Tsunami Relief

The news every day gets worse and worse. The people of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Somalia, Myanmar, Malaysia, Maldives, Tanzania, Seychelles, and Bangladesh are in need of international aid and many are still in peril as disease threatens to claim as many lives as have already been taken. The people of these countries will be rebuilding for years.

Please consider donating to, and/or getting involved with, the following organizations to help provide relief to these tragically stricken nations.

UNICEF Canada online at www.unicef.ca, or 1-877-955-3111. Donations can also be mailed in to UNICEF Canada, 2200 Yonge St., Suite 1100, Toronto, Ont., M4S 2C6.

World Vision Canada online at www.worldvision.ca, or call 1-800-268-5528.

The Red Cross online at www.redcross.ca, or 1-800-418-1111 – the 24-hour toll free line accepts Visa and Mastercard. You can also mail a cheque made payable to the Canadian Red Cross, earmarked “South East Asia Earthquake and Tidal Wave Relief” to Canadian Red Cross National Office, 170 Metcalfe Street, Suite 300, Ottawa, Ontario, K2P 2P2. Donations of goods won’t be accepted.

The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace (C.C.O.D.P.) online at www.devp.org, or 1-888-664-3387, or you can mail a cheque to Development and Peace, 5633 Sherbrooke St. East, Montreal, Que., H1N 1A3. The cheque should be marked “Tidal Wave Disaster.”

Oxfam Canada online at www.oxfam.ca or 1-800-466-9326.

Christian Children’s Fund of Canada Donations can be made at www.ccfcanada.ca following the link to “Devastating Earthquake and Tsunami Hit South Asia”. As well, donations can be marked as Earthquake and Tsunami Relief and sent by mail to: Christian Children’s Fund of Canada, 1027 McNicoll Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M1W 3X2. Donations will help provide emergency food, clothing, shelter, medical treatment and construction of housing.

ShareLife online at www.sharelife.org or by phone at (416) 934-3411 or toll-free at 1-800-263-2595.

From the department of irony

walmart-logo.gifOn sale now for $7.55 (you save $3.40) at Walmart:

How Walmart Is Destroying America And The World: And What You Can Do About It

Ha! I don’t know what’s funnier, Walmart selling an anti-Walmart book or alarmist leftist anti-corporate literature achieving its ends by selling at the world’s largest corporation… Walmart.

Whichever is funnier, one thing is for sure…
Advantage: Walmart

UPDATE: Looks like Walmart has removed the item. Funny while it lasted though.

CBC finally gets RSS feed

cbc-logo.jpgI don’t know the exact date that this happened but CBC.ca has finally joined up with the rest of the online and syndicated world and has started to offer its news in RSS format. All of the good stuff is there including Canadian, International and local news (including Toronto, Ottawa and even the North – you can now get news updates from Iqaluit as it happens)

RSS is syndicated content that is easily read by a news reader and thus notifies you whenever new content is posted… think of instant messaging meets news.

Ahem, this would be a good time to plug my own RSS feed.

I sent CBC news an email asking for the service back in the summer and received this reply:

Following your request, it is impossible to send you any RSS feed due to our strict policy. We understand your point, but we do not send it to particulars. We hope this will answer your questions

I guess that either enough people asked for it or enough of their staff were already receiving RSS content from the New York Times or CNN… which reminds me of a tour I took of the CBC newsroom a couple of years ago… I asked a staffer where CBC gets most of their news to which she replied, “We watch CNN a lot”