Ten Tsunami Stories
Wake up world. We are in need of aid, desperate aid, help us.
Ten Tsunami Stories
1. “There will be time for crying, but that will come later…”
2. “Millions of people on Indian Ocean shores are scrambling for food and clean water…”
3. “Bus driver loses five in family, buries dead…”
4. “I had his hands in mine. But the second wave flung me some distance away. I didn’t see him thereafter. The sea took my son away…”
5. “All are gone, why should I live…”
6. “They were having a wonderful holiday. David had proposed to Sharon earlier that day…”
7. “The only signs of life were a few desperate people scavenging a beach for food…”
8. “Bodies still entombed on death train…”
9. “What will I do now? Whom should I live for?”
10. “All he could do was watch the terrified face of his son as the boy disappeared…”
Missing Tsunami Victims
Thousands are still missing after the Boxing Day quake and tsunamis clobbered beaches across Asia and Africa.
Here are some useful links:
www.locators-online.org/
www.tsunamiforum.org/
Missing Malaysians in Phuket
BBC websites:
Asia quake-Missing persons-Thailand
Asia quake-Missing persons-Sri Lanka
Asia quake-Missing persons-India
Asia quake-Missing persons-Indonesia
Asia quake-Missing persons-Maldives
More links of the missing
More information at:
tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/
A Swedish boy was found alive and sent to Phuket International Hospital. His photo was posted on the hospital website and spotted by his uncle from the Internet. His father and grandfather who were recuperating in another hospital were reunited with him. His mother and grandmother are still missing.
A 10-year-old German girl also survived but her parents were missing. I did a Google search and found her father’s name of net.
Here is reply from the law firm he worked in Frankfurt.
— “Niehues, Henrik”
> From: “Niehues, Henrik”
> To: ‘Julian Matthews’
> Subject: AW: Calling Norbert Michl : Your child has been found
> Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 09:59:38 +0100
>
> Dear Julian,
>
> Mr. Michl is one of the partners of our law firm.
> Since Sunday we know that his daughter Sophia is in
> the Phuket International Hospital. She will be
> taken to Germany by plane as of today.
>
> Unfortunately, their parents, Mrs. Edeltraud Alsdorf-Michl
> and Mr. Norbert Michl are still missing. We all hope
> the best.
>
> Thank you very much for your support and kind assistance.
>
> Best regards
>
> Henrik
>
>
> Dr. Henrik Niehues
>
> —–Ursprüngliche Nachricht—–
> Von: Julian Matthews
> Gesendet: Dienstag, 28. Dezember 2004 16:39
> An: frankfurt@hbml.de
> Betreff: Calling Norbert Michl : Your child has been found
>
>
> Dear Sir
>
> I noticed you have a Mr Norbert Michl listed on your
> website.
>
> A German girl has been found alive after the tsunami
> disaster in Phuket and is currently in hospital.
>
> She says her father is Norbert Michl. If you are
> same
> person go to this website and contact hospital. Her
> mother is Mrs.Edeltraud Michl
>
> http://www.phuket-inter-hospital.co.th/boy.htm
>
> or here: http://www.phuket-inter-hospital.co.th/
>
> Concerned person,
>
> Julian
POST: Chris Pirillo has linked to us. It was also linked by Will of MSNBC.
Phuket Tsunami Photo Sequence
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This man was later pulled out of the rushing waters according to the photographer. Thank god.
Phuket Tsunami Photo Gallery by hellmut issels at pbase.com
Amazing videos posted by amateurs
We pray for all the victims of this terrible tragedy.
Dropout designs chips for retro PC lovers
A 30-year-old high school dropout and self-taught computer chip designer has squeezed the entire circuitry of a two-decade-old Commodore 64 home computer onto a single chip, which she has tucked neatly into a joystick that connects by a cable to a TV set and plays 30 games from the early 80s.
Drum roll please for Ms Jeri Ellsworth…
Fastap: Coming to phones everywhere soon.
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John Yunker asks: Will Fastap Replace Qwerty?. The fact is most phones don’t have qwerty on them. What they have are sets of three or four letters per numeral whatever that arrangement is called.
But his suggestion that Fastap will be ubiquitous makes sense. Now why didn’t anyone think of this earlier?
US economy headed for Perfect Storm
Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley says the US economy is headed for Armageddon, according to the Boston Herald.
Roach met select groups of fund managers downtown last week, including a group at Fidelity.
His prediction: America has no better than a 10 percent chance of avoiding economic “armageddon.”
Press were not allowed into the meetings. But the Herald has obtained a copy of Roach’s presentation. A stunned source who was at one meeting said, “it struck me how extreme he was – much more, it seemed to me, than in public.”
