Repeating a word many times over makes it lose meaning to one's ears.
There came a point for all of us in the newsroom last week when the word 'disaster' just didn't cut it anymore. Neither did 'crisis', nor even the big gun, 'catastrophe'.
Because what on earth do you call a gigantic quake, followed by a 10-metre tsunami, and then a nuclear emergency that caused some commentators to quote numbers eerily similar to Chernobyl?
It was no wonder, then, that rather than devouring every one of our now-hundreds of Japan stories, readers went straight to the gallery of those things that tell a thousand words.
Perhaps a thousand would suffice, but the feelings stirred by headlines like the top one this week: 'Nuclear cloud 'to pass over Europe' certainly take some describing.
News that makes sense
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The evacuation from Fukushima of a group of brave men - who'd been inside battling to avoid a meltdown at huge risk to their own health since the March 11 distaster/crisis/catastrophe - drew its share of clicks too.
As if looking to the skies for an answer, next in the most popular was the report that a 'super full Moon' is coming.
The appearance of the glorious orb itself hopefully brought a moment of beauty to those in Japan, though the news that it would likely bring larger than normal tides probably did not.
As a vicious conflict continued within Libya, the question of what to do about it divided the world's leaders, including Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev and action-man President Vladimir Putin.
Putin didn't let the disagreement get him down though, popping off to visit a rare snow leopard named Mongol.
In the meantime, a defiant Muammar Gaddafi vowed payback as the West struck and fairly soon videos emerged of funerals for alleged civilian victims of the strikes aimed at protecting ... civilians.
As is their wont, some lighter stories appeared further down the list, with a yarn about 'socialbots' shaping Twitter networks - a headline that the less-social-media-minded may find bamboozling.
Essentially, the story was that researchers had created bots that acted like real, human Twitter users, effectively tricking the actual real, human Twitter users into making friends with them.
In the entertainment world, epic film sagas are becoming more and more - well, epic, and trilogies are increasingly being filmed backwards. In keeping with the trend, cameras finally began rolling on The Hobbit (not literally!), the long-awaited first film in the already massive 'Rings' series.
The Hobbit comes years after Peter Jackson's other movies, and the controversy around it has grown with each passing month.
This week encompassed St Patrick's Day, to be sure, and to celebrate, a flash mob burst out in a fit of Irish dancing in the middle of Sydney's Central Station.
Many others were seen clad in green and doing something that resembled dancing near Aussie pubs on the day, but few of them were doing it on purpose.
But the titillation of a day of alcohol couldn't keep Japan far from any news consumer's thoughts.
Last on the list, with text unable to do it justice, readers turned to our constantly-updating multimedia interactive feature, as they, and we, grappled with the enormity of the horror that has befallen the tiny yet stoic country.
Hopefully, there will be no need to repeat the words 'disaster', 'crisis' and 'catastrophe' anymore this year. It has been quite a start.
