The world’s most densely populated country has been besieged by the hot breath of desert winds killing over 600 people, so far. The Indian state of Andhra Pradesh has seen temperatures as high as 120 degrees. The heat has affected the elderly and outdoor laborers mostly.

Of course, most Indians can’t afford air conditioning, especially in rural areas, so there is truly no way to beat the heat. So, instead of supplying air conditioning or some relief for the people, the Indian government decides to put together a scientific commision to figure out why it’s so hot. Let’s not actually try to alleviate these people’s sufferings, instead let’s just spend a bunch of money to figure out why they’re dying.

But the fault doesn’t lie totally with the government. These people have legs, for the most part. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t move somewhere cooler, like the Northern part of India. Granted, this heat wave is especially bad, but it gets hot in India every year. Wouldn’t people just get tired of it and move?

That’s the way I feel about the people who die in the floods in Bangladesh (is that still a country?) every year. They know when the floods are coming, they know where they are coming, yet they inexplicably set there homes right in the flood’s path. It’s inconceivable. They ought to put up big signs at the farthest reaches of the floods that say, “Don’t build your house past this line or you’ll die.”

However, all this complaining is easy to die as I sit in a nicely air conditioned office while a nice Armed Forces Day parade marches by outside. Even people in this, the richest of countries, die during heat waves. Perhaps, we, like the Indians, ought to spend less on nuclear weapons and more on making sure our citizens don’t burn up like a forgotten Thanksgiving turkey.