"Where you live should not decide whether you live or whether you die." — U2, Crumbs From Your Table

" The astounding tragedy in the Indian Ocean is not just a human disaster of unbearable magnitude. Nor is it a matter of fate. It is the consequence of years of underinvestment in the scientific and technical infrastructure needed to reduce the vulnerability of developing countries to natural and environmental calamity."  From an editorial by Art Lerner-Lam and Leonardo  Seeber, seismologists with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University and Robert Chen, a geographer with the Center for International  Earth Science Information Network. Maxx Dilley, Deborah Balk, and Klaus Jacob also contributed to this essay.  Full editorial at the Los Angeles Times (registration required.)

Give to the Red Cross courtesy of Amazon.

The Working Families party called the other night soliciting a contribution for their campaign to raise the minimum wage.  The New York State minimum wage is currently set at $5.15 an hour–a proposal in Albany would raise it by $2 to $7.15 an hour.  I’d given them a contribution for this cause before, but the act sent me back to my microeconomics textbook–wasn’t raising the minimum wage one of those policies that hurt more than it helped? 

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