Last week's earthquake in Haiti seemed more apocalyptic than just about any natural disaster I have heard about, including the Christmas tsunami in 2004. Not that there's any settled place that's good for a strong earthquake to strike, but Haiti is probably one of the worst places to have been hit. A day or two after the quake David Brooks had a column in the New York Times in which he noted that when a 7.0 earthquake struck the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989, 63 people died. The same magnitude earthquake may have caused 100,000 deaths in Haiti. I have heard on the news that one reason the devastation has been as bad as it is is that there was no enforcement of building codes due to a less-than-reliable government. (I am also told that the U.S. bears some responsibility for Haiti's political situation as well--but I don't know enough about that yet to comment.) Also, I learned there had been a trend of people leaving the countryside and coming to Port-au-Prince in an attempt to find work, so that the city had many more people in it than it could reasonably support. I heard a radio news story yesterday suggesting that since Haiti was so dysfunctional, the earthquake might be a good chance to restart, to rebuild the nation almost from scratch. So I guess my perception of the seriousness of the earthquake was pretty accurate. I felt more sadness and dismay about it than about any natural disaster before. It seemed disrespectful to want to listen to the "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!" podcast at the end of the week for some laughs. Maybe this emotional reaction is a consequence of generally becoming a little more in touch with my emotions during this first unit of CPE.
Besides thinking a lot about Haiti recently, the Christmas underwear bomber has gotten people talking about Yemen. I remember reading about the instability of that country in the fall in the New York Times, before it started making most headlines. (I take pride in paying more attention to world news than many people--perhaps this is a consequence of knowing another prominent world language and having traveled to Europe and Latin America). I'm very much looking forward to listening to Jeb Sharp's podcast on the history of Yemen. Her podcast is one of the ones from "The World" that I follow regularly, and if you're interested in learning about various aspects of world history, I highly recommend it.
I'm glad I wasn't in Massachusetts to be in the middle of the campaigns and election for Ted Kennedy's vacant Senate seat. I know less about Scott Brown's positions than about Martha Coakley's, but neither candidate seemed particularly attractive to me, so I was glad I wasn't able to vote. And while I'm not particularly sympathetic to the Republicans' categorical opposition to the health care reform bill (about which I am still ambivalent myself, looking at it from a faith perspective), I also don't feel particularly sorry for the Democrats either. It seems like they may have taken their super-majority for granted, and so they could more or less do what they wanted with the health care bill with limited accountability. If they had had to be more accountable to the public and to the Republicans, perhaps there would have been less behind-the-scenes negotiation, fewer tricks like buying a senator's vote by giving Nebraska special treatment, and writing a bill that was way too long for anyone to really read closely. (Is the bill really 2000 pages long? That's what I've heard.) That's the risk of being at the top of power--having little to gain and a lot to lose. Now--shockingly!--the Democrats will have to work with Republicans to get any health care legislation passed at all, unless they give up on it or the Republicans show no interest in anything but stonewalling health care reform. I think the 2010 midterm elections will be very interesting.
The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good
40 minutes ago

