[UPDATE (Nov. 20 at 20:00 UTC): The auction lot went for an astounding $2005! Thanks to scottgoblue314 for winning the bids, and to Desert Bus for inviting me on. It was a lot of fun, and I hope you raise a ton more cash for kids.]
At 19:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. EST) today (Nov. 20), I’ll be doing a live video interview with the good folks at “Desert Bus for Hope”, a wonderful charity that raises money to buy video games for hospitalized kids.
I wrote about the background of this charity last year, so please read that for more info. Also, please read my friend Liz Smith’s reasons for participating; she is a driving force behind this charity telethon. The reason I do this every year? Because she asked me to.
Photo by Phil Plait
Photo by Phil Plait
One of the ways these folks raise money is to have auctions. This year, I’m donating some cool stuff for bidding:
The loot includes an honest-to-space-junk meteorite (I’ll include a description I wrote — the meteorite (shown inset below) is 3.5 cm across and weighs 30 grams), some tektites, lithograph pictures from Spitzer Space Telescope, an Earth squishy ball, two pairs of eclipse glasses that let you safely view the Sun (donated by my friend Stephen Ramsden of the Charlie Bates Solar Observatory), an issue of Astronomy magazine that has an article I wrote about UFOs, a “Krieger’s Army” sticker given to me personally by Lucky Yates from “Archer”, and copies of my two books: “Bad Astronomy”, and “Death from the Skies!”. The latter is the Chinese version, because why not. I’ll sign both of them for the winner, too.
To bid on the stash you need to register with Desert Bus, but that’s easy enough. And if you win, you’ll own a piece of outer space as well as knowing you’ll have helped lots of kids who can really need use a pick-me-up.
And you know what? You can also just send them money anyway.
So don’t forget to tune in and watch me chat with my pals, talking science and general geekery!
