February 17, 2012

Better Grad Students, Please

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Thoreau complains about a grad student in his upper division biophysics class:

One of the problems involves the entropy change from evaporating a cubic centimeter of water. She asked me how she’s supposed to know the number of atoms in a cubic centimeter of water. Um, this is basic freshman chem stuff.

No, that’s not right. It’s junior chem stuff. High school junior, that is. At least, that’s where I learned it.

The same student apparently also had a problem converting joules to electron volts. Well, I don’t know the conversion myself. But I typed “joules electron volts” into Google and got the answer in .33 seconds. So I guess at least some grad students don’t know how to use Google either. This does not bode well for our coming economic war with China, does it?

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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