Sent you 18 and 19, too. Since I will only be doing the daily column till the end of the month, you are going to get Monday to Friday until the 29th. The usual caveat: curious, you are welcome; not, meet you at the bend! Quakes and fire,drought and water When mapping the consequences of quakes and droughts, floodsand fires, the human cost has become a must. When we promote the perspective of viewing everyone as individualsrather than just a numerical entry in a group, the value of an individualbecomes paramount. This runs counter tothe virtue long held in social groups that one's life laid down for a race oran ethnic bunch is more heroic than just the mere expenditure of the same sometimeson behalf of another. I happen to think that an individual is not filled fullsave in the company of and in collaboration with peers but that is a choicerather than the moral imperative of an ethical ought-ness. Likewise, in mapping out the human cost,whether it is the personnel-inflicted conflagrations in Gaza, Iraq, andUkraine, it is helpful to imagine not an abstract number but snuffed lives or livingcasualties often pictured short of limbs. They have a face, and definitely, a name. Increasingly, in covering disasters on TV, the human factoris often covered if only because a broadcast watcher can readily identify witha person rather than an abstract number. Admittedly, we get irritated when the newscaster injects through thetone of his/her voice what ze feels as an emotional response to an event ratherthan the content of the news through pictures and sounds that establish emotivecontent itself. But that's whatdistinguishes professional broadcast journalism from its dime-a-dozen cousinsthat relies on tugging at our sentiments. Quakes that drew fire visited Yunnan Province last weekwhere a shudder that otherwise would only get a shrug of the shoulder managedto dislodge rocks and caused landslide of uncharacteristic proportions that thearea in Ladian is still reeling from the rocks that was not confined to thecradle. We do not mean to make light ofthe disaster. Chinese workers are stilltrying to create water drainage for a river that has since become a lake, threateningresidents downriver should the water level rise some more as rain has yet toabate from the headwaters. The landslides were bad enough. The flooding added to the destruction ofcrops, penned animals, and homes. Neighboring province to Yunnan, Guizhou of the Yi minority tribes thatmight be cousins to our Philippine mountain folks got the brunt of theunceasing rain and caused flooding where ladies used to walk down the laneswith parasols. Guangxi where Guillinwith her famous kartz and Lijiang that rafts down to tourist town Yangzhounestled in lighted hills at night (quite a spectacle), and Hainan with hertropical shores had not been spared the fierce treatment of typhoons. Drought hit the foothills of California and Colorado, aswell as Canada's Northwest territories that lit up fires for our satellites topicture. We all heard of that explosionout of Kunshan in Jiangxi (that's west of Shanghai for thegeography-challenged) from a factory manufacturing aluminum wheel caps forGeneral Motors. From the northeast to the northwest, all we got were drywinds this season. Qui Tian (autumn) kicked in August 11 and though dusk to dawn mightfeel a little cooler, the days are still summer warm. The aridity has been exceptional this year,making the sigua (watermelon) anabundant and desired commodity in every street corner, from Urmuqi of Xinjiangto Dandong of Liaoning. It has the addedattraction of being an aphrodisiac! We had a 30-minute drench in Shenyang the other day, withthe full compliment of accompanying thunder and lightning playing loud orchestralpercussion, plus a downpour that lashed and peppered car roofs. One can tell the plastic touch is in thedrainage as something clogged up the system again; one of the streets at myback in a fairly elevated area of the city was flooded from the accumulatedrain. The environmental disasters that have been visited uponChina since it became the manufacturing factory of the world are considerable. The cheapening of American consumer goods hasalso occurred as the timeframe for programmed obsolescence got shorter, andprice became the gauge for commodities rather than quality. Only the one percent of the US populationshop from quality shops; the rest of us go for the bargain, the discount, andthe sale. We pointed recently on the reality of trash and how China isno longer Los Angeles and Brooklyn's trash bins. Worldwide, we have polluted our planet, sothere is no point belaboring the point, nor pointing fingers on who is to blame. No one has pristine hands! What China, however, is doing in its China Dream that hasbecome the organizing principle of its internal and external affairs (can'thelp point to Obama's foreign policy description of "Don't do stupidstuff" as inadequate, according to Madame Hillary), is to shift fromproducing products "Made in China" to ones that it designs so it canbe labeled as "Created in China". The rhetoric is ahead of the reality but Zhongguohas the time! j'aime la vie pinoypanda2031@aol.com yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!