Donation to the Human Rights Campaign Item 19 - Donate to 30 25 charities/non-profits

As a straight white male under the age of 50 in the United States I have it pretty easy. I'm disproportionately represented in the media, there is very little likelihood of my being assaulted and pretty much nobody hassles me about who I want to love.

I am a big believer in the idea that all humans should grant one another equal respect and rights. I'm lucky enough to live in a state that recognized last fall that denying an entire group of people the right to marry "just because" was actually unconscionable. Unfortunately we still have a long way to go in this country, which is why I donated to the HRC. When our children and grandchildren look back at this time in our history they're not going to be proud of our actions in granting entire groups of people basic rights, they're going to ask why it took us so long.

Donation to the The Water Project Item 19 - Donate to 30 26 charities/non-profits

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You know what's fucking awesome? Water. I drink a ton of that shit every single day. It comes out of holes in my house, and i can get it anytime I want. I love water so much, 57% of my body is made of it. I pour loads of perfectly potable water on my body daily, sometimes twice in one day. And as much as I love water I frequently and deliberately ingest other substances that will dehydrate me because the effects are pleasing.

Those things sound perfectly normal to anybody reading this (normal might not be the exact word, but you get my point), but if I said them to about a billion people that live on this planet I would sound like an insane super villain.

Or Superman, apparently. (Source)

That seems insane, with all the things that we can do there are still people that don't have one of the two things that are absolutely essential to life. The Water Project exists to try to make that disparity disappear. If you could help people to have access to a necessity without having to do anything wouldn't you?

Donation to the American Civil Liberties Union Item 19 - Donate to 30 27 charities/non-profits

So, do you care that the government can now assassinate essentially at will as long as they put the word "terrorist" on a report? Because the ACLU does. They care about all the important things that you should care about but can't because if you had to deal with all the atrocities of the world you'd be crippled by the sheer horror. They defend your privacy, your freedom and your life and most of the time we never hear about it. They are as close to a superhero as we're likely to get.

I made the decision to make this donation this week because of the drone issue (which is why I keep mentioning it). It bothers me a great deal that we've turned murder into a video game. I don't believe that these "targeted killings" (doesn't that sound so clean? Almost like an action film title) make anyone safer. Our government shouldn't be in the business of finding ways to kill it's citizens, that seems like a "no duh" statement, but apparently we need to keep telling them that.

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Donation to the Wikimedia Foundation Item 19 - Donate to 30 29 charitie/non-profits

For my first donation on this blog I figured I'd go with a well known one. My purpose with making these donations in such a public way is not to pat myself on the back but more to put the idea out in the world and hopefully inspire someone else to donate as well. Thus, while I'm still getting my footing I figured it would be best to go with one that is already well known and to whom I can't do any harm with my shitty writing.

I use Wikipedia on a daily basis. I think a good majority of people in the United States do. Usually it's to prove that I'm right about some insane piece of trivia that nobody really cares about ("I told you the Black Panther first appeared in Fantastic Four! In your face!"), but it's also one of the best ways to find primary sources for things that you might actually care about. If I'd had Wikipedia when I was in high school I would have breezed through every research paper in no time.

We've all heard the (frankly somewhat asinine) arguments about how you can't be sure if what you are reading isn't information that has been inserted as a prank or un-sourced, but the same is true for a good deal of traditional academic work. The sheer number of edits keeping things honest gives a much better case for peer review than many academic papers, in some ways (at the very least, better than one by Andrew Wakefield). And hopefully the money that we donate now can foster greater technology to improve accuracy even more.

Donate here if you haven't already.