Australians may find it easier to donate to Alzheimer's Australia, whose donation page is here:

http://www.alzheimers.org.au/content.cfm?infopageid=948

I had trouble donating to the British mob.

Posted March 16, 2008 11:57 PM by vian

Just
as a reminder to other US readers -- the "Alzheimers Research Trust"
donation site that that links to is of course a UK site, and so the
donation amount will be in pounds, not dollars.

I found this a bit easy to overlook, and thus donated a bit more
than twice as much as I meant to -- and immediately realized it as soon
as I hit confirm. How tragic, and other sarcastic notes to indicate
that I'm not exactly upset about this. Nonetheless, I figured it's
worth the warning.

In any case, the donation does seem to go through fine regardless of the lack of UK postal info that I could associate with it.

Posted March 17, 2008 12:03 AM by Brooks Moses

Please feel free to snag the button at http://blogenspiel.blogspot.com. It was made by a LJ user who just
wants the word out and made it for people to post at blogs and
websites. There is also a facebook group, "Matching Funds for Pratchett"

Non UK donors who wish to donate to the UK site can do
so by clicking on the "don't have a postal code" link at the UK
Alzheimer's Research site. UK, Oz, Canada, and US sites all allow
comments where you can say you're matching for Pratchett.

Posted March 17, 2008 6:07 AM by Another Damned Medievalist

#2: The "Alzheimers Donation Jar"
button at www.matchitforpratchett.org accepts US dollar contributions
via PayPal, which seems more convenient than entering all one's address
and credit card details at the Alzheimer's Research Trust site. You may
need to scroll down a bit to see it.

Posted March 17, 2008 8:43 AM by Dave Langford

For anyone going to Eastercon in London this weekend (I am) - I'm told that copies of Terry Pratchett: Guilty of Literature will be on sale, with half of the £10 cover price going to the Alzheimer's Research Trust. I'm planning on making a donation anyway, but I do want to try and snag a copy for myself.

A reminder for UK natives (probably most of you know this anyway - I
had to be reminded) is that if you donate via the charity itself,
rather than the PayPal button, and tick the Gift Aid box then they get to claim tax back on it and thus get 28% more money in the end, at no additional cost to you.

Posted March 17, 2008 9:55 AM by Sam Kelly

Thanks to Dave at #4 for the link to be able to use PayPal.

Posted March 17, 2008 11:08 AM by Janice in GA

I think I noticed somewhere that Guilty of Literature will also be available at ICFA on the same terms, but I could be wrong.

Posted March 17, 2008 12:03 PM by Another Damned Medievalist

I wish I'd known about the Paypal donation, although it didn't take long to enter all my info on the original site.

I'm hoping that soon we'll start seeing humorous fantasy anthologies
with proceeds going toward Alzheimer's research, for those of us who
already own Guilty of Literature (and who have already given away
copies to everyone we know as well).

Posted March 17, 2008 3:20 PM by K.C. Shaw

Done. Come on, let's make this the longest thread in the history of ML!

Posted March 17, 2008 4:42 PM by Malthus

Done earlier today.

Posted March 17, 2008 5:18 PM by Fragano Ledgister

There's also a US Alzheimers Association donation link through the
bottom post on the page. Don't know how the reporting works, though, to
let the guy know that $nn have been donated to the "Match it for
Pratchett" challenge.

Posted March 17, 2008 6:19 PM by Jon Baker

Done yesterday afternoon, and flagged as a Pratchett-related donation in the comment field.

Posted March 17, 2008 6:45 PM by Madeline Kelly

Dave @4: I made a donation at the link you gave, and received an email receipt from junk-matchitforpratchett@tregenza.com

The "junk" part worries me. Did I give money to the right place? Anyone?

This is a subject close to me. My mother has vascular dementia. She
has, in 6 years, gone from reading widely to reading children's books,
and now, to only looking at the pictures. She can appreciate art, or at
least likes the books of paintings I've sent, but she can't follow a
story any more. The idea of getting to the point where I can no longer
read scares the sh*t out of me.

If the trend continues, we may have a market for very simple books
for the impaired, somewhat like the high-low books for teens with low
reading skills. Except the teens often improve, and the impaired
elderly will not.

Posted March 17, 2008 7:37 PM by Magenta Griffith

Another Damned Mediaevalist: Yes, it will be.

This is quite a personal issue for me, too - I've lost three family
members (on both sides) to/with Alzheimer's, and I'm not exactly
optimistic about my own chances. So this is quite definitely an
investment in the future.

