Drawing the line

Since I have no job and can only handle the misery of looking for work for a few hours each day, I have plenty of time to watch TV. For whatever reason I now prefer the news to, say, Judge Judy. Today in the news a child died of Bird Flu and a twelve storey building in Cairo collapsed, injuring many.

There are a handful of such tragedies every day, and it's becoming hard for me to adequately care about everything that's going on and going wrong. So, I did some math.

According to the Census Bureau's world population calculator, there are 6,344,594,620 of us on the planet right now. Generously allowing every one of them to live seventy years gives us about 172 new humans every minute of every day being born or dying (assuming no growth).

That's far more than I expected.

At any rate, I can't go on like this, getting upset whenever anything goes wrong. I can no longer summon the concern when one cow is found with Mad Cow Disease and, sad as it is for those involved, I think I'll stop mourning for any disaster that takes us fewer than five seconds to recover from. That's about fifteen lives. I know that my own mother's death was one of the most traumatic things I've lived through, but from now on unless more than fifteen strangers are killed, however tragically, I'll take what comfort I can in knowing that they'll be replaced in about the time it takes me to sign my name.