Off Our Radar Screens

If an airliner full of people crashes, your local and national media is right there to tell you about it with film of all of the gory details. Better not get on an airliner lest you die a horrible, premature death.

If there is a high speed car chase in LA and a news helicopter following the crack-head-idiot-car-thief drivers, Fox News is sure to break into regularly scheduled programming with live aerial footage of the suspects. Don't let a car thief run over you unless you want your relatives to collect on your insurance policy.

If a shark chews on the foot of a Ft. Lauderdale surfer, all the newspapers have front page stories the next day showing the bloody stump. For God's sake don't go to the beach unless you want to feed the sushi they tell us.

Then there are Tsunami. That’s right--Tsunami, not Tsunamis. (Octopus…Octopi…it’s the English language—I didn’t make up the spelling rules, I just try to adhere to them.)

My mother says she had never heard of a Tsunami before this recent international disaster. I admit that if it hadn’t been for the Professor on the TV show “Gilligan’s Island,” I wouldn’t have heard of the threat of Tsunami before the age of 21 or so. But, as it turns out, I had heard of “tidal waves” and Tsunami and I knew before Christmas that they were usually caused by earthquakes under and adjacent to the ocean floor. I worried that there could be a tsunami immediately after hearing of the earthquake Christmas weekend. I was right.

What I did not realize is that there were 796 tsunami observed in the Pacific Ocean between 1900 and 2001. According to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, 117 tsunami caused casualties and damage in that same period.

What I want to know is, where the heck has the mainstream media been over the past hundred years? I thought that it was the media’s self proclaimed job to hyperventilate over every single thing that could possibly cause a “boo boo” on your knee or potentially cause the loss of human life. Viaox, lightening bolts, children's car seats, air bags…most Americans should live their lives in wild eyed fear to hear the TV talking heads tell it, but Tsunami?

Off our radar screens…

UPDATE: Before I could even finish this post, I have to add "herd of cows" to present international threats.

It seems that the main airport in Sumatra was closed to relief flights when a cargo plane hit a herd of cows on landing.

Where is the Transportation Security Administration when you need them? Do they have a procedure to pat down a cow entering airport property?

Just Wondering...