I have developed the habit of looking at a news site when I first turn on my computer. It started when I was sitting in the den some years ago and opened my laptop to see that the space shuttle was breaking up over Texas. So I always check and usually Internet news is just like the old broadcast networks  – the usual stuff of politics, obituaries and human interest stories. But yesterday morning, it happened again. I opened the computer and then called to Der Bingle “Japan had an 8.9 earthquake.” B ecause it occurred in the afternoon, Japanese time, there was daylight for filming and we are talking about Japan here . . . so there was lots of film to watch. And I did.

One of the first videos I watched was filmed in an office and people were in it. It has started to dawn on me that most of the subsequent videos have been aerial shots of the tsunami. So many videos have no people in them and this morning I watched a flyover of a town that was hit by the tsunami following the quake, but much of it is underwater still. The scientists are thinking that section of earth has subsided permanently – well, in relative terms.  Someone on the helicopter kept asking if anyone saw any people at all.

This is going to be a long story – and perhaps not told by as many eyewitnesses as I originally thought.