Why is it that we spend countless hours on this forum blabbing about any wish-wash and not one person makes a peep about the tens of thousands of people who suddenly died while trying to enjoy christmas vacation? Shame on you!!!

In 1999, approximately 41,000 people died from car accidents in the United States alone. Approximately 16,000 of these involved alcohol. On top of these, 3 million people were injured in car accidents in the United States the same year.

This just accounts for car accidents in a single country. Countless hundreds of thousands — millions worldwide — die every year, but that's not as dramatic as a couple thousand being wiped out at once.

Suddenly, ten thousand dead from a tsunami seems so much less important — like a drop of water in the ocean.

Sadly, it's gone up to 84000 deaths. I'd say that the amount injured should be ten times as much. The amount who have lost body parts should be 1/3 the amount injured.

In any case, if anyone here in Allegro wants to help (which I personally doubt), here's a number.

American Red Cross
International Response Fund
PO Box 37243
Washington, DC 20013
800-HELP-NOW
www.redcross.org

Why, this is a programming forum and not a discuss-giant-disasters one. That's one reason for the wish-wash.
Another one may be that it really doesn't concern most of us enough, pls there's not much of a point in discussing it. It all comes down to "It's so horrible all those people died there. If only anybody could have done anything to prevent this!" But that's how natural disasters are, you can't prevent them from happening, and it's nobody's fault (at least not this one). Anyway, there's not much of an opinion to have here.
And then there is the fact that those numbers are just plain too big for us to grasp. We can't even cope with a single death easily. And whether 2000 people die or 2 million, it's all just an enormous disaster.
Anyway, if you want to go for the numbers, IIRC, the number of Tsunami deaths is pretty much the same as the number of people starving to death in Africa each day - I haven't heard anyone talk about this one in a while either.

I agree with Bobo. I donated 84 dollars. It was all I could donate. I will donate again after New Year.

I do. I have.

Why? It's demonstrate that, in big disasters, people tends to be more supportive, even if they are not affected.

Remember September 11th and March 11th: i never thought that people could be so friendly, supportive and helpful. A lesson of humanity.

I care. I wlil probably donate.. just don't know if i want to do it throgh the red cross. If you give the money to them, chances are it will never reach the people who need it (or atleast half will be gone by then)

There are a bunch of bank collection funds setup up here in NY to help with the families who lost loved ones. Prolly donate to one of them.

Well Casco, the people here in Allegro would post about anything. The off-topics forum is always bigger than the other forums. More emphasis is put to talking about other things than game design/development itself. If people dedicate happy birthday posts and talk about their personal problems (which is something that does not concern me), I don't see why it's so hard to dedicate one simple post to honor the earthquake deaths. Maybe a post named "Dedication to Earthquake Victims" would be nice. Since this has not been done, and since people are defending themselves with statistics, why should I expect a lot of people to donate? Yanking out statistics about the thousands of people that die due to other causes is like saying that "If someone died, then who cares? You're not the only one". A different response to my first question would have been more appropriate. Saying that is just plain cold hearted. Since a number of Allegro members act this way, I don't see why I shouldn't doubt people will not donate.

Regarding the donation centers, there are many out there. I just mentioned the red cross because a close friend of mine works there. Any other center would be fine.

Topics on current events tend to be closed quickly, so no one bothers. Case in point: Matthew threatened anyone who posted on the American election with an instant ban. RP probably would have (maybe) made it one of his news threads, but I haven't seen him in a while (think he's on vacation) ...

Have fun jumping to conclusions anyway though, Fozzie.

There was only one response in this thread before you doubted that people would donate.
And as far as my first response is concerned: I was not defending myself, rather trying to find explanations why so few people post about this particular disaster.

I should have placed the word EDIT, but the phone number and comment was given out after you posted.

Matthew would not ban a message related to this.

EDIT:

It's okay. My job here is done. There's nothing more to do, so I'm outta here.

Time for me to shake up some more action, seeing as how it seems my point was missed last time around...

