Wizbang calls this 4.7 MB movie clip “simply the most amazing video of the tsunami I’ve yet seen.” It gives you an incredible eye-level view of the monster wave crashing ashore.

P.S. The Amazon.com American Red Cross Disaster Relief online donations page has received $3,692,342.01 and counting.

And then of course there’s the wobblewobblewobble. :>

Here’s the NASA-JPL spin:

Wednesday, December 29, 2004

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) — The deadly Asian earthquake may have permanently accelerated the Earth’s rotation, shortening days by a fraction of a second and caused the planet to wobble on its axis, U.S. scientists said Tuesday.

[I’ve done that on mine, occasionally. / - the guestblogger :]

Richard Gross, a geophysicist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, theorized that a shift of mass toward the Earth’s center during the quake Sunday caused the planet to spin 3 microseconds, or millionths of a second, faster and to tilt about an inch on its axis.

When one huge tectonic plate beneath the Indian Ocean was forced below the edge of another “it had the effect of making the Earth more compact and spinning faster,” Gross said.

Whole thing.

It took him long enough. Bush pledges he will send more aid. Other world leaders had already done so.

The tsunami death toll is now, by some accounts, at 100,000.

As of early this morning, the death toll has reached nearly 68,000 in the wake of the recent natural disasters.

And how much is the US giving in aid? $35 million. Now, $35 million is nothing to sneeze at. I might be able to live comfortably for the rest of my life on $35 million if the dollar doesn’t deflate any more. But to offer only $35 million in an area that requires billions of dollars in aid? I’m not the only one who thinks this is a horrible insult to the people living near the Indian Ocean.

Although U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland yesterday withdrew his earlier comment, domestic criticism of Bush continued to rise. Skeptics said the initial aid sums — as well as Bush’s decision at first to remain cloistered on his Texas ranch for the Christmas holiday rather than speak in person about the tragedy — showed scant appreciation for the magnitude of suffering and for the rescue and rebuilding work facing such nations as Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Indonesia.

One would think that after the way the world came to aid the US after 9/11, Bush would be happy to return the favor:

Some foreign policy specialists said Bush’s actions and words both communicated a lack of urgency about an event that will loom as large in the collective memories of several countries as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks do in the United States. “When that many human beings die — at the hands of terrorists or nature — you’ve got to show that this matters to you, that you care,” said Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.

There was an international outpouring of support after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and even some administration officials familiar with relief efforts said they were surprised that Bush had not appeared personally to comment on the tsunami tragedy. “It’s kind of freaky,” a senior career official said.

Now, I understand that the US only has a certain amount of money in its coffers. And I understand that we’re trillions of dollars in debt and so on and so on. We have a duty to help our fellow man (it’s . . . the Christian thing to do). $35 million is a good start. I just pray that Bush plans on giving more . . .

UPDATE: The Washington Post now reports that the death toll has surpassed 76,000.

Jordan Golson, a UMass undergrad and a typical, run-of-the-mill blogger, got one hell of a traffic boost when Drudge linked to his collection of tsunami videos Tuesday evening. You think an Instalanche is something? Try a Drudgelanche: nearly 140,000 unique hits Tuesday, according to his SiteMeter counter, and those were almost all after 5:00 PM EST. Wednesday could bring even more. Wow.

The videos are incredible, by the way, especially this one (11.7 MB) and this one (7.6 MB) and this one (10 MB).

The Great Tsunami of 2004 is now blamed for 59,000 deaths, making the 9.0 earthquake that spawned it the deadliest quake since 1976, when an estimated 655,000 perished in Tangshan, China.

P.S. It’s the deadliest tsunami since an estimated 60,000 died in Lisbon in 1755 — and this death toll will almost certainly surpass that one, making it the deadliest tsunami on record, according to this list.

The risk of an impact by Asteroid 2004 MN4 has abruptly dropped to 1 in 26,000, or 0.003800000%. I guess they found that new data they were looking for!

Here’s a map of the asteroid’s projected path; the thick white line shows the “set of possible positions” with relation to the Earth and Moon. None of those positions involve an impact; appparently the 1 in 26,000 risk relates to 2037, not 2029.

So, that’s good news. But, er, let’s still prepare, shall we? Because, as my dad said, a large oceanic asteroid impact would produce a tidal wave that would dwarf this past weekend’s Southeast Asian catastrophe.

Speaking of which, Belmont Club has some excellent thoughts on the tsunami, the asteroid, and preparations for rare or unprecedented disasters generally.

Now there’s a video of the tsunami hitting Thailand’s Patong Beach, a popular tourist hotspot (in particular, a gay mecca) on the western shore of Phuket Island.

The death toll of the Great Tsunami of 2004 is now more than 22,000, and “could climb far higher,” according to officials. Millions are homeless.

The Command Post has more, including links to how you can help.

Now they’re saying more than 7,000 people died in yesterday’s earthquakes and tsunamis in Southeast Asia. I’m guessing that number will rise even higher, into the tens of thousands. :(

Sounds like a disaster of the first order in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and elsewhere in that area, after a massive offshore earthquake, 8.5 on the Richter scale (that’s stronger than Thursday’s harmless biggest-in-four-years quake off Antarctica), produced a big tidal wave, and was then followed by eight aftershocks in the 6.0 range, at least one of which occurred on shore.

UPDATE: Now they’re saying it was the largest earthquake since 1965, and they’re already reporting a death toll of 500. I suspect and fear that the final toll will be in the thousands, perhaps many thousands.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Now they’re saying it was an 8.9 on the Richter scale. That would put it fifth on the all-time list, and would actually make it the worst since 1964, not 1965.

P.S. Drudge is going nuts with this story.