I have a lot of contempt for the American news media, but sometimes that spills over into actual hatred.

Starting on 1/10/08 there were a series of brutal winter storms in southern China.

Here’s a picture of a soldier using a flamethrower to melt ice off of frozen power lines in Yunnan province, which is at about the same latitude as Florida:

The impact:

• 63 deaths as a direct result of the weather
• Over 200,000 sick and injured
• 223,000 homes have been destroyed
• An additional 862,000 homes are damaged
• The city of Chenzhou, with a population of 4.6 million (for reference, Los Angeles has a population of 3.8 million) was without power or water for a week
• In total, 1.8 million people have been evacuated/relocated
• 1.3 million head of livestock have been killed
• 6 million railway passengers total have been stranded during the busiest travel season of the year (chinese new year)
• 4 million hectares (40,000 square km or almost 10 million acres) of food crops destroyed
• 54 billion RMB (7.5 billion US) in economic damage

So, who’s heard more than a passing reference to this? Where’s the reporting?

Natalee Holloway gets drunk and goes missing, and we have weeks of nonstop coverage. Humanitarian disaster in China? nobody cares. No Americans died (unlike, say, the 2004 Tsunami) so whatever.

Edit: Here’s a pretty good article from CNN. Too bad it’s not even on the front page of CNN World.

How I Made My Millions is a neat little show I found on CNBC that profiles successful entrepreneurs. The format of the show is stale as a piece of bread long lost behind the sofa, but what won me over was the tidbits of advice each business owners shared about how to face obstacles to success head-on and the innovative strategies they employed to stand out in the market. Plus, there was the whole destruction thing. Take a look:

SSI Shredding, which I shall deftly describe as a manufacturer of big-ass shredders, was one the companies featured on the most recent episode of Millions. The entire organization is built around chopping stuff into little pieces… anything… just name it.

Now if you’re going to mince things like cars, boats, and refrigerators, then you might as well make a video library and stick it up on YouTube like SSI Shredding has done. Although, I have no evidence of this, I’m sure the following was said at some point by a SSI sales representative to a customer – “So you want a demo of what these babies can do? Just search for us on YouTube” . Now that’s YouTube marketing at its finest, folks.