This is what annoys me:

Looking at facts, we quickly realize that tens of thousands of people die every day as it is. Shame on you, dear Bobo, for not mentioning these every day and not mourning for them like you do with the tsunami victims! And how dare you attempt to shame us for not posting about the tsunami victims, when you so clearly don't care enough to post about all the other thousands who die every day from starvation, disease and lack of fresh water?

I can stand not caring, and I can stand people throwing their money at the red cross, but I can't stand hypocrisy.

I work at the red cross along with my close friend (6 years now). I'm very sorry if you feel you have to accuse me of being so. It's deja-vu again. I do not want this to continue.

Simply because you work for them does not mean you can pick and choose who to mourn and who not to. Either mourn them all and make a post everyday, or don't say anything.

The amount of "mourn" is dependent on the coverage in the media.

There's no need to discuss this here, though. We all know what happened, so posting to inform us is pretty useless. Those of us who care and have spare money have already donated. Those who care a bit more donate money to organisations like the red cross and docters without borders regulary anyway.

And then there are millions of people who have had these houses completely destroyed. They are walking around with nothing but the clothes on their backs, I hear there isn't all that much food to hand out to people either. Many people will die from all sorts sickness that come with being cold, homeless and hungry.

So what are you saying? That since a lot of other people die in a lot of other ways, this doesn't matter? That all these people are made less important by the numbers involved in car crashes? It doesn't matter if zero people have died in car crashes or 1000,000 people; the significance of the tsunami is the same. They are unrelated events.

80,000 people in a day vs 41,000 people in a year is not 'like a drop of water in the ocean'. The concentration of this destruction makes for chaos. The damage is far worse than just the body-count.

I don't mean to sound flamey, I just wanted to try to remind people that this is a big thing. If it happened in your country you would see that it is a big thing.

I think this makes the WTC incident seem a lot less severe... Wasn't that around 3,000 deaths?

Edit: In reply to CascoOscuro

Edit 2:

Nice pun Glad to see you care so much.

Just because it isn't talked about.... sigh....
Some people do not talk about the good things they do. It's a sign of humility.
And besides, donations shouldn't be made every time you hear something on CNN. Try donating regularly to a good cause.

I was wondering why no one had posted anything about this. I just didn't expect it to be a 'I'm so much better than you because I posted this' thread.

Exactly, what else can we say?

People who care have donated or helped, it's just they don't make threads to tell all of us how wonderful they're for doing it. People that don't care or cannot help will not be convinced by threads like this.

Honestly, I thought the people here would be more informed on the tragic events. We all know about it. No reason to do collective mourning.. that's what IRC is for.

I could tell you people about my realitives who were off the shoreline of India at the time, but, it wouldn't do any good. When you're starving to death in a 3rd world country while suffering from a number of viruses that are spreading like lightning, you'll begin to see that having people 'care' and 'mourn' about you really doesn't help. Repeat: Does not help.

Money is what makes the world go around.
Ironically, the earth's orbit was slightly affected by the events. Since the world was changed in it's around-like motion (er, I mean orbit,) more money. Sort of. Just look at how much supplies are being bought. Power generators, food, bottled water by the truckload, .. etc. What's bad for the majority is good for the economy unless it's the economy being bad itself resulting in a market crash(?). Woo. I make zero sense.

X-G: You get flamed whenever something like this happens. Instead of using sarcasm or subtle hints of your viewpoints and why somebody elses isn't exactly 'quallified', why not explain down to the last detail? It'd make everybody's time much easier slash no more large abundant amount of post restrictions on your behalf.

I believe that people who send money/things must be caring enough to do so... So yes, caring and mourning does help in a way.

Caring helps, mourning doesn't. If you care, you help in any way you can, but I can't see a way to relate 'mourn' and 'help'.

I think it is SO bad, it is hard for people to really discuss it. Entire families were wiped out - it is so very very sad....

I have noticed people don't talk about it anywhere...

nicholle

Aren't they at war over there too? Talk about your bad luck.