Roach sees a 30 percent chance of a slump soon and a 60 percent chance that “we’ll muddle through for a while and delay the eventual armageddon.”
The chance we’ll get through OK: one in 10. Maybe.
In a nutshell, Roach’s argument is that America’s record trade deficit means the dollar will keep falling. To keep foreigners buying T-bills and prevent a resulting rise in inflation, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan will be forced to raise interest rates further and faster than he wants.
The result: U.S. consumers, who are in debt up to their eyeballs, will get pounded.
Less a case of “Armageddon,” maybe, than of a “Perfect Storm.”
Roach echoes similar statements by Paul Krugman this week.
Here are some more facts to mull over:
- To finance its current account deficit with the rest of the world, America has to import $2.6 billion in cash. Every working day.
- Household debt is at record levels. Twenty years ago the total debt of U.S. households was equal to half the size of the economy. Today the figure is 85 percent.Nearly half of new mortgage borrowing is at flexible interest rates, leaving borrowers much more vulnerable to rate hikes.
- A source who heard the presentation concluded that a “spectacular wave of bankruptcies” is possible as the dollar slumps against other currencies.
Krugman told Reuters that Bush has set “the country on a dangerous course that will likely end in crisis”.
“This is a group of people who don’t believe that any of the rules really apply, said Krugman. “They are utterly irresponsible.”
The only bright spot in having Bush in power for another four years, said Krugman, is that further economic mismanagement might trigger some sort of popular outcry.
“I do believe at some point there is going to be a popular tidal wave against what has happened,” concluded Krugman. “In the meantime, you keep banging on the drum, you keep telling the truth.
“And then eventually we have the great demonstrations, which I think are important to let the government know that many Americans are not happy with what is happening,” he said.
2014: One new media scenario
Microsoft buys Friendster. Google buys Tivo. Google partners with Amazon and becomes — Googlezon.
Possible? The end of media as we know it? Participatory journalism driven by bots?
A nice Flash presentation with a haunting sound track…watch it here.
Colour Laser Printers Leave Tracks On Every Page
Did you know that a colour laser printer leaves yellow dots of the serial number and the manufacturing code on every document those machines produce? Scary but true.
According to this PC World article, Peter Crean, a senior research fellow at Xerox, says his company’s laser printers leave “..the millimeter-sized dots…about every inch on a page, nestled within the printed words and margins. It’s a trail back to you, like a license plate.”
The dots’ minuscule size, covering less than one-thousandth of the page, along with their color combination of yellow on white, makes them invisible to the naked eye, Crean says. One way to determine if your color laser is applying this tracking process is to shine a blue LED light–say, from a keychain laser flashlight–on your page and use a magnifier.
The device that embeds the dots is a chip located “way in the machine, right near the laser” that makes them when the document “is about 20 billionths of a second” from printing.
“Standard mischief won’t get you around it,” Crean adds.
Neither Crean nor Pagano (Lorelei Pagano, a counterfeiting specialist with the U.S. Secret Service) has an estimate of how many laser printers, copiers, and multifunction devices track documents, but they say that the practice is commonplace among major printer companies.
Witch-hunt begins
The witch-hunt has begun. And if you are not already aware of it, here are some news flashes to chew on.
FBI targets Indymedia
British authorities with a subpoena supplied by the US FBI shut down 20 Independent Media websites–spanning the continent of Europe and across the ocean to western Massachusetts.
The websites were hosted by Rackspace, an Internet Service Provider based in San Antonio, Texas.
Volunteer-run Indymedia carries news, articles and other postings about anti-globalization struggles, anti-war protests, and many other issues, including anti-Bush rants.
Colin Powell’s resignation leaves hawks to rule the roost
…did he jump or was he pushed? Last night in Washington, the answer was still unclear as the most doveish member of the Bush administration announced he would resign from office whenever his replacement was appointed, probably in January, before the president’s inauguration.
Last night, a senior administration official said Mr Bush had asked Condoleezza Rice, his national security adviser, to replace Mr Powell as secretary of state…
It’s war: the CIA vs Bush
“The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House,” said a former CIA official. “Goss was given instructions … to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the President’s agenda.”
Bush accepts Powell resignation along with three others
…The White House said it would not announce replacements for Powell, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman; Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham; and Education Secretary Rod Paige on Monday.
Recounts begin
Bush won, Kerry conceded, right? So who’s ordering the recounts? Ralph Nader and Bev Harris that’s who. They’ve started http://helpamericarecount.org/ and plan to recount the votes that the politicians don’t seem to care about anymore.
Already one discovered computer glitch has changed the fortunes of Democratic candidate Carroll Lanning in Franklin County. Can there be more?
