Japan's travails

One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. Joseph Stalin

Like everybody else I am watching the horrors unfolding in Japan. And the center of fascination, in the media at least, is the behavior of the Nuclear power plants. Unquestionably these are part of the story as is the battle to contain them. In some accounts we are facing no less than a nuclear Armageddon, others are a little more sanguine.

But there are 10,000 dead and counting and untold devastation and the power plants bear no responsibility for any of this. In the scale of this disaster it is hard to imagine that in terms of human misery these plants will be a major factor, a factor yes and some may even die from the consequences, but the vast majority of the misery has come from the crumbling buildings and the rushing water not from purported nuclear leaks.

To add to the trials being endured by Japan at this time is a major volcanic eruption but you would be hard pressed to know it, reporting of that is buried underneath lurid reporting of nuclear meltdown.

Pray for the Japanese people.