I gave 30€. Before Christmas we had this little Saint Lucy stage play (my text, my music) that brought about 150€ to the local Red Cross. They shared about 4500€ to poor (local) people for Christmas. A fund raising is still going on, until 13th of January, when the Christmas time ends. I bet they give the major part of the money to the International Red Cross. Personally I feel this all is something I want to do and I really don't care whether someone thinks this all is hypocrisy or not.

I'm kind of selfish on that point.

I've published the play with a self-made charity license: all income from performances go straight to charity. If not, I'll be there to share the income.

I'm kind of selfish on that point, too.

I guess this post makes me look very pharisean. Again I'd like to say I don't care very much about that.

I'm kind of selfish on that point, three.

Funny; they won't shut up about it on GameDev.

I didn't even realize you could donate with a credit card online at redcross.org. I just donated and I've come to a conclusion that donating is so impersonal. I think if I could really see MY donations at work it would mean more to me.

Jorram: Mourning helps certain people personally, to get over the loss of friends and family. These people need to mourn in order to cope with the situation, and then help others who are still in need. That's just the way it works for some people... If they didn't feel any loss, why would they feel the need to help?
Sometimes, caring is not enough... It might take a tragedy, a death in the family, to help someone realize that there are many that can still be helped. Sounds selfish, but what can you do.

I understand that simply mourning will not help the victims of this disaster, but I believe that mourning can lead people to do things which will be helpful to those who are still suffering.

Rick and Diana, welcome to the selfish people. What Diana says is exactly how I feel. Everything I do is in the end for selfish reasons. I just try to turn it to something good for others, too.

We have been over this, and the conclusion was: that's retarded. Mourn one or them all? What kind of robot of a person are you?

If it applies to you--you know someone or were someone affected by something--then I see no real problem with mourning. But mourning 500,000 people dying daily isn't even remotely possible. So by your logic, if your mother dies, you shouldn't even shed a tear, because it's hypocritical.

I'll say it again, since I'm not great at emphasizing the point: If it applies to you in some way, there's nothing wrong with feeling really bad. If it doesn't, well, anything more than "man, that sucks..." is kind of overboard.

As for posting about it, I don't really know. Like stated earlier, we can't really do anything other than donate and/or say "well, that sucks." It's not really a debate kind of thread. Though, we still manage to make it one.

As for donating, I can't, so... poo to that.

I don't believe that. I do believe what you're saying, that you should be a regular giver. It is a blessing. But, giving for any reason, is still giving, and helping someone. So in that sense, I don't care if you saw some commercial that guilted you into it. You're still helping regardless of your reasons.

Right! Helping is what counts, not reason.

This is starting to sound like a Seinfeld-wouldbe-episode. I can imagine it: Jerry thinking, "Well, if I donate, she'll think I have compassion, .. but I don't want to spend that much money on her." That show has all the characters utterlly not caring about each other accept when it effects them personally.

So then: I notice a split in the types of people in this thread. The 'personal gains' (me, X-G?, Johan, ..) and then the people that would probably go out of their way to help some people when it clearly interferes with their life and normal routine.

I'm suppost to have a point to this post. I'm just pattern gathering right now.

I don't feel much, and I don't want to search for any feelings, I don't know anyone who was there.

I just hope they set up a warning system for the next time. They did have 2 hours to get people to start running, instead people were heading towards the beaches when the waves came. They could have saved thousands of lives.

Hey, here's an idea: Let's not visit 3rd world countries for vacations.

What does that have to do with a natural disaster? I didn't realize they specifically targeted 3rd world countries.

No they weren't. Anyone looking out toward the ocean was running and screaming. One (NBC?) reporter ran to the beach, grabbed his 5 year old son, and ran. He busted his foot, but saved him.

[appended]

Yes, this is a major tragedy. I'm not sure I know what to say about it.
To be quite frank, I didn't even miss a thread about this here, so apparently I had no desire to really discuss it here on this forum. That doesn't mean that I don't care. Be careful before you jump to conclusions.

