so skewed?  Governor Jan Brewer preferred spending millions on prisons in Nevada while refusing transplants to the two  fathers of several children.  What is wrong with the choices made when politicians have life and death power of their constituents?

EARTHQUAKES

It is a quirk of human nas that when things are bad we do not remember them as having been so bad before.  I thought there were more earthquakes than ever before in a year but have come to realize that is probably not so.  It is just that the world has gotten so small, we get instant media coverage and feel as though we are seeing what we have never seen before (probably true but not that it hasn't happened before).

There is a wonderful site that lists twenty years of world earthquakes, location, and numbers killed by them.
Click here.

It proves that no place is really safe in this world from the dangers that Nature offers.  We suffer avalanches, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, lightning, mudslides, tornadoes, tsunamis, volcanoes, and wildfires.  National  Geographic has described these pictorially exceptionally graphically.  For example, wildfires:  There are three conditions that need to be present in order for a wildfire to burn, which firefighters refer to as the fire triangle: fuel, oxygen, and a heat source.


For anyone who is interested in all of them, read this article.