Posted March 17, 2008 9:28 PM by Sam Kelly

I've whipped up a few icons for Match It For Pratchett. The art is
by Aysha Shehim (Questionstar on DeviantArt.com) and is used with her
permission. So far there is one featuring Vimes and Errol, and another
featuring Moist von Lipwig.

Badges here: http://pixelfish.livejournal.com/730186.html

(I also made my donation through the Alzheimer's Association site
and flagged it as in honor of Terry and Match It For Pratchett.)

Posted March 17, 2008 9:53 PM by PixelFish

I've been told (for whatever that might be worth) that a donation to
the US Alzheimer's organization is likely to get you on their Mailing
List, with junkmail that costs them more than $2 per year to produce
and send. IOW, it might be one of those "poor stewardship Good Causes",
and perhaps some kind of workaround would be in order. Maybe this will
(finally) motivate me to get a PayPal Account.

Posted March 17, 2008 10:20 PM by Don Fitch

*goes to donate*

*has completely unforgiveable fit of black humour at the existence
of a "Alzheimer Wandering Registry Program for Veterans" discovered
while googling "Alzheimers Canada"

*considers not sharing this on the grounds of good taste*

*remembers this donation is being made on behalf of the man who wrote the line "bet you half a dollar you're the Widow Jones?"*

*gives money*

Note to Canadians: http://www.alzheimer.ca/ keeps timing out. I knew there were a lot of Pratchett fans in Canada, but wow.

Posted March 18, 2008 12:36 AM by Marna Nightingale

Did it! Made small postcards to set on the con sales table at Minicon so people can take them home and donate!

Posted March 18, 2008 12:59 AM by Marilee

I should say that what I eventually ended up doing was donating to the Ottawa Chapter.

Apparently www.alzheimer.ca -- the Alzheimers Society of Canada --
is down and has been for a bit, but a google on Alzheimer's plus your
city, country or province will almost certainly give any Canadian a
selection of excellent organisations to give money to.

Posted March 18, 2008 1:06 AM by Marna Nightingale

I used to give to the Alzheimers Association here. That did get me on their mailing list, as Don suggests. With a vengeance.

That got me more than one begging letter a month, some of which even
had return address envelopes with stamps. Not counting ones to
alternate spellings of my name, or Donya's.

I stopped giving to them - the percentage of what I give them that goes to junkmail must be ferocious.

Does anyone know of an Alzheimers group that will put the money you
send them into, like *research*, instead of wasting it on a huge volume
of junkmail?

Posted March 18, 2008 1:10 AM by Allen J. Baum

Donating to the UK group is easy if you click on the little
link that says to click there if you're not in the UK. Then you get the
right fields for your address.

Donating via Paypal will take some processing fees from the
money, which is why I did it directly to the UK group for research.
(Marked it for Pterry.)

Posted March 18, 2008 1:28 AM by Marilee

Marilee@ 21

Another reason to consider donating locally, for those of us Dow
Nunder at least, is that our rapacious bastard banks charge large fees
on foreign currency transactions. So, in my case anyhow, I added what
would have been the transaction fee in pounds to the $aus amount I
donated, on the basis that I'd rather the money went to research than
to a wunch of bankers.

Posted March 18, 2008 2:22 AM by vian

#21 -- PayPal fees: personally I was happy to pay a bit more for
general convenience (not to mention avoiding the possibility of getting
on a junk mail list), and just increased my intended donation to allow for PayPal's cut.

Posted March 18, 2008 2:58 AM by Dave Langford

Wish I'd thought about Gift Aid before PayPal-ing at the "Match it" site. Oh well.

Marna Nightingale @ 17. Black humour is good - much better than no humour.

Posted March 18, 2008 5:29 AM by dcb

Just done, and added thanks for the PayPal link as well.

Posted March 18, 2008 10:27 AM by meredith

Done. Handy pounds-to-dollars conversion utility here.

Posted March 18, 2008 11:25 AM by Lila

Done. Yes, the e-mail address for the Match It for Pratchett site
strangely begins with the word "junk," but that seems to be intentional.

Posted March 18, 2008 12:11 PM by Zeynep

Arthur C. Clark died...?

Posted March 18, 2008 6:05 PM by inimitablej

whoops so sorry, wrong thread :(

Posted March 18, 2008 6:06 PM by inimitablej

Just
a note here that only the funds donated directly to the UK charity all
go to it. Paypal takes their cut on the donations through paypal and a
good portion of the t-shirt sales go to cafepress. The
Matchitforpratchett.org website is NOT official and none of the
campaign and the rapid blogosphere spread was done with any checking
with Terry about it.

