A poll that matters, for a change

Can't watch videos at work, but I'm all over this as soon as I get home.

Cool. :D

Pardis Sabeti gets my vote !

She's hot.Sorry,what am I voting for again?

Oh,and I liked this :

//She's also the lead singer and songwriter of the band, Thousand Days, who uses her music to make science appealing to children, especially, girls//

I voted for Sonia Patel. Such a lovely British accent.

I voted for Dr. Quinones-Hinojosa. He went against all the odds. If he can do it there's nothing stopping any of my students from reaching their potential. What an inspiration!

By the way, fund DonorsChoose projects. I tried to get some funding through them and not enough was available for my project (to buy a class set of binoculars so I could teach my kids about birds and birding). It's a great program and I know it has worked for many teachers - we sometimes need extra money to do really cool stuff in (and outside of) our classrooms!

I purged PZ's comments from my mind, read all the profiles, and then wound up voting for Pardis Sabeti.

I can relate to Sabeti, but Dr. Q. was qool.

I was definitely tempted by 'hot rock chick magnetism' - but I had to vote for Dr. Bonnie Bassler. Quorum sensing is just so cool. (Despite Greg Bear making it silly in Blood Music)

If you read the fine print, it says "*Pfizer will contribute up to $10,000 to DonorsChoose.org.
You may vote once for each video profile."

After reading that, I voted for the other 6 scientists, too.

With 7 bucks a person, we can fill those coffers in a few hours.

The Dr. Q story is easily the best. It reawakened my dream to jump the border into the UK or Canada.

Thanks for all of your support! With over 4,300 classroom projects dedicated to Math & Science, we'll take as many clicks as we can get...
- the donorschoose.org team

As per my earlier comment about one click per video profile, please someone correct me if I'm wrong. The last thing I want to do is stop someone from getting cash for my overzealousness.

@ Randy, #10: Dr. Quinones-Hinojosa has a great story, so I voted for him as well. Actually, all the profiles showed scientists who are really into their work, which is fantastic. People like them need way more exposure than I imagine they're getting. Great videos to show middle or high school students to illustrate the "science is very, very cool" idea.

I voted for Dr Bonnie. I saw a segment about her on Nova Now last night & was very impressed. Her talk about bacteria even impressed my fundie wife - no small feat!

PZ - way to go! Pardis is right down the hall from me (though her lab is moving from our building).

She's really cool in person, btw.

PZ, according to the votes so far, you should crash my poll asking if you should crash it. (I'll eventually succeed at getting noticed if I'm persistent!)

Dear Pharyngulans: Here's another poll to crash, run by World Nut Daily "columnist" VoxDay -- noted misogynist, creonut and mental midge: http://voxday.blogspot.com/2008/08/presidential-vote.html

The poll is on "Who will you vote for in the upcoming U.S. election?"

Clinteas, my reasoning exactly. Unscientific? Well....
Move over, Buckaroo Banzai!
Bonnie, though... Hell, may as well go back and vote for all of 'em...

I voted for Dr. Quinones-Hinojosa, just to piss Lou Dobbs off.

Lest anyone think "mental midge" was a typo in my post on the Vox Day poll; nope, I meant it - as in "gnatlike cognitive skills."

As of this comment, it says $2,700 has been raised through our clicking.

If we can crash the polls of online newspapers in every podunk town in North America, surely we can bring the clicked donations up to the $10,000 limit per researcher.

C'mon Pharyngulites, get your click on.

Is anyone else unable to load the page? I'm using Firefox 3 and it keeps saying "Connection interrupted".

#17

Uh oh, after I voted on that poll, I was voter #666, so I guess the anti-christ will win the election.

@ Sara M. #22: I'm running firefox 3 and the page loaded fine.

General comment: tough choices and I ended up voting for Dr. Quinones-Hinojosa since he really beat the odds.

Being the sycophant that I am, I also voted for Pardis Sabeti. It should have been a tough choice, but I only live to impress P.Z. Anyway, I'm glad to see this power being used for good, er, a better good than usual!

I'm running FF 3.0.1, and it worked fine...

I also voted for Dr. Sabeti, only because she's also a bass-playing scientist like myself.

I voted for Professor Bassler--her work with Vibrio Fischeri is reakky cool. I'm also completely biased because I was in her Molecular Biology 101 class and she was great at making science interesting, accessible, and relevant (I probably wouldn't be reading this blog if it wasn't for her class!)

I voted for Dr. Sarah Schlesinger because I think developing an HIV vaccine will be such an important milestone for humanity.

I voted for Bonnie Bassler.

Great idea, thank you.

Dr. Bonnie Basler is doing Nobel work. I voted for her.

Watch and cry: http://www.bigthink.com/faith-beliefs/6877

They ask *Rick fucking Warren* whether faith and reason are compatible. Do you think PZ could get a spot in the "faith and reason" showcase?

Ah, I spoke too soon. They cast a broader net than I thought. I just randomly got three "pros" for religion in a row when I looked at the "faith and belief" section. Sam Harris is in there, so ok. End of crank. Sorry.

Really, n=3. I've studied stats. I know better than that. *headdesk*

I voted for each of the 7 videos once (the site says you can do that) resulting in 7 times the donations of the rest of you uncaring loire. Finally there is a noble purpose for our poll crashing. Let's make a REAL difference for once.