Philanthropy
jstemwedel | October 2, 2008Near the end of our 2007 DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge, I received a generous donation from a reader who asked if I could write a poem about narcolepsy.
I'm a little late in paying up, but better late than never. Here it is:
I tried to write you
a narcolepsy poem.
Pen meets paper, but --
YAWN
Excessive daytime
sleepiness, or writer's block?
Push through fatigue and --
YAWN
Pen in my hand,
Body crumpled, inert, but
cataplexy won't --
zzzzzz
Sleep paralysis.
Awake, yet I can't move or
try the lines aloud.
YAWN
Drifting into sleep,
vivid hallucinations
scare me, but I must --
zzzzzz
Talking in…
jstemwedel | October 1, 2008See, I told you more ScienceBlogs bloggers would jump into the fray for our DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge 2008.
Challenges have been mounted by:
A Blog Around the Clock (challenge here)The Quantum Pontiff (challenge here)
Watch the ScienceBlogs leaderboard to see if they catch up.
In other news, the motherboard would seem to indicate that the tech blogs, mommy blogs, topical/local blogs, and BlogHer are currently leaving us in their dust. I wonder if fans of science will remedy that ...
jstemwedel | September 30, 2008It's October, which means ScienceBlogs bloggers are, once again, participating in the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge. The idea behind the drive is simple: we're appealing to you, our readers, to help public school teachers across the U.S. fund proposals for classroom supplies, activities, and field trips. As I wrote at the start of our very first drive in 2006:
Those of us who blog here at ScienceBlogs think science is cool, important, and worth understanding. If you're reading the blogs here, chances are you feel the same way.
A lot of us fell in love with science because of early…
skookumchick | September 29, 2008OMG, has it been a busy few days. I'm just starting the second shift of working today, after an 8-5:30 day of back-to-back meetings, and tomorrow will be all day in a workshop, but I need to share some updatey things, including a belated announcement for the October Scientiae (yay!) below the fold.
Jen at Deliberate Pixel has had a tough month, but is going to pull out all the stops to get us an October Scientiae carnival. Get your posts in by Friday on anything or the theme "being a good example even in a misstep" and she'll post the carnival this weekend. Thanks, Jen!
Everyone is gearing…
sciencewoman | September 15, 2008
Very early one Saturday morning in October, Minnow and I will be congregating in the heart of Mystery City with thousands of other women and men, girls and boys. And many of us will be wearing pink. Then we'll run or walk five kilometers in honor of the 1 in 8 women who will be affected by breast cancer over the course of their lifetimes.
This issue has taken on a lot more personal dimension for me in the past few years, as my mom fought uterine cancer, an aunt continues to battle breast cancer, and a lovely neighbor BandanaLady is struggling with chemotherapy following a masectomy. My…
jstemwedel | July 25, 2008Sure, we still have about a week of July left, but those days are getting shorter and soon the classrooms will be filling up again.
Which means that it's a pretty good time for public school teachers (in the U.S.*) to start thinking about what they'd like to accomplish in those classrooms, and whether submitting a classroom project proposal to DonorsChoose could help them secure the funds to make exciting ideas into real educational experiences.
Before the students are lining up outside the classroom, check out the DonorsChoose blog, which includes:
Tips for putting together successful…
jstemwedel | December 31, 2007The One Laptop Per Child program's Give One Get One promotion (which I blogged about back in November) has been extended through the end of December 31 (today!!).
If you're in the U.S. or Canada, for $399 ($200 of which is tax deductible) you can donate a spiffy new and super-cool XO laptop to a child in a developing country and get one for yourself.
Santa (who apparently reads this blog) availed himself of the offer and brought an XO laptop to the sprogs. It's set up with Linux (a plus for many people), although some bits are a little buggy (but free upgrades are expected to be available…
sciencewoman | December 14, 2007Via BitchPh.D. comes this story of a 7 year old who jumped in front of her mother's murderous ex-boyfriend to save her mother's life. The little girl was shot six times (and her mother twice) before the police finally showed up. Child and mama both miraculously survived, but they are going to need some help. Please go over to Bitch's, read the whole story, and see what your heart tells you.
sciencewoman | November 22, 20071. Happy Thanskgiving everyone. Minnow, Fish, and I are enjoying a mini-Thanksgiving meal of turkey, wild rice, and apple pie. Minnow will be getting her first taste of turkey. Photos will be taken.
2. On this day of feasting and family, take a moment to think of those who are less fortunate than you. This year you might send your compassion (and your money) to victims of Cyclone Sidr that struck Bangladesh last week. The latest news stories report more than 3000 people have been confirmed dead, with fatalities rising hourly. The area that was hit was already impoverished, and these people…
jstemwedel | November 15, 2007I just found out about something cool for which the window of opportunity closes in eleven days:
Through November 26, the One Laptop Per Child project has a Give One Get One deal (in the U.S. and Canada) wherein you can donate a spiffy new and super-cool XO laptop to a child in a developing country and get one to give to a child in your life (although, presumably, your inner-child might persuade you to keep it for yourself if you aren't acquainted with any kids).
