I was forwarded the first today--it shows a monster way towering more than 75 meters over the beach in Phuket--a huge, curling breaker in the style of the Banzai Pipeline in Hawaii. And it's a fake, and a poor one at that--a picture of a large wave superimposed on a photo of the Phuket beach.Observed the same thing after 9/11--some people are quite sick in the way they "entertain".-John

And its just as sick when people post about it.

Yeah, I just saw a pic of the WTC "Tourist Guy" posing with a surfboard with what looks to be about a 40' tall breaker curling up behind him.But...it's not like dark humor was just invented. Heck, Johnny Carson was telling Space Shuttle jokes a week after the Challenger exploded.Laughing about even some of the ugliest things is part of the healing process. You ought to hang around a fire station or urban trauma center ER for a few hours. Some of the nicest people you might know have pretty twisted funny bones after watching disaster after disaster roll into their world.RegardsBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-V L-300Washington, DC

Paul, I don't know why you find my post "sick". I'd say that your response is way out of line, since I was trying to bring this to the forum's attention. I've been a contributor here for a long time and I don't post to get my laughs. Would you rather people get fooled by these BS shots? Being a parent, the last thing I want my child to believe is that some towering monster wave is going to swallow them in the manner the faked shots show. Bad enough we're deluged with pictures of the real event. We don't need to create more horror...I won't respond with an equal insult towards you, I do consider your remark trashy and beneath contempt.-John

Thanks Bob,I already replied to Paul. I don't think (in the case of the shot I saw) it was meant as dark humor. Seemed more like an attempt to scam the public into believing it was a real shot. In events like this, everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame.I've done a google image search and the shot I was sent doesn't appear, so I suspect it was another one of those "forward this to ten ppl on your mailing list" type of emails. Most of the people who were CC'd with me are local programmers here as well as programmers in India.-John

It gets worse. Someone got a domain name (I think disasterrelief.org) and tried to sell it at eBay, minimum bid something like $50.000.When he got angry letters from people he said he'd only intended to donate the proceeds to charity.Yeah, right. He didn't make up a nice and soggy story to that regard on his eBay auction...Had he been interested in charity he could as well have donated the domain itself to charity directly.

Hi John,while Paul's post may have been inappropriate, I can understand where his feelings may have come from (of course, I may be totally wrong...).This morning, I listened to BBC radio over the internet, whilst browsing through my e-mails and visiting my favourite forums. Whilst I was hearing a report of the first officially confirmed case of child abduction, I stumbled across your post. My first reaction was "Who the (insert rude expletive) cares about some pictures sent by a few retards to some tossers who still haven't figured out how to eliminate spam, while all this is going on?"I refrained from posting a scathing reply as I realised that you were a professional person posting a real-life concern to affect people on a forum which is, as of late, predominantly occupied with concerns about the accuracy of some (perceived) rendition of reality on a piece of consumer electronics.Of course, Paul may well fall into that category....Cheers,Gosta.(who has no doubt that you are aware of the real issues in the face of this tragedy)http://www.hifisim.com/images/as2betateam.jpg

That or many people just like to take cheap points really.Yeah there is a lot of ruthless people out there. People stealing red cross donations directly from people collecting money for the Tsunami disaster. Some banks got their donations stolen and of course a number of fake red cross employees :(I won

I've already received a (surprisingly small number so far) number of spam emails from obvious scam operations trying to take advantage of the disaster.Another group trying to gain (in this case political power) from it are the treehuggers. Greenpeace and others have openly claimed the whole thing is caused by their pet project: global warming.But the real charities aren't loath to misappropriating funds either.After the 9/11 attacks the US red cross received tens of millions of dollars in donations. Millions of this were used not for helping the victims (and their families) but to build a shiny new headquarters for themselves.During the massive fundraising operations of the 1980s to help the people of Ethiopia during the famine there (never mind they brought it on themselves by wielding Kalashnikovs instead of plows and spades) the majority of the aid never reached the intended people. Shiploads of grain went straight to the USSR instead to pay for weapons (this was witnessed by people in country at the time).The aid groups knew this but didn't complain or take action to prevent it.This coincides with the recipients abusing the aid given for their own purposes.Aid sent to one African country to build schools and hospitals was instead used to build a modern new airport and purchase a private jet for the country's ruler. No complaint was ever filed and the donors kept pumping in more and more money (they turned a blind eye and misinformed the people in the donor countries) in the hope that something would trickle down to those schools and hospitals.Then there's the well intended but useless aid.Also in Africa tens of tons of milk powder were distributed in areas that were bone dry after years of no rain.Only the aid organisations forgot to also ship water so all it did was add more dust as it was completely useless.

I don't understand why people here are questioning John's motives. I only see a forum member posting about something that he got in his inbox, and that he found distasteful. He isn't amused by it as far as I can tell.

