Warning: the following is a non-PC statement

January 13, 2005 · Filed Under In the News 

You may want to lynch me after reading this, or at least tell me to denounce my citizenship.

10 DEAD IN MUDSLIDE!!! OH THE HUMANITY!

1) 10 people is nothing. Worldwide, 10 people die of AIDS every 2 minutes. Of course, if you know one of these people, 1 can mean everything, but c’mon, to the general public, this should not be MAJOR HEADLINE news for several days.

2) These people are not poor, they are quite wealthy if they are living on a hillside in CA. One would also assume they are not stupid (I know, big assumption here). If you live on an eroding hillside, you are occasionally going to have to deal with mudslides.

3) A mudslide occurred on this very spot in 1995. One neighbor was interviewed complaining that the residents had petitioned the CA government to tier the hillside to avoid future mudslides. They were talking about suing the government for negligence. Of course, several million should have so obviously been spent to tier this hillside, because CA has so much money, and it would be much better spent on protecting these few homes than buying schoolbooks or paying schoolteachers.

4) Why didn’t the neighbors get together, buy some trees at bulk prices, and plant them on the hillside? Much cheaper than tiers and the tree roots help to stop erosion. Maybe this is unreasonable to ask…

I’m sorry, I know that losing a friend or loved one is extremely difficult and the residents, family, and friends of those affected are in a lot of pain now, and I feel bad for them. But I’m having a lot of trouble with the media attention that is being given to this disaster. Especially when half the population of some Indonesian cities were drowned, washed out to sea or pummeled to death against cars and buildings without warning; and there are 1 million preventable deaths from malaria every year, and according to the WHO website:

The vast majority of malaria deaths occur in Africa, south of the Sahara, where malaria also presents major obstacles to social and economic development. Malaria has been estimated to cost Africa more than US$ 12 billion every year in lost GDP, even though it could be controlled for a fraction of that sum.

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