Follow-up

On the radio I just heard an ad for UNICEF's relief efforts for the tsunami victims. At the end it said, "Let's create a tsunami of hope." I couldn't decide if that was poor taste or simply an incredibly bizarre decision on the part of the ad writers, but either way, it didn't exactly make me want to run out and create my own natural disaster of goodness.

I should also add, in reference to my last post, that I do believe the tsunami victims need every bit of help they're getting. The death toll (now at more than 150,000) could easily double if disease begins to spread from lack of clean water and medical supplies. So obviously much help is needed quickly. But if the world can pull together for this, why do we have such a hard time with other things? True, we can't pour money into the scores of problems that need fixing, but we could try focusing on one or a few at a time. It also seems like the region plays a lot into how much attention problems get. Africa, especially, tends to be largely ignored. The Rwandan genocide, the mass deaths in Sudan (we're still not calling that genocide), the AIDS crisis -- all went or continue to go without much notice. There was a recent article about the deaths in Congo and their outlook on the world's generosity to the tsunami victims while they watch 1,000 people, mostly children, die every day from war-related disease and starvation.