The Discordance of Twitter During Disasters

Disasters like last night's insanely huge earthquake in Japan and subsequent tsunami bring out the very best and the very worst in people. And Twitter remains one of the most important and up to the minute places to get breaking news. The only problem with Twitter during events like this is that there will always be folks who carry on like nothing's happened, tweeting about their lunch, tweeting about the jerk who cut them off, tweeting as if there isn't an entire country in shock and not even beginning to start the recovery process from the double whammy.

And sometimes its just too discordant to try and parse the disaster tweets from the mundane What-I'm-doing-now tweets. And it is also sometimes difficult to not get irritated with the people who carry on as if nothing is happening. People are dying, people are suffering mightily and you're tweeting about trying to get a cab? There's a more polite term for it, navel gazing, and a less polite term, head up ass.

It is difficult to not want to shout at these people just going about their day as if nothing is happening. I know life goes on, it has to, but still, your tweets about the mundane are so very unimportant now (truthfully, they were unimportant before but far more so now).

And yes, I know that its important to not get stuck in the trance of the devastation, to go outside, to breath fresh air, to do the things you have to do to get through your day. But I think its also incredibly important to respect the tragedy unfolding before our eyes. And maybe think twice about tweeting that you're pissed because the bagel shop is out of your favorite kind of bagel.

By the way, if you do want to follow the tweets in real time, use this link.

Not Because Bush is a Texan Though

FEMA: Dean Prep Far Exceeds Katrina

The dirty cynical bastard in me wants to think that the prep for Hurricane Dean is so much further ahead of where Katrina was is because its Texas, the President's home state and not because they learned the painful and expensive lesson from Katrina.

I have a difficult time not imagining that George Bush was far more interested and involved in preparing for this potential disaster because the disaster was targeting his state.

I'd like to think that he learned a valuable lesson in the aftermath of Katrina. But I don't think he's learned anything, I think he's just trying to do everything he can to save his peeps.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. But he should want to help protect and prepare all of America, not just his corner of the nation.

Trouble Over Here, Trouble Over There

Are you curious about that chemical spill in Minnesota? Or how about the bio hazard situation in Honduras? The Havaria Information Systems AlertMap is updated in (near) real-time and the wealth of bad news is fairly astonishing. Plus they've got RSS feeds for whatever bad (or locationally relevant) news you want delivered. There are USA only maps, Europe only maps and Hungary too (slow day, just a fire).