Good Deed For The Day

Yay me - I donated $20 to the Australian Red Cross at work to go towards the tsunami relief. I know $20 is probably not a lot compared to what they need, but as Marx said, from each according to their ability to each according to their needs. What will $20 buy, people? A nice tent for a family of four or five? Ten blankets from WalMart? Anyways, it's my small bit for the planet, today at least...



Gattaca is on the TV at the moment - as well as being good for being an Uma Thurman movie, as well as a Jude Law movie, is a good sci fi movie, especially with all this talk of genetic engineering nowadays. Just thought I would mention it also because of the view of Titan as a wine glass filled with smoke, very now and Huygens probe LOL. Think it was the first movie in which I noticed Jude Law...



The news from South Asia just keeps getting worse - the toll is up to 68,000, and the reports are coming in from western Aceh now, 80% of the buildings in one of the villages was destroyed - and in the nearby Indian Andaman and Nicobar islands, maybe a third of the population has been wiped out on some islands, and they are fearing the ratio will be the same on the biggest, which still hasn't had communication with the outside world...



And the US military is doing something humanitarian for once, well ordered to for once I mean - two warship groups, including the USS Abraham Lincoln, are headed to the disaster zone to help out, and the US government has given $35 million in aid - I thought it was $60m on the TV earlier? Hmm, wasn't the Lincoln where Dubya declared Mission Accomplished - nooo, don't bring petty US politics into one of the worst disasters in the world Pauly. Anyways, a 9.0 earthquake underneath Wellington or Los Angeles would flatten either city, makes you pause for thought eh, and thank our lucky stars that it wasn't us...



And left for the inside pages, the killing in Iraq continues. Over the past couple of days there have been at least seventy civilians or local cops or National Guard killed in insurgent attacks. Less coalition troops are getting attacked the past few days, but the insurgents are adapting too efficiently and quickly, and I see this seriously becoming a civil war, not between the Sunnis, Shia and Kurds, but between the National Guard and the rebels, whether or not the US pulls out or not. And the Iraqi National Guard are going to protect the ballot boxes in the election, just thirty one days away now - good luck guys, you are going to need it.



Mmm, Uma - Gattaca finishing up here LOL.

Pauly