I think that mourning on some issue that has nothing to do with you personaly, just doesn't make any sense. And I also do not feel the lack of a disscussion too.

No, people did not see the waves 2 hours before they reached the beach. And every sesmograph (?) around the globe had felt the earthquake and things could be done to save some lives.

Yes, I hear Florida is quite safe ...

For your average drunken young adult on Spring Break; Yes.

unless on spring break 3 hurricanes crash the party.

Ah, but they're drunk. They don't even notice.

You would have to be pretty wasted not to notice a hurricane. That would be a cool story if one would survive it.

Well, they're drunk. That means they probably won't remember anything.
.. Ugh..disgusting. Think about how bad the hangover would be the next day. Going around in circles and circles at phenamonal speeds.

But at that time it was too late. The old man from our town that now is missing (and dead, forgive me God for saying that) went down to the beach to look at the shore line that oddly had escaped far out. That was before the wave. His wife survived merely and is back to Finland now and told this in the local newspaper.

If I do something good for someone, I do it because I feel it is the right thing to do. Afterwards I'm pleased with my self. So I'm satisfied. I could OTOH think there's no use in helping anyone, I won't save the world by doing that and after helping someone I would only think it was a stupid thing to do and I was kind of forced to it because everyone was staring at me. If the latter were true, I surely wouldn't gain anything. Now the former is true and I do gain something personally.

The 30 € I gave away to the Red Cross I would have spent on fire crackers and rockets for New Year's Eve. I did buy some. For 1.50 € I bought a bunch of Cat Farts, the smallest rockets on sale, very well worth their name.

The difference is that the people are warned in advanced and they get a chance to evacuate. When's the last time 100,000 people in Miami were washed away without warning in a storm? (I hope there's not an answer to that. )

What I really want to know is: what does Yves have to say about all this? It seems to me that he used to be the king of Sri Lanka and... Well he can probably fill in the rest.

My guess is that:
a) As a king in exile, he ordered the disaster because his subjects refused to pay taxes.

b) It really was a natural disaster and he narrowly escaped the jaws of death with the help of a great Eagle.

Either way, we should probably set up a fund to donate money to Yves because as the king of Sri Lanka, he probably knows what best to do with it:)

He is an usurper. He isn't even born in Sri Lanka anyway. I was born in Jaffna in the Rajanayagam estate. I am the true overlord of the island.
Donate your money to Manjula Orzeszek.

Yes well, if I was interested in facts, I wouldn't have asked for a "Yves Adventure" (tm). Now go get your brother and lets move on to the sugary sweet cereal box excitement.

My foster kid is in Eastern India; I hope he's okay.
A tsunami doesn't really go too terribly far inland, does it?

LohL, X-G, you rock

True, and I sometimes take this policy for granted; it's nice to have a no-spin zone (or several) in your life. Although, when it comes to the truly important topics, locking threads is terribly discouraging. For example, my peanut butter and jelly thread got shut down just minutes after it was posted, presumably due to the heated debate that was about to ensue between jelly and peanut butter lovers, such as hazul and Kitty Cat (respectively).

Oh yeah, and go X-G! You've got a sharp wit; I think that's cool. So kiss and make up, guys.

That post made me crack up Gideon.

My family and I personally donate to cancer foundations. Even though I think it is the most ridiculous thing how many of them there are. Why don't they just all go into one foundation so they can share the money? Instead of strething it across 15 foundations.

Also, my sister (I am not old enough) donates blood to the Red Cross about once every two months.

I think that was because everything was covered in the discussion

I remember when that was posted, and I laughed so hard.
When I clicked it this time to refresh my memory, I laughed again

On a serious note, the tsunami predicament is terrible and all.. but what are we going to discuss about it? It's not like a terrorist attack, where there's someone who caused it or a reason behind it. It's a natural disaster.

It happens, it sucks, but there's little room for discussion. Not a good forum topic.

Hm, what would the first post to a thread about the Tsunami have been about anyway?

