Take a Ride with Me on Desert Bus. For the Children!

[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), Iâll be doing a live video interview with the good folks at âDesert Bus for Hopeâ, 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 Smithâs reasons for participating; she is a driving force behind this charity telethon. The reason I do this every year? Because she asked me to.

One of the ways these folks raise money is to have auctions. This year, Iâm donating some cool stuff for bidding:

The loot includes an honest-to-space-junk meteorite (Iâll include a description I wrote â 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 âKriegerâs Armyâ sticker given to me personally by Lucky Yates from âArcherâ, and copies of my two books: âBad Astronomyâ, and âDeath from the Skies!â. The latter is the Chinese version, because why not. Iâll sign both of them for the winner, too.

To bid on the stash you need to register with Desert Bus, but thatâs easy enough. And if you win, youâll own a piece of outer space as well as knowing youâll 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 donât forget to tune in and watch me chat with my pals, talking science and general geekery!