Gah! I’m not enjoying working on my English essay, unfortunately. I enjoy studying literature, and I found the book I’m writing on, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, to be quite moving and interesting, but the essay questions we’ve been set are just so dull. It isn’t helped that in a 1600 word essay there isn’t much room to attempt to do something a bit different unless you give over the entire essay to doing so, which is rather risky. Ho hum. I’m sure I’ll get it written eventually.My worries pale into subatomic insignificance compared to the terrible disaster that took place in Asia. It’s heartening to see people being moved by it and being willing to give to help those affected. The way the media has reported it has annoyed me, though. The news channels kept showing footage of the waves hitting, finding more people to give their own stories and so on and so forth. The excessive amount of information seems to me very morbid, and also not terribly respectful. In this age of 24-hour news channels, any disaster is quickly turned into a sick combination of disaster movie and reality television. After I’d got the facts about what had happened, I stopped watching lest I become desensitized to the tragedy. Is it really helpful to revel in the destruction, really respectful to indulge our morbid curiosity from the comfort of our living rooms?Faced with such pain and destruction, many people seem to be grappling with the question of how could God allow such a thing? Is he uncaring, impotent or non-existent? How could a loving, all-powerful God let this happen? Serious questions, and I plan to share some thoughts on them sometime soon. My thoughts and prayers go out to those affected and those trying to help them.