The Quantum Pontiff

DonorChoose, an organization which matches teachers requests for funds with donors, is running their annual blogger challenge. Already Cosmic Variance is trying to harness their vast resources of physicists, The Optimizer is appealing to the base nerd in everyone, He of Uncertain Principles is offering up his dog's services for donations (does the dog know?), and the moral Mathematician is offering solutions to math homework problems (err I mean blog posts on a chosen topic.) But I think you shouldn't fall in this trap and support those blogs....

Because, of course instead you should support my "Pseudo Physicists Unite!" DonorsChoose challenge!

Okay so why should you choose my projects to donate to over all the others out there in the great vacuum of the blogosphere? Reasons: my favorite things to give!

Reason's to donate to "Pseudo Physicists Unite!":

1. The projects I selected are not just badly in need of funding, but they are...wait for it...wait for it....FUN! Holy mole if education isn't fun, then why the heck are we doing it? Stuff I learned playing board games I still use today. Dude you should see the paper I'm about to start writing with a student (it involves the game of Go. Seriously!) Stuff I read in popular science books totally shaped my desire to go into physics. (Seriously: learning about the controversies in quantum theory before learning the actually theory helped me understand what to worry about and what not to worry about when I finally encountered the real thing.) Three of the projects I'm hoping you might chose to donate to involve playing games and popular science physics. So when you donate you won't feel like you've just donated to some student's private educational hell, but instead made the students happy and playful!


2. This is a "psuedo physicists" challenge. I'm a pseudo-professor in a pseudo-discipline and once had a pseudo-major (physics and literature.) So, if you're not, you know, a straight up physicist (those varying Cosmically or Uncertainly) or a straight up computer scientist (Optimized Math), but someone who loves all physics and all computer science and all mathematics, or doesn't fit in the traditional "boundaries" of these very traditional boundaries, then this is your way to express your free spirit of pseudo-ness. Misfits, and dare I use the word, mavericks, of the physics and computer science world unite!


3. You're the ex-physicist who decided it would be a good idea to chop up all those mortgage backed securities and are feeling a little guilty right now about the little mess you've created. You could even fund your donation by selling some of these mortgage backed securities. Oh. Wait.


4. You're from an isolated town in The State of Jefferson. One of the projects is the closest I could find to my hometown of Yreka, CA: it's a project in Crescent City, CA requesting a DNA model. Also you might consider this project if you really really really liked Vineland by Thomas Pynchon.


5. You're a many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory enthusiast. Then in some universe you can donate and in the others you'll still have the cash. So you really won't be using any of your own money, just money from one of your copies in a different universe. No?