What do we care about?

This past weekend saw two fascinating events:

The Kentucky Derby (good, pomp, etc)
Myanmar Cyclone (bad, scary, etc)

While surfing around the internet for my morning news, I noticed stories about both. The death toll from the cyclone has reached over 22,000. The death toll from the derby reached one euthanized horse.

Now I'm as guilty as anyone else when it comes to caring about the wrong things, but it's just fascinating what physical distance does to mental distance. What should we be caring about?

Excerpts from both articles:

"What we really want to know, did he feel anything along the way [while running the race if the horse was hurt]?" PETA spokeswoman Kathy Guillermo said. "If he didn't then we can probably blame the fact that they're allowed to whip the horses mercilessly." - ESPN.com

A news broadcast on government-run radio said Tuesday that 22,464 people have now been confirmed dead and thousands more are missing. - AP

Now I understand that PETA has a mission statement concerned with care for animals, and this is indeed an important issue, it's just funny how distant we are from some of the most important things in this planet and how easily we are caught up in little things.