Indian Ocean Catastrophe

One of the more telling indicators of the magnitude of the catastrophe in the Indian Ocean is how consistently the New York Times has been "wrong" on the death toll. In this morning's edition, for instance, the NYT reported the death toll at 80,000. That was probably an accurate report of the count at their deadline. But, by the time I picked got the paper this morning, NPR was already reporting a death toll of well over 100,000, and tonight, as I wrote this, CNN was reporting that the toll has climbed above 118,000. That was as of 9:01 ET. Who knows where it is now. It has been like this every day this week. By the time the paper edition of the NYT gets to the street, their report of the death toll is obscenely low.

In the "a picture is worth a thousand words" department, look at the picture that accompanies this story. Closely. Save it to your desk top and blow it up in Photoshop or whatever, if you can, because all is not what it appears at first glance.

I went looking for videos of the disaster last night and ended up a Cheese and Crackers, which has links to just about everything available, I think, so I'll give JL credit, although these videos are now available on a host of blogs. Kudos and thanks to all of you guys. The videos, though, are absolutely horrifying. If you go surfing for these, seriously consider making a donation. Given the size of the videos and the demand for viewing them, the bandwidth requirements for posting these are apparently prodigious. Also, most are promising to send some or all of any excess donations to relief organizations. JL at Cheese and Crackers says he has collected $6.5 million so far! Given that, I'm sending my donation to Pundit Guy, who seems particularly desperate in this regard. Hope you don't mind JL.