India says it can go it alone with tsunami relief but things don't seem to be going very well.

The year 2005 has arrived in our country. May we never have another year to end as did 2004.

ABC News has their list of winners and losers in 2004. They somehow managed to shunt aside the biggest loser of all, John Kerry. Of course, they don't have any flags waving around President Bush either, claiming the two were so obvious as to be left out.

When I first saw the fatality figures for the tsunami coming in, I figured it would be about 100,000. News services are now reporting over 115,000 but if this is true, it could go as high as 400,000 dead in Indonesia alone. This is turning into a horror beyond human comprehension.

ABC World News people of the year: Bloggers. Lots of talk about how we are affecting the world with good coverage of bloggers and the tsunami disaster. But no mention of Rathergate. Wonder why.

There's been a spate of reports in the immediate past from airliner pilots about lasers being flashed into the cockpit. And one or two pilots have supposedly been blinded--at least temporarily--by these coherent light sources. The FBI has gotten into the act and is concerned that it could be a terrorist plot to incapacitate air crews and cause a crash on landing.

Fairly potent green lasers are available all over the place--my Google search turned up 115,000 mentions. Most, of course, are the garden variety 5 mw devices which are dismissed as too puny to do any damage. But look here. This one is touted as having a range of 10,000 feet and it's a 5 milliwatt laser. And here's a site with all kinds of high power stuff, up to 30 milliwatt green lasers. You can even buy "plans" to build a 200 milliwatt laser gun.

So is it terrorists? Probably not. I have a green laser that is supposedly less than 5 milliwatts output and I could easily shine it into an airplane cockpit if it was on approach and close to the ground. The human eye is highly sensitive in the green region and a dark adapted eye would sense even a puny little 5 mw beam as being very bright. I know this from experience.

The other unknown is tracking. Reports from pilots say the beam was in the cockpit for several seconds or even several times during the episode. FBI investigators believe it would take a stable tracking device to keep the laser pointed accurately for that long. I'm not so sure. If I stood near the approach end of a runway I believe I could score a few hits if I spent enough time. But with all the upsetment about lasers, I don't think it would be a good idea to try.

Update: Jay Manifold's site confirms my thoughts.

As I said in a previous post, there could be worse things than what's happened in the Indian Ocean. This is pure speculation, but eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano in the Canary Islands and subsequent underwater landslide could cause a tsunami with waves as high as 150 meters. The coast of Florida would receive a wall of water 50 meters high. Of course no one knows if and when this will happen but, considering this week's tragedy, the consequences would be beyond our imagination...and shouldn't be ignored.

I've not posted about the Indian Ocean tsunami because there's not much I can add that the news organizations or other blogs haven't already covered. But the latest numbers are staggering. Fox News web site today says the number of dead is a mind boggling 114,000. I don't have a good grasp on worldwide disaster death tolls but this may well turn out to be the worst in history--discounting, of course, things like flu, bubonic plague, and other disease related events.

I believe, too, that this shows us how bad things can get. The world's population is spiraling upward, especially in third world and poorer countries. People tend to gravitate to the coast lines because it's easier to make a living in areas where tourists abound. Buildings that, in our country may have easily withstood the quake and subsequent deluge, collapsed easily, trapping or denying refuge to thousands. Tens of thousands die, governments that were marginal in good times are unable to cope, anarchy sets in, and the law of the jungle takes over. Will it happen again? Absolutely. Maybe not for decades but when it does, it will make this one look tame in comparison.

Back in Houston last Sunday evening. It was a good Christmas with our daughter and her family but home and your own bed is best. I'm always glad to visit family and I'm always glad to be back.

We missed the making of history while we were away. On Christmas eve, it snowed about two inches in Sugar Land, Texas. I've lived in these parts most of my life and a white Christmas just doesn't happen. That's not to say we didn't have snow in Chicago. It snowed three times while we were there but it was always just enough to mess up the streets. The biggest was Christmas day night when we had about 1/2 inch.

I have a host of blogs I read, some on a daily basis, some intermittently. American Digest is one of the intermittents but warrants more attention. This blog has good writing but this piece is more than good--it's outstanding. I'll be visiting this web log much more often in the future.