Paul Jacobson

I received an text from one of my teachers last night asking me (and the others she sent the text to) to light a candle for those affected by the tidal waves in South East Asia. This was the first I had heard of it and when I saw the papers this morning I realised what had happened. For those of you who don’t know what happened, here is an extract from CNN:

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (CNN) — Weeping residents combed through debris and stunned tourists wandered through litter-strewn streets on Monday, a day after tsunamis swept across the Indian Ocean from Thailand to Somalia, killing at least 23,000 people.

The giant waves — caused by the most powerful earthquake on Earth in 40 years — also left thousands injured and missing as well as hundreds of thousands homeless in Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

The magnitude 9.0 quake struck about 7 a.m. Sunday (7 p.m. ET Saturday) and was centered about 100 miles (160 km) off the coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra island at a depth of about 6.2 miles (10 km).

It was the strongest earthquake on Earth since 1964 and tied a 1952 quake in Kamchatka, Russia as the fourth strongest since such measurements began in 1899.

Based on estimates received by CNN, it looks like over 25 000 people have been reported dead already. The effects of the tsunamis were felt as far away as Somalia in Africa. It also appears that no warnings were given even though Sri Lanka was hit over two hours after the initial quake hit Sumatra. That something like this could happen with no warning is just plain scary. This must certainly be a wake-up call for the whole region. Here is more from that article dealing with the absence of warnings:

The tsunamis struck with no warning to those in coastal areas — particularly Indonesia, so close to the source — as no warning system exists for the Indian Ocean, said Eddie Bernard, director of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Marine and Environmental Labs in Seattle.

Such tsunamis are much more common around the Pacific Rim than in the Indian Ocean.

“The damage is just phenomenal,” said Jan Egelund, U.N. emergency relief coordinator. “I think we are seeing now one of the worst natural disasters ever.”

There was disagreement over whether the threat was over.

Waverly Person of the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) said the tsunamis are “long over” and residents and visitors should not worry about further tsunamis.

Bernard, however, said the aftershocks are strong enough to produce more tsunamis.

The quake represented the energy released from a very large rupture in the earth’s crust more than 600 miles (1,000 km) long, the NEIC said.

It was the strongest earthquake to hit anywhere on Earth since March 1964, when a 9.2 quake struck near Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The strongest recorded earthquake registered 9.5 on May 22, 1960, in Chile.

Sunday’s quake hit a year after the 6.6-magnitude quake in Bam, Iran, which killed more than 30,000 people, injured another 30,000 and destroyed 85 percent of the buildings in the southeastern Iran city.

I am a huge fan of OpenOffice and use it on my home PC. I can’t really afford Microsoft Office so OpenOffice is immediately a very attractive option for me. Anyway, I discovered that a preview version of version 2.0 is available for review and that a review has already been published. If you use OpenOffice (or even StarOffice), definitely check out the article and if you are not currently a user of this open source (and excellent) office suite, check it out anyway. The article is titled OpenOffice 2.0 preview released. I am interested if any of you use OpenOffice or StarOffice, so feel free to let me know!

I was chatting to my friends a little while ago and mentioned this speech I heard Larry Ellison gave at a Yale graduation a couple years ago. It turns out this rumour is false. I found a copy of this fiction and present it for your entertainment. I still think it is really funny and there is a lot of truth to it:

We have people begging all over Johannesburg and normally these guys fake some obscure physical disability or have signboards similar to this one begging for money to help them with some calamity. They also use small children and blind people to solicit donations. This one is brilliant, he is honest and it worked for us!

I have just spent about a day reading through all the archived posts of Memoirs of a Married Man Man and it has been quite a read. I am not too sure what compelled me to read every post (going back to October 2003) but I did. For those of you who have not visited the site and have not read some of the posts, the author, OrdinaryJoe, is married with a little girl. Aside from the posts about the recent US elections and a couple jokes, OrdinaryJoe focusses on his marriage, the woman he had the hots for and his daughter. There is also a fair amount of stuff about his fantasies about various people.

What his blog is, is an unfortunate tale about a relationship gone bad and an unhappy participant in that relationship. I felt taken in by the energy of the posts and I indentified with much of what he wrote because I was there a couple years ago when I was married. I empathise with the need to be loved and cared for and his efforts to entice the woman he was attracted to. At the same time I saw, with the benefit of my own experiences, a fair amount of what has been going on. It is sad when a relationship comes to an end. It is sad when two people who came together in love begin to forget that love and live their lives in fear and anger. It isn’t that relationships end because relationships are like everything else, impermanent. They change and often that change means they end. It is more that the end the way they do. Couples start fighting and lose themselves in the fog of the constant fighting and animosity. If only people could realise that the relationship is changing and either change their expectations to keep up or recognise the end and go their separate ways. Both are ways to avoid the pain and suffering that ordinarily ensues.

Sadly, this is rare and people end up locked in this painful and fear-based relationship that endures while each person becomes diminished in the process.