***smoke wavers in the air****
FWOOSH!

First Post:
Hey guys! ! You know that giant tsunami? Yes. . So... uh, what do you think? Ok, bye!

On a serious note, spare some change and donate to help rebuild the affected areas of Sri Lanka. The area is also ravaged by civil war so they need all the help they can get.

I know "bobo" in person... and for quite a long time. He's always been like that... very serious... disgusted at the things people sometimes do..., and so on... but most of the time for a good cause. I'm not going to do propaganda here, but I think he's seen far too many people literally die out in front of him while working in the field, mostly because of other people's hatred, careless mistakes, etc, so I think that's why he sometimes shares a different point of view from others and taking things pretty seriously, though I must admit that he kind of found the wrong place to express his anger. For being senior aged (sorry bobo, nothing implied here) he no longer works in the field (less contact with injured people), but he still gets angry at people who don't care enough and don't work hard in their lives. So he says I'm lazy. Point being, he's been angry lately at the ones people/organizations/countries that act too slow to help out. You can't blame him. I support his thoughts, not only because I've known him for roughly 10 years, but like karadoc said, it is a big thing that just happened, and it's not the same as comparing it to the other people that die every year.

It's pretty true... and this applies to many other organizations as well. The amount of donation that actually reaches the destination is most of the time a bit less than the actual amount donated, mainly because of corruption... most of the time, the money gets lost near the destination point (the disaster zone). It's UN and the organization's job to make sure that the donations reach there safely. Sometimes, people don't mention this because they do not want to discourage people from donating.

You're saying this to the wrong person.

Yeah it's pretty sad. People talk about it on the news and radio, but sometimes, not enough people care enough to talk about it.

Right. Though in times of crisis, collective donations are very important.

Evert's right. You jump to conclusions too quickly. Or at least combine conclusions of other people with the innocent allegro community. It might not be a bad idea to change that.

I think you're right. but... I joined this forum 2 days ago because I had a programming problem (bobo told me about this site), so I'm pretty new here. No offense, but I thought that most of the topics posted on the off-topics section were pretty lame. I wouldn't consider a third of them as good forum topics. I've seen much better collections of topics elsewhere.

I cracked up when I read this .

Well actually, a simple message dedicated to them, like bobo said, would have been a good thing. Currently 120 000 deaths with millions of homes destroyed, this tsunami is a big thing, and IMHO, giving them our respects would have made a really good post.

I'm not saying it was necessary or not, and I'm not saying that not posting it would make you guys sinners. Some would probably see it as cheesy but I don't.

I've heard that the Bible has forseen all these tragic events.
Including WTC and something about 'many people dying' (as in, many more )

Gryphon, welcome to A.CC.

Enjoy your stay.

Heh, bobo said he had a dream about a giant tsunami hitting his apartment (he lives on the seventh floor) two days before the actual earthquake happened. If only he could dream up lottery numbers.;D

Weird. I had a dream like that last night.
It hit the apartment I was living in, but I don't even live in an apartment!
I survived it and was able to swim. In the wave.

I had the dream after watching The Day After Tomorrow, but there was no ice

Lately several areas of the planet have been overwhelmed by Locusts. Armegedon is upon us!

Sanku veri mach.;)

From what I recall about the jewish scholars, they're basically just trying to find patterns where there are none. Basically, modify your algorithm till a pretty message shows up. They found titanic, world war 2, nuclear bomb and all other kinds of "research" by doing that. Clearly, God must have put all the significant parts of life in that book so we can cheat! Woo! Cheatsheet to the universe!

Oh yeah, and weclome to A.CC, Gryphon!

Gryphon: Welcome, I like your avatar:). (Kinda the wrong thread to greet someone new, heh?)

Yeah man, I feel so powerful with this avatar.

I wish to be welcomed to a.cc as well. And with warmth.

http://www.digitalglobe.com/tsunami_gallery.html

Well, this is just bullsh*t. It's like this nostredamus thingy.

