The Logic Off Topic list

By now, most of us know how devastating Sunday's Tsunami in the 
Indian 
Ocean has been to parts of Southern Asia.  As the death toll climbs 
to 
120,000 lives, we cannot forget the millions who have no homes, 
farms, 
means to support themselves, access to clean drinking water, and so 
on. 
  Anyone who wants more information, please check your local or 
online 
news sources.

Writing on behalf of the LUG moderators, our thoughts and prayers go 
out to the victims and those suffering.  But they need more than our 
hearts--they need our cash, as well.

Many of us already have given to aid organizations on our own.  Some 
of 
us may want to give, but are not quite sure how, or to whom.  We LUG 
moderators wanted to not only give ourselves, but provide our entire 
LUG community with the opportunity to give a collective donation to 
Tsunami Relief.  Thankfully, we already have a bit of our own Web and 
finance infrastructure thanks to our group buys.  Here's what we have 
done:

We have set up a Paypal account for the address: 
donations@...

We will collect donations starting now, and continuing through 
Friday, 
January 7th.  At that point, we will donate everything we have 
collected to CARE:
http://www.care.org/

CARE has been developing works and projects to fight both the causes 
and the symptoms of 3rd world poverty for 60 years.  They also boast 
that some 92% of all funds donated to them goes directly into aid 
projects, as opposed to institutional overhead, fundraising 
campaigns, 
and so on.  This is truly a noble organization, and one with people 
in 
place to use the money wisely.

We have over 15,000 members in the LUG and 1,200 OT list members; if 
everyone gave $1 that would 
be a very sizable donation of over $15,000 towards Tsunami Relief!  
Of 
course, we know that many readers are on "no mail" or have already 
given all they can.  Please remember, NO gift is too small.  Even 
those 
of us who are struggling in our own lives--a common theme among 
musicians!--have more than those whose lives are crushed by this 
catastrophe.

If there are any LUGers who have any concerns about how we 
co-moderators are handling this contribution drive, please let us 
know 
(offlist) how we can address those concerns.  We moderators are not 
making any money off this, and have already collectively contributed 
$950 to our LUG Tsunami Relief effort.  We are not, however, going to 
split up the money raised to different organizations, or change 
organizations, etc.  Our goal is to keep it simple, and to donate to 
one organization with a proven track record of doing good for a lot 
of 
people--many organizations fit this bill, and CARE is one of them.

Anyway, please contribute if you can.  In addition to the donation 
email address, Jeremy will have additional Web buttons and a Web page 
up at http://www.logic-users.org as soon as possible.  We will repost 
reminders about the LUG Tsunami Relief effort throughout the week.  
The 
LUG community, at its heart, is based around helping each other; in 
times like this, I think we need to expand that definition to help 
those who need it most.

Thank you,

LUG Admin Team