Mark D Roberts argues that not only is it OK to celebrate new year tonight despite the tsunami, it is vital that we do. In the midst of great pain and heaviness the world needs joy. Lets generously enjoy the New Year and make today another record day of giving financial aid to the victims of the tsunami. After all to share our money is the least that we can do. I pray that all my readers may have a... Read more

Scotsman.com reports that Britons have now donated more than 32 million to Tsunami charity work, whilst Amazon.com has also collected a stunning $7,279,808.35 on its own! I wonder what the total worldwide charitable giving curently stands at. Read more

Josh at In the Agora explains how challenging to his conservative comforts he has found the recent events. Read more

Wesleyblog wonders wether listings at Google are rigged and asks “how did the Mormons get the top spot?”. Well the answer is no the results are not rigged but yes they are very sensitive to links especially those found on blogs. The mormon site will appear at the top for the search “Jesus Christ” simply because more websites link to that page with the words Jesus Christ in their link. A few sites down is a Campus Crusade site about... Read more

Herald Sun. There is now no doubt at all that simple communication would have prevented many deaths as there WAS an advance warning but “no telephone numbers” to call. We HAVE to learn to work together accross the nations, and it is clear that failure to do so was the biggest factor in the scale of this event. In poor nations it may have been difficult to get the message out, but we saw that it was possible to clear... Read more

Some of you will have noticed an improvement to my blog’s appearance tonight- for ages now on certain PCs and at certain times the side bar has disappeared to the bottom of the page. Many thanks to The Minor Prophet who has kindly fixed it for me! He has been granted entrance into the Blogdom of God as a reward, and a couple of others who have been waiting a while are now in: I was just thinking by novelist... Read more

Earlier today I predicted that embarrassed by their own people, the governments of the world would give more to tsunami relief. Indeed they already are. Sweden was reported as increasing giving first, and just a few minutes ago big increases in government giving were reported. I am sure that the US will follow suit. But lets not turn this into some kind of adolescent male testosterone-fuelled contest. The people need as much aid as they can get. (On second thoughts... Read more

News24 says “In resorts Thursday, tourists swam and snorkeled near resort buildings that had windows and balconies smashed by the tsunami. Scuba divers descended next to concrete breakwaters in which the wave had punched gaping holes.” Read more

Hat tip to MediaSoul who passes on Drudge’s report that up to “400,000 are Possibly Dead” in Indonesia alone. So far Ghanaweb has it but no other news sources except the agency cited on both these pages- Bernama, the Malaysian National News Agency- KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 30 (Bernama) — The death toll in Acheh, the region worst hit by last Sunday’s tsunami, may exceed 400,000 as many affected areas could still not be reached for search and rescue operations, Indonesia’s... Read more

Yahoo! News reports: “Wild animals seem to have escaped the Indian Ocean tsunami, adding weight to notions they possess a ‘sixth sense’ for disasters, experts said Thursday.” Read more