Today I was watching the news, which isn't something I do very often, but it's one of those things I have to do every so often to cure me of the impulse to ever do it again for at least a month. Kind of like eating okra (for those of you unacquainted with this vile weed, consider yourselves lucky) and going to the dentist (actually in that case it's because I don't have a choice).

Anyway, what I saw disturbed me greatly. Of course, that's what the news is for, but this was worse than usual. Today, a man was charged with treason, a plane crashed into a building and a baseball player died (a Yankee, sure, but even they don't deserve to die in tragic accidents), a guy who murdered four people about twenty miles from where I live is plea bargaining, another guy murdered like three people, North Korea threatened the rest of the world, and there have been about four school shootings in the last couple weeks. Is it just me, or is that worse than usual? I mean, I'm sure the news channels' stony hearts were warmed by all this tragedy, but it's got me worried.

My question is this: are things getting worse or are we just getting more capable and more informed? Personally I tend to think that things have always been basically this bad, the main difference being that crazed fascists and suicidal goth punk kids couldn't get their hands on automatic weapons and we didn't have newscasters salivating over the latest double murder and waiting to pounce on unsuspecting witnesses. In third world countries, genocide has been going on for hundreds of years, but we've only really heard about it within the last decade. In other words, the world has always been this way, more or less, which I find at the same time comforting and frightening. Maybe it was just a bad day to watch the news.