Please open your wallets.
OK everyone, please help with what is one of the largest disasters ever. So far over 60,000 people have died. What you may not know is that there will likely be double that number of people that die in the aftermath. They will die of horrible diseases such as cholera (basically sh*t yourself to death in a couple of days), dysentery (bloody diarrhea death), typhoid fever (death from salmonella poisoning), and malaria. These are not pleasant ways to die and are totally preventable. Donations need to be in money. It costs tremendous amounts of resources to try and send items and food. It is more efficient to send money. I would suggest the Red Cross or some organization that will allow you to send money to specific causes. The donations are tax deductible and besides your contribution can save lives.
Editor’s note: Hi, this is your friendly neighbourhood 24601. This is a fantastic idea (in fact, Angel had already proposed something of the sort just yesterday evening). We will be taking a group collection in conjunction with our New Year’s party. If you are attending, please bring a donation. Also note that Red Cross accepts Mastercard/Visa, so we will probably be sending our collection there.
Update: The number of people who died from the tsunami is now estimated over 100,000. Here is some satellite imagery of the before and after effects. The size of the waves 4 hours after are huge:

9 comments Tuesday 28 Dec 2004 | SlantyBard | SlantyNet - General
And as an added note/thought, we’re all saving $50 or so per person by not buying a ticket to go to some New Years party somewhere as our gracious hosts Gord & Jody are having us around to there place instead. It’d be nice to roll that unused ticket money into a cheque for the Red Cross wouldn’t it?
This disaster has been all over the news here, even one of the news papers got their images from here
Our government has put up about $35 mill in aid…
Our government has put up about £15 mill in aid…
It’s astonishing how out of touch a person can get. The first I heard of this was when I came back to work yesterday. We don’t have cable and with Donna’s mom visiting, anytime we were in the car the radio was off so we could talk.
Anyways, I like the idea of a Slanty pool for New Years, just wish we could be there. Instead, we just used the Red Cross link to donate $200. Thanks for the link Bard.
The Canadian Gov’t is now up to $40million in aid I think, and the BC Gov’t has given another $8million.
Videos.
Google disaster page.
It is a good sign that the level of donations here by the general public has caused the British government to raise their contribution from 15 m pounds to 50 m pounds- nice to see.
Is there a count of the money collected NYE? The pot looked nicely full!
The official tally of the cash collected on New Year’s Eve is $260. In addition, I know a number of people made many generous donations online. Thank you everyone, for helping out. The people in need thank you as well.
Uodate: My company has announced that they will match the donations made by employees, and the $260 from the party will be matched as well (including being matched by the Canadian Government). Thus, this $260 is getting matched twice, to a grand total of $780 to go to those in need. Whew! Not bad for a night of partying, folks.