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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Yes, I hear Florida is quite safe ...

unless on spring break 3 hurricanes crash the party.

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

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.

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:)

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.