I always give to Doctors Without Borders.

Those are probably both decent choices, Dana. I don't think your money is in bad hands with either one.

They are also French so they may already have a decent presence in Haiti.

I doubt the death toll will reach 100,000, though tens of thousands seems probable.

People survive earthquakes in a way they don't survive typhoons and flooding.

I'd like to believe that this would be an opportunity to rebuild Haiti into something more stable, but I doubt that will happen. It just a huge dose of human misery to a place that's already a wreck.

From The Onion, Gay Teen Worried He Might Be Christian

Faber's parents, although concerned, said they're convinced their otherwise typical gay son is merely going through a conservative Christian phase.

"I caught him watching The 700 Club once when he thought he was alone in the house, and last week, I found some paperbacks from the Left Behind series hidden in his sock drawer," his mother, Eileen Faber, said. "I'm sure he'll grow out of it, but even if he doesn't, I will love and accept my son no matter what."

Faber's father was far less tolerant in his comments.

"No son of mine is going to try to get intelligent design into school textbooks," Geoffrey Faber said. "And I absolutely refuse to pay his tuition if he decides to go to one of those colleges like Oral Roberts University where they're just going to fill his head with a lot of crazy conservative ideas."

He added, "I just want my normal gay son back.

I just made an appointment to give blood on Friday morning. I don't need it all.

Oh, oh, do earthquake victims need maternal guilt? I have plenty of that to spare as well.

Further research indicates that some of the highest death tolls from natural disaster are from earthquakes.

Also, China has had some incredibly deathy wars. More than a few with between 10 and 20 million dead.

I am not sure what sort of mis-firing is going on in my head, but I almost just responded to someone with "if you can smell what the rock is cookin'" RANDOM and now Jump Around is stuck in my head.

DWB/MSF teleconference:

We have altogether around 800 medical staff working in Haiti. Thirty of those are international. We're currently putting rapid response plans into place based out of North America and out of Europe to have another 70 international staff available over the next few days with specialties to be able to respond to these more immediate emergency medical needs. Likewise, we're prepared now and have prepared freight, including an emergency inflatable hospital so we can set up exactly those services we're currently missing.

Teams are basically managing what comes to them. There's very little possibility to get out and do more than that at the moment. Already teams are getting overwhelmed. We're strongly identified in Haiti with emergency medical care — even our coordination offices are becoming centers of influx for people in neighborhoods with severe trauma wounds. So even in our capital offices where we're trying to maintain contact with our teams they're struggling to manage quite high case loads of patients seeking medical care.

>[link]

and now Jump Around is stuck in my head.

Did you put your pants on backwards?

Huh. I didn't even know about Limnic Eruptions (sudden eruptions of CO2 from lakes that asphyxiate everything nearby).