Uncertain Principles

At the time of this writing, the Uncertain Principles blog challenge stands in first place on the ScienceBlogs Leaderboard, with just under $2,000 in donations so far. That's almost a third of the challenge goal of $6000 in just three days, which is fantastic. Thank you for your generosity.

Of course, that still leaves $4,000 to go, which means more donations are definitely wanted. The hip thing to do appears to be to offer incentives for donations, and who am I to pass up a good idea. So, here you go:

For a $30 donation to the DonorsChoose challenge, you can buy this blog.

Details, terms, and conditions are below the nice graphical link to the challenge.

Incentive rules:

• For each $30 donated, you can choose the topic of one blog post, up to a maximum of five. (Notice that if you got and cashed a gift certificate from Six Apart, that gives you one for free).
• This could be a question you'd like answered, a suggestion for a Dorky Poll, a "meme" you'd like me to pass along, a request for a book or music review-- whatever.
• You get to choose the general topic of the post, but I decide what to write about it. I'll take suggestions as to the tone and content, but if you ask me to write about the Dallas Cowboys (for example), that doesn't mean I'm obliged to say anything nice about them. I can fulfill that by writing "The Dallas Cowboys are a festering boil on the ass of the NFL..." and going on from there.
• (Unless it's a really generous donation, in which case, we can talk about it...)
• To be even more specific, I will not post anything that might cause legal trouble for me or for Seed, nor will I post on topic that, in my judgement, are beyond the bounds of good taste. My judgements in matters of content are absolute and final.
• By opening the shrink wrap on this blog post, you agree to abide by these terms and conditions.

To claim the incentive:

1. Forward me a copy of the confirmation email from DonorsChoose acknowledging your donation (orzelc at steelypips dot org).
2. Include the topic or topics you would like me to write about with that email.
3. If you would like to be anonymous or pseudonymous, I will respect that, but make sure you tell me that in the email.
4. If you have a blog or site that you would like linked in the eventual post, tell me that, too. Link requests are subject to the content restrictions mentioned above-- i.e., I will not link approvingly to things I don't agree with, or link to anything at all that I think is in poor taste or legally dubious.

I will pledge to write something about each topic selected by a donor, and acknowledge that donor in the eventual post. I can't commit to any particular time scale for the writing and posting of those articles-- I do have a day job, and a book to write-- but I will try to get to them as quickly as I can.

Obviously, the goal of this incentive program is to bring in new donations, but if you've already contributed, you're still eligible. I will accept donor requests through 11:59 pm on November 1, 2007, and only donations to this year's challenge are eligible.