Friday, December 31, 2004
Sister-in-law and I struggled to get her over-stuffed suitcase into the back seat of the Audi, compliments of awesome after-Christmas sales and a Euro/Dollar exchange rate much to sister-in-law's advantage. We waved again to her brother standing on the porch a.k.a. my husband. "You know Anna you really do have things backwards," she comments. "He's supposed to put the suitcases in the car. He's supposed to take out the trash. He's supposed to do the outdoor grilling." "Really? Gee now you tell me...Is he supposed to be taking his sister to the airport too?"
Western-Centricity. The death toll from the Tsunami disaster has nearly reached the population of the little Austrian city sister-in-law is returning to tonight. Put in this perspective does 125,000 seem a lot or little? How strange that the significance of a given number changes when juxtaposed against different backdrops. For instance, had the number of people killed on 9/11 been killed in Indonesia since Sunday's earthquake, it probably wouldn't have even made the front page. We are moved by the photo of a cherubic two-year-old Swedish boy reunited with his sobbing father but hardly a mention is made of the countless Indonesians lucky enough to be reunited with their loved ones. 100,000 plus people have just died in a natural disaster yet there are only media whispers of the same number of Iraqis having been killed by a government who decided to wage a war against a country that had nothing to do with the 3,000 or so killed on 9/11.
Western-Centricity. The death toll from the Tsunami disaster has nearly reached the population of the little Austrian city sister-in-law is returning to tonight. Put in this perspective does 125,000 seem a lot or little? How strange that the significance of a given number changes when juxtaposed against different backdrops. For instance, had the number of people killed on 9/11 been killed in Indonesia since Sunday's earthquake, it probably wouldn't have even made the front page. We are moved by the photo of a cherubic two-year-old Swedish boy reunited with his sobbing father but hardly a mention is made of the countless Indonesians lucky enough to be reunited with their loved ones. 100,000 plus people have just died in a natural disaster yet there are only media whispers of the same number of Iraqis having been killed by a government who decided to wage a war against a country that had nothing to do with the 3,000 or so killed on 9/11.
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