Teh l0lorz.
Welcome! And your avatar really rox0rz! Where did you take it from?

Yeah, that is a good idea. Today earlier we had over 175 killed in a fire in a rock concert. When I left job at around 1:30 AM, Clarin (the most popular newspaper here) said there had been only 6 killed, so I headed back home. Had I known it was that serious, I would have gone there. I know some first aid stuff (learned after a couple of years being an amateur climber), but very little about intoxication.

(Both links lead to spanish pages).

What a s*** of new year...
The thing i can't understand is why the emergency doors were closed!!! .

Anybody can go around saying that such-and-such 'predicted' such-and-such event. But the whole thing is just stupid if the predictions are made after the event. These people say that they've found the special code for understanding the bible (or whatever), and if you use this special code to read the bible then it tells you that this terrible event will happen.
I could go around saying that I've finally found a way to understand what my cat is saying, and my cat actually told me about this tsunami a few weeks ago. But it really means nothing at all unless I tell you about it before the event; otherwise I could easilly have just made up the language after the event, and hense made up the meaning after the event - which is not predicting.
Then on the other end of the spectrum, there are those other idiots that just 'predict' as many things as they can tell people about so that at least some of them come true. Then when one of there predicts is actually correct, people tend to forget about all the mistakes and just be amazed by the correct prediction! (horoscopes often work in this way, along with being a bit fuzzy so the predictions can be interpreted however best suits the reader).

wow. that was so far off topic...

In other news:
The death toll has reached 160,000 so far. I've also heard that there are areas in India where officials have stopped counting bodies because there are just too many of them to manage and there is so much else to be done.
My local newspaper has some 'before' and 'after' photos of some of the areas. It's quite amazing just how much damage this thing has done. Huge areas of houses have been completely destroyed. This is probably the biggest natural disaster that any of us will see in our lifetimes; or at least one of the biggest.

Just wait until San Fransisco gets wiped off the map.

Actually, the logic behind the Bible Code is pretty sensible. It's a load of crap, but it's not stupid crap.

Jelly still owns, though.

And the offtopicness award goes to hazul...

I don't like the idea that the future is predictable, meaning our timeline is set in stone. I want to have real intelligense and not just be a machine whos choices depend on physical laws.

I think this thread has gone sidetrack...

You'll be glad to learn that according to the laws of physics, the future is not predictable.

But maybe unhappy to learn that you are just an incredibly complex machine.

Yeah but it doesn't matter at all what the 'code' actually is. If someone comes up with the code, or the information, after some event has happened then they cannot say that they predicted it. There are countless possible codes that would seem logical, but they are still just codes that some crackpot made up so that they could squeeze something out of the book that vaguely resembles what is going on. No one has managed to come up with anything like that to get what will happen, only what has happened - surprise surprise.

Klick

The entire point was that the predictions couldn't be found until after the fact, though. It's like sealing a prediction in an envelope and giving it to a friend (so you can't cheat), then telling him to open it after the event.

\o/

welcome!

But that's different, the prediction really exists before the event.
Depends on type of prediction though, it could be something obvious or something cryptic that could be interpreted as true no matter the outcome. But it could also be a precise prediction, like, you're gonna get a straight flush in the third hand, in which case it's very spooky.

I read The DaVinci Code not too long back. The plot is based on hidden messages in texts, double meanings, cryptography and anagrams - including texts from the bible or ancient works of art. All very cleverly found and put together to suggest a consistent whole, but fiction none the less (though Dan Brown apparently thinks differently). You can apparently find whatever you want to find as long as you search long enough and selectively discard information that doesn't fit.
I wouldn't trust anyone seriously trying to find a hidden message in the bible to find something more reliable. In the end, all such hidden meanings and predictions found in the bible or the works of Nostradamus are utter nonsense.

Love thy neighbour! Now why do people search for hidden messages in the Bible, when the open message should be the important thing?

Then it's not different at all.

I thought I said that... just with less words...

Though, you know why they're trying to figure out the bible code, right? Stock market numbers, oh baby!