Lileks’s Bleat this morning explains why we should be giving to support relief for the victims of this week’s tsunami better than anything I could write. So I’m just going to fair-use it:
It’s not for the dead we send the money, of course – it’s for those whose lives have been scoured down to the bone, but you can’t help but think that your contribution somehow mitigates the awful numbers. It doesn’t. And if your money makes its way to a small village, and ends up as a box of clean underwear and toothpaste and batteries and aspirin dropped in the lap of a man who watched his entire family scraped off the face of the earth and swallowed by the brutal, implacable and mindless hand of nature, well, know that it probably won’t make much difference. It can’t. But someone has to get him clean underwear and aspirin. You there, with the drawers full of Jockeys and Bayer: cough up.
and suggest you read the whole thing. I’ve already posted some suggestions on where to donate and Command Post has a good run-down. Go over there, find a suitable agency, do the right thing.