For more details on Terry's donation, his official news site has the details here: http://www.pjsmprints.com/news/index.html

Terry's comments about the Match It For Pratchett campaign can be
found here: http://www.discworldstamps.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11460

Lee Whiteside

Posted March 19, 2008 3:25 PM by Lee Whiteside

Done. $30 via paypal to the matchit people, and $120 to the US organization, which will probably flood me with junk mail.

On the other hand, I can be certain the $120 will go to the alzheimers organization, and not to Nigeria.

Posted March 20, 2008 1:34 AM by Jon H

#30 Lee -- Thanks for that URL... From there I followed Terry's
recommended link to the ART site. I get nervous about "unofficial"
sites...

Posted March 21, 2008 7:27 AM by Edward Oleander

Tangentially, a friend of mine here in the US donated one pound to
the British organization. That led to her bank putting a stop on her
debit card until she called them--apparently, some scammers use small
charitable donations to test if a stolen credit or debit card number
will work, and her bank was taking no chances.

In the course of sorting this out over the phone, she and the bank
employee found an actual fraudulent transaction, from a company trying
to make an automatic debit on an account she had cancelled in January.

Sometimes charity has unexpected benefits.

Posted March 21, 2008 7:50 PM by Vicki

Highly predictable pharma spam.

Send these guys a karmagram:

Next time send the Parma ham.

[posted from 221.128.150.17]

Posted April 9, 2008 8:04 AM by [spam deleted]

The earnest spammer seeks to get a lock

on every reader with a droopy c..k.

Posted April 9, 2008 8:12 AM by Fragano Ledgister sees spam that is oddly apprpriate

Droopy? I prefer thinking of it as resting.

Posted April 9, 2008 9:17 AM by Serge is told he should buy Viagra

I think it should be spelled "Viagara". But that would be a different value proposition.

Posted April 9, 2008 10:49 AM by Larry Brennan

Larry Brennan #37; Wouldn't the proposition be 'Viagara Falls'?

Posted April 10, 2008 6:36 AM by Fragano Ledgister

[posted from 78.129.202.7]

Posted May 15, 2008 6:16 AM by [spam deleted]

At least I that's what I see

Posted May 15, 2008 6:34 AM by Paul Duncanson is having spam, egg, bacon and spam.

At least I think that's what I see.

Posted May 15, 2008 6:34 AM by Paul Duncanson is having spam, egg, bacon and spam.

It kind of looks like someone is testing autospamming software, and doesn't have it working as intended.

Posted May 15, 2008 10:14 AM by Joel Polowin

[posted from 78.129.202.7]

Posted May 15, 2008 10:21 AM by [spam deleted]

[posted from 78.129.202.7]

Posted May 15, 2008 2:27 PM by [spam deleted]

Will no one rid us of these turbulent misfiring oracular priests?

Posted May 15, 2008 3:03 PM by joann sees more of the all-too-usual at #44

[posted from 78.129.202.7]

I'm seeing a pattern...

Posted May 15, 2008 6:33 PM by [spam deleted]

comment text

Posted May 15, 2008 6:35 PM by Xopher wonders if we can't get rid of this jackhole for good

Can the IP address be blocked?

Posted May 15, 2008 6:36 PM by Jon Meltzer agrees with Xopher

[posted from 78.129.202.7]

Posted May 15, 2008 10:37 PM by [spam deleted]

They're probing every four hours.

Posted May 15, 2008 10:42 PM by Jon Meltzer notices something about the spammers

In general, the IPs used by this class of spammer are many and varied. They're proxies hijacked for the purpose. (Maybe not always, but every time I look.)

78.129.202.7 is a proxy. Interestingly, though, 221.128.150.17 isn't (at least, it hasn't been used to the point where it's been indexed by Google -- not to say it's not a fresh proxy, though.)

I still haven't figured out why the single-nonsense-word spammers are doing what they're doing. My theory is they're probes to gauge how diligent a given forum's moderation is. But I can't say for sure.

*sigh* I love spam.

Posted May 16, 2008 12:00 AM by Michael Roberts

comment6,

Posted May 16, 2008 2:43 AM by Emcejsza

Another probe....

Posted May 16, 2008 4:38 AM by David Goldfarb notes yet another one

comment4,

Posted May 16, 2008 6:49 AM by Ldxslbqf

still at it

Posted May 16, 2008 10:49 AM by Mary Aileen notes more spammy goodness