How you can give 10¢ to Haiti relief

via Twitter:

PLEASE RT! Want to help Haiti but don’t have $? Comment here: http://bit.ly/7i030b For every comment 10¢ will be donated to relief efforts.

My dime:

On November 1, 1755 around 10:24 AM, there was an earthquake off the coast of Lisbon, Portugal:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake

between it and the fires as well as massive tsunami it spawned, 85% of Lisbon was obliterated, with 30-40K of its 200K inhabitants killed.

The message to the people of Haiti that I wish to send is that of Lisbon’s then-prime minister “Sebastião de Melo (the Marquis of Pombal) [who] survived the earthquake. When asked what was to be done, Pombal reportedly replied “Bury the dead and heal the living,” and set upon organizing relief and rehabilitation efforts.”

Some other Haiti-related comments I made on Twitter:

* Best 2build homes, hospitals +schools. RT @USATODAY: ‘What if your city’s churches, like #Haiti‘s, were suddenly gone?’ http://bit.ly/6zNbZY

* Pat Robertson is a vile little man: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/13/pat-robertson-haiti-curse_n_422099.html

* http://bit.ly/5BZUsb Geologist warns of “major seismic activity in Port-au-Prince” in 2008, says “Thank God [for] science”

and, in reply to: “Am completely disgusted. Workmates conversing on how Haiti brought destruction upon themselves by believing in “voodoo and not god”.” I wrote:

What do workmates say e.g. when a tornado hits a church in the US? They must be excited for doom in Calif. :/

Update Jan. 17: There were a total of 25,850 comments left on that post! 8-)  Originally the plan was to donate 10 cents per post, divided among three charities, BUT (in a VERY cool move) they decided to donate $2585 to *each* of the three charities; each post thus was worth thirty cents :)

Also!  Christopher Hitchens has a post up, “A Fault Is Not a Sin“, which references the 1755 Lisbon disaster too.