"The devastating 8.9-magnitude earthquake that rattled Japan Friday shifted the earth's rotation axis by about 25 centimetres. What does that mean to us? Our days are now shortened by a millionth of a second. After a number of centuries, a full second would be lost. Crazy. Watch the news. The world has changed."

Sometimes it's hard to see the real tragedies through the muck of Charlie Sheen and insider trading. And some tragedies are so huge it's impossible to truly comprehend them. It seems human nature to look for signs, symbols and messages to weave some kind of meaning into these events.

"I'm fascinated by the Richter scale. It's logarithmic, so a level 6 magnitude quake is 10 times stronger than a level 5 quake. The amplitude increases 100 times between a level 7 and a level 9 earthquake! The energy equivalent in terms of explosive force for a 4 mag quake is a small atomic bomb."

Just a sampling of Facebook and Twitter posts this morning, I'm sure most of you had similar newsfeeds.

"In this time, Uranus is entering Aries and will stay there for about 7 years. Uranus represents unpredictability, revolutions, and individuality. Aries is controlled by Mars which is considered to be the planet of war. What we can expect is to see even greater revolutions and more natural disasters... What we are seeing now is that the Earth is vomiting out all the negativity that we have created over the years, whether its greed, hatred, anger, or even a simple lack of human dignity. Kabbalah teaches us that we can overcome the influence of the planets. To do so, we MUST change our behavior, act with kindness and quickly embrace each other with tolerance and respect."

What do you make of all this? Do you go to church or subscribe to a particular faith? What does your faith say about this?