Some possibly encouraging news.

Over the last couple days I'd noticed that news accounts were reporting finding relatively (and obviously that's 'relatively' heavily underlined) few bodies in New Orleans. There was the sobering discovery of 30 bodies at the nursing home reported yesterday. But with estimates ranging from 10,000 to 25,000 dead you'd expect higher numbers even at this early stage.

And this morning there's this off the AP wire: "Authorities said Friday that their first systematic sweep of the city found far fewer bodies than expected, suggesting that Hurricane Katrina's death toll may not be the catastrophic 10,000 feared."

Obviously, the numbers are certain to be horrific even if they're far less than 10,000 dead. And there's a whole swath of less-reported-on outlying areas which will yield up their own dead. But our collective eyes tend to glaze over once we start talking about numbers of dead in the thousands. So let's note at least this possible sign that the loss of life may not be quite as extensive as we've feared.