Much of the current media exaggerates the situation by claiming that the entire Horn of Africa is starving. This rallying cry is meant to make us all pay attention, but I think it makes us want to look away. How can you help the entire Horn, after all, and haven’t we been trying for years? (more on this intentionally tongue in cheek comment in my next blog). We could push this line of reasoning and say that humans should be able to take a great deal of bad news and still care and still act. We should have that patience. But I don’t know if we really do, or if we really should. In the past five years I’ve given over sixty lectures around North America about Ethiopia. People hang onto the good I share and not in a naive way, but in a way that makes them more motivated to pay attention to the bad. In short, I think we can understand more complicated reporting that shows both.