Thoughts for the Day

“Mother” Earth is scary. No kidding; she can burn us with volcano lava, whip our homes and crush us with tornadoes, choke our lungs with dust (especially in Korea, where the infamous “yellow dust” flows from the Gobi Desert in the spring), drown us in a tsunami … you name it. And in spite of recent events, it just goes on to tell us she ain’t peaceful.

Myanmar’s deadly Cyclone Nargis made landfall on May 2nd and lived until the 3rd, killing well over 100,000 people (and counting), and mind you, the number of people killed by the earthquake/tsunami was about 250,000.

Just a few hours ago China reported a strong earthquake with a magnitude of about 7.8, confirming a kill of about 100 people, but with 900 children collapsed under a school, it is hard to say what happened to the innocent students. Above is a student from the Juyuan Middle School being rescued under the rubble. (News update at DST 10:40 – about 3000 ~ 5000 feared dead with 10,000 injured, with about 80% of the buildings in the area destroyed. http://news.joins.com/article/3143256.html?ctg=1302, Korean JOINS newspaper).

And added to that are tornadoes over the Midwest in the United States, killing 22 people over a mother’s day weekend. Ouch.

Next up is the hurricane and typhoon season for the United States and Korea, respectively. Both haven’t experienced a threat from these monsters in a few years…

Well on a happier note, Obama seems to be getting a better grip over the democratic candidacy in the 2008 presidential elections by evening out the number of superdelegates with Clinton and more “normal” delegates.

Photos thanks to: Cyclone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Nargis_01_may_2008_0440Z.jpg),  China Earthquake,  (http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/12/china.quake/index.html), Mideast Tornadoes (http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/05/11/severe.weather/index.html), Obama vs. Hillary (http://edition.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/)