David Brooks surveys the tsunamai story and warns against silly feel-good stories:
Most of the stories that were told and repeated this week were melodramas. One person freakishly survives while another perishes, and there is really no cause for one's good fortune or the other's bad. A baby survives by sitting on a mattress. Others are washed out to sea and then wash back bloated and dead. There is no human agency in these stories, just nature's awful lottery.
Yes, but... For an uplifting story of human agency, let's hear about ten-year old Tilly Smith:
A 10-year-old girl saved her family and 100 other tourists from the Asian tsunami because she had learnt about the giant waves in a geography lesson, it has emerged.
Tilly Smith, from Oxshott, Surrey, was holidaying with her parents and seven-year-old sister on Maikhao beach in Phuket, Thailand, when the tide rushed out.
As the other tourists watched in amazement, the water began to bubble and the boats on the horizon started to violently bob up and down.
Tilly, who had studied tsunamis in a geography class two weeks earlier, quickly realised they were in danger.
She told her mother they had to get off the beach immediately and warned that it could be a tsunami.
She explained she had just completed a school project on the huge waves and said they were seeing the warning signs that a tsunami was minutes away.
Her parents alerted the other holidaymakers and staff at their hotel, which was quickly evacuated. The wave crashed a few minutes later, but no one on the beach was killed or seriously injured.
In an interview with the Sun, Tilly gave the credit to her geography teacher, Andrew Kearney, at Oxshott's Danes Hill Prep School.
She said "Last term Mr Kearney taught us about earthquakes and how they can cause tsunamis.
"I was on the beach and the water started to go funny. There were bubbles and the tide went out all of a sudden.
"I recognised what was happening and had a feeling there was going to be a tsunami. I told mummy."
There's a teacher who is feeling pretty good.
MORE: The David Brooks Hookie Awards were worth a permalink.
UPDATE: Brad DeLong, not one to wallow, wallops David Brooks.
The column idea had potential, it just wasn't executed well. For Brooks, that should be praised.
Posted by: Jor | January 02, 2005 at 10:50 PM
Although Brooks throws his hands up in the air, there is a much better thread on the problem of evil at crookedtimber.
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