I think the thing we’ve definitely learned about this is having one of the top 10 earthquakes ever recorded is a really bad thing.
-Chad Orzel
As we discussed many things post the Mid Hudson Astronomy meeting on Tuesday, the earthquake came up, especially some conversations around the nuclear reactors, as our speaker, Chad Orzel, is a physicist. Fortunately generosity seems to be overpowering blame at the moment in helping Japan recover from this act of nature.
Our local public radio station is doing a one day fund drive for relief to Japan. They did this with Katrina and Haiti, and it has become a fabric of WAMC, which I’m proud to support.
It's always more complicated 
Felix Salmon gives an argument for not donating money to Japan which I find persuasive. See http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/03/14/dont-donate-money-to-japan/ Interestingly, most of the comments responding to his blog post ranged from extreme disapproval to hate, without addressing any of the points raised in his post.
In my view, there are horrors of the same scale as Japan going on in the world all the time. As just one example, over 25,000 children die EVERY SINGLE WEEK from diseases for which there are already vaccines. (See Gates Foundation.) As an engineer, it makes more sense to me to do a cost-benefit analysis with one’s charity dollars. Instead of emotionally throwing money at sensational events, one can use the same dollars to more cost-effectively address the horrors of the world. This seems to be Bill Gates’ approach.
Bill Rubin
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