The XO laptop is an impressive feat of engineering, and distributing these beauties is part of a plan that really speaks to me:…
jstemwedel | November 12, 2007The results of our drive to raise funds for teachers and students with DonorsChoose are, in a word, astounding. Ginny reported the morning-after stats:
ScienceBlogs readers donated $54,335 for 155 classroom projects. With $15,000 in matching funds from Seed Media Group, that means our readers put $69,335 toward U.S. science literacy.
That $15,000 from Seed Media Group fully funded 33 more projects and gave a chunk of money to a 34th. But my most recent calculation shows that a total of $72,920 went to the 20 challenges mounted by ScienceBlogs bloggers -- which means that an additional $3,…
jstemwedel | November 1, 2007With just over 10 hours left in our ScienceBlogs/Donors Choose Blogger Challenge 2007, it's time to think about what happens next. Supporting classroom teachers with your funds is a noble gesture, but it's just a start.
To really get math and science literacy (and enthusiasm) to the levels we'd like to see, your time and personal involvement can do an awful lot. In this post you'll find ideas from ScienceBloggers about how to turn your good intentions into action.
From Mike Dunford at The Questionable Authority:
There are a lot of children in this country who don't have much in the way of…
tqa | October 31, 2007
If you are one of the many people who was trying to contribute to the Scienceblogs.com DonorsChoose challenge today, you should know that there's one person you can blame for the trouble you had accessing the site: right-wing spinmeister and wannabe Presidential candidate Steven Colbert. That's right, folks. Like a typical heartless Conservative, Colbert's not content merely trying to shrink government to a convenient, easy to drown size. No, he's not going to rest until he makes it harder for un-American liberal weenies like you to waste your hard-earned dollars by using them to buy things…
jstemwedel | October 31, 2007It looks like you get 1440 extra minutes. And you can blame Presidential candidate (in South Carolina) Stephen Tiberius Colbert. From the DonorsChoose blog:
...our site was flat-out overwhelmed by the massive traffic that resulted from Stephen Colbert and Craig Newmark's announcement around midnight on Thursday, October 18.
As we scrambled to increase capacity, we continued to receive big spikes in web traffic from the re-airings of that Colbert show on Friday, October 19 in the morning, afternoon, and early evening, and across US time zones.
Since no new Colbert episodes were airing last…
jstemwedel | October 30, 2007The 2007 DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge ends tomorrow, and ScienceBlogs readers have met (and exceeded) 10 of the 20 challenges we mounted, raising $47,705.
Here's who's left:
Uncertain Principles: $3442 from 45 donors (0.597 donors/1000 pageviews)
Terra Sigillata: $2081 from 8 donors (0.738 donors/1000 pageviews)
Cognitive Daily: $1584 from 23 donors (0.147 donors/1000 pageviews)
Adventures in Ethics and Science: $1511 from 26 donors (0.556 donors/1000 pageviews)
A Blog Around the Clock: $1499 from 6 donors (0.0499 donors/1000 pageviews)
Stranger Fruit: $1358 from 16 donors (0.400 donors/…
tqa | October 30, 2007
We're now in the last two days of the DonorsChoose Bloggers' Challenge. As things currently stand, this blog is now $88 away from my $2,500 fundraising goal. Unfortunately, we've been more or less stalled for the last couple of weeks, so I'm going to add an incentive to see if we can get over the top.
DonorsChoose has generously committed to give blogs that hit their goals with a 10% bonus that can be used to fund additional projects. I've already contributed some to my own challenge, but if we have met the goal by 10 pm tomorrow night, our family will also contribute 10% of the total…
jstemwedel | October 30, 2007As this is published (about 10 AM Eastern time) there are two hours left before the noon deadline for the last of the drawings for T-shirts, books, mugs, and subscriptions to Seed to thank you for your donation to our DonorChoose Blogger Challenge.
All you have to do is make a donation to one (or more) of those challenges, then forward your email confirmation from DonorsChoose to scienceblogs@gmail.com. I'm told that at present, the chances for each entrant in the drawing of being drawn for a prize are very, very good.
Haven't made a donation yet? Here are three challenges that are…
jstemwedel | October 29, 2007The 2007 DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge is in its last few days, which means there may be enough data to start identifying trends as to which ScienceBlogs readers are the most generous:
By scientific discipline:
Chad Orzel of Uncertain Principles is our lone full-time physical sciences blogger with a challenge this time around. He's more than halfway to his goal, but if you physics, astronomy, chemistry, and math types think you can do better vote with your donations and give Chad a boost.
Two of the brain and behavior blogs that mounted challenges actually met them (Retrospectacle and Omni…
jstemwedel | October 26, 2007... The Ridger has posted the illustrated sonnet about Saturn's rings that the sprogs and I crafted as a "thank you" for donating to a project in my DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge.
It's not too late to get your own sprog artwork, or nerd poetry, or sprog-illustrated nerd poetry -- and to help teachers and students in the process!
jstemwedel | October 26, 2007Jennifer is another reader who made a generous donation to one of the projects in my challenge. She wrote:
I felt like I definitely needed
a piece of art work from your very talented crew. ... I'd like
something in the style of Dr. Seuss about reptiles with some
accompanying artwork.
I've done my best to get my Seuss on. (This is one of those instances where it's clear how much more talented my offspring are than I!) This goes out to Jennifer with our sincere thanks for her donation.
Look there! Pressed up against the glass
A brave member of the Sauropsida class
(Whose orders four…