Yeah somehow such disasters points out exactly how evil and how good we humans can be don

Thanks Fred...I found the image very disturbing not only because it was fake, but for some deeply personal reasons. In the winter of 1977, my father and I took a camping trip--I was sixteen at the time. Although the weather was chilly, we decided to visit Goat Rock state beach near Jenner, CA which was a short drive from our campground.We were impressed by the waves. A storm in the Pacific was causing large 20-30 foot waves to come in--some crashing into Goat Rock. But the beach was clear, and my father and I walked about a mile down to where the Russian River meets the sea.At that point, a series of waves came in unlike anything I'd ever seen, in person. They were reported to be 50 feet from trough to crest. We were in some dunes about ten feet above sea level. That didn't stop what happened next... The waves just surged right over the dunes. We had about ten seconds to decide what to do. There were large pieces of driftwood about 25 yards from where we were... We ran for it and reached them, and held on for dear life as the waves surged in. Although we were perched about four feet above the beach, only our hands showed.You could feel the waves moving the driftwood in both directions as they came in and out. Although the wood was sticking about six-seven feet out of the ground, I suspect an equal portion was buried in the beach and that likely helped save us. The cycle of waves lasted for several moments, then we saw the tide get sucked back out to roughly the normal waterline. We ran for dear life, the entire mile back to the parking lot. We just drove off and climbed about 75 feet above sea level, and another series came in obliterating the beach and the parking lot.Eight people were killed at the state beaches that day within a twenty mile radius of where we were. And nearly 30 years later, I still have recurring dreams about that day. One image that sticks with you is the terror of a wave towering over you. Most Tsunamis aren't like that, although they are much worse in their own right. People who spend their time taking a disaster and splicing photos to achieve either shock effect or dark humor are bottom feeders, IMHO. Because such images either force people to relive their nightmares or place nightmares in the minds of those who haven't experienced such terror.-John

Let me clarify why I said, what I said. I find these types of EDITS very distasteful, and the reason people do that, is because it gets a reaction, When people react, they prove that the originators are making their point.Simple, ignore them, and they will go away. Coming here to tell us all about it, is just speading their cause, whether you have good intentions or not. If you don't spread their work, they are powerless, and won't do it. I will NOT be a pawn in their game.I agree that John meant well, and it was not a personal attack towards him, just an attack to the origin.I too saw the WTC tourist guy, and found that picture just as distasteful, again, same idea.Nuff said. That's my point of view.

"Simple, ignore them, and they will go away. Coming here to tell us all about it, is just speading their cause, whether you have good intentions or not. If you don't spread their work, they are powerless, and won't do it. I will NOT be a pawn in their game."I am no one's pawn--I am simply a father and a concerned member of this forum, one where children visit, alerting the members not to believe what they see. I didn't post the picture which would have certainly been giving lip service to the person who created the hoax.Obviously I pushed all your buttons and I find your second response no better than the first.'Nuff said--that's my point of view.

I'm sorry, but I have to correct some of the mis-statements in that post."During the massive fundraising operations of the 1980s to help the people of Ethiopia during the famine there (never mind they brought it on themselves by wielding Kalashnikovs instead of plows and spades)"In the 1970's and 1980's Ethiopa had one of the worst droughts in history. When the military seized power in 1974, sparking the civil war, over 300,000 Ethiopians had ALREADY died from drought related famine. The wars certainly made things much worse, but in the trigger drought of 1978 the Ethiopians could have wielded all the spades and plows they wanted to to no avail - Eastern Ethiopia had NO rain during the entire growing season. "the majority of the aid never reached the intended people."A severe spin on the truth. MOST of the food aid got to Ethiopians who needed it. A lot was diverted by local governments (Official or de-facto) fom the particular group it was intended for to another village or tribe because of political reasons, but the new recipients were generally in just as much need as the original recipients."Shiploads of grain went straight to the USSR instead to pay for weapons"Never happened. Aseb (The only major commercial port) was under foreign control the whole time. NO shiploads of food went out during the entire period. Thousands of tons of food aid rotted in storage in the port or offshore on ships that couldn't offload, but those were logistical problems, not fraud ones. A large part of the problem was that Western governments, such as the US, used the crisis to prop up their own farming economies by buying surplus food and dumping it on the aid agencies, instead of providing what was being begged for - cranes, trucks, trailers, etc. "(this was witnessed by people in country at the time)" No it wasn't."The aid groups knew this but didn't complain or take action to prevent it."The aid groups complained loudly about the security situation, the theft and diversion of aid, and the misappropriation of what logistical supplies we had. The only people with the power to "take action" about it were the western governments and military authorities, who were too scared of getting "bogged down" to allow their troops to come in and impose order."Also in Africa tens of tons of milk powder were distributed in areas that were bone dry after years of no rain.Only the aid organisations forgot to also ship water so all it did was add more dust as it was completely useless."Pure "urban legend". Think about it for a second, and it's obvious. If there's enough water to drink just to stay alive, you can mix that water with the milk powder and get nutrition as well as hydration. If there isn't even enough water to stay alive, then food is moot anyway. Also, no "aid organization" would "forget to ship" water - every aid agency in the world knows that water is the one single most urgent requirement in any area. In any event, except for the briefest of emergency situations, you wouldn't ship in water to an area to keep people alive - it actually takes less truckage to bring the people to where there is water than take water to them.Please, there's enough people coming up with their own reasons not to give to relief operations without people posting untruths and urban legends about what will happen to their aid once it's received.Richard