Charlie C. Nicholson, 26, poses Wednesday in front of a diagram that charts his and other UVM graduate students’ research in the Gund Institute office of his adviser, Taylor Ricketts.On Tuesday, Nicholson discovered he had been awarded a National Science Foundation grant to further his work on native bee pollination of blueberry flowers. (Photo: JOEL BANNER BAIRD/FREE PRESS) 
 
 BURLINGTON, Vt. — You'd think a message from the National Science Foundation could manage to outwit an email spam folder. 
 
 Not this time. 
 
 On Tuesday, the federal agency's announcement of a prestigious research award joined reams of overlooked get-rich-quick schemes in University of Vermont grad student Charlie C. Nicholson's account. 
 
 "I got a text from a friend while I was having my morning coffee," Nicholson said Wednesday. "He said if my middle name was Casey, I'd just won an NSF grant. 
 
 "It was a moment of shock, hope and definitely skepticism," he continued. "So I did something I never do — which is check in spam." 
 
 The news was good indeed, and genuine. 
 
 Nicholson had landed more than $100,000 to support his research in native bees' pollination of blueberry crops. 
 
 "It's huge honor," he said. "I feel more like a real member of the American scientific community. 
 
 "It's also a level of economic security I've never experienced before. It's a pay bump. I'll be eating less pizza," he added. 
 
 Charlie C. Nicholson nets pollinators on a Chittenden County blueberry farm, summer 2013. (Photo: Courtesy UVM Ricketts Lab) 
 
 Nicholson, 26, is two years into a doctoral degree in natural resources management at UVM's Rubenstein School. 
 
 His work has revolved around this fundamental question: How can berry farmers in the region maintain a healthy, diverse habitat for our many species of native bees? 
 
 Why it's important: Local bees have evolved in concert with blueberries; they expertly navigate and dislodge pollen from blossoms through wing-vibration. 
 
 Honeybees (none of them native to North America) just aren't cut out to "buzz-pollinate" those plants, Nicholson said. 
 
 Tuning in to native bees' needs for forage, nesting and shelter, he added, might help expand our appreciation of the broader benefits of biodiversity. 
 
 "I think we can do a much better job of supporting species other than ourselves," Nicholson said. 
 
 The grant funds three more years of research — in the blueberry patches of Chittenden and Addison counties and less glamorously, in campus laboratories, crunching data and sniffing out patterns that might turn out to be useful. 
 
 Nicholas credits his adviser, Taylor Ricketts, with the project's momentum. 
 
 Charlie C. Nicholson evaluates Champlain Valley pollinator habitat, summer 2014. (Photo: Courtesy UVM Ricketts Lab) 
 
 "He's the reason why I'm here," Nicholson said of Ricketts, a professor and director of UVM's Gund Institute of Ecological Economics. 
 
 Farmers in the Champlain Valley have further enriched the research by heightening his appreciation of complex landscapes — and, in season, with easy access to fresh fruit. 
 
 In Ricketts' office at the Gund, Nicholson took a break between classes. He eyed a chart of his progress and that of other graduate students. 
 
 He predicted no change of plans in the aftermath of the grant award, but a boost forward. 
 
 Speaking of pleasant surprises: Soon after receiving his good news Tuesday, Nicholson checked the NSF website. 
 
 He discovered that his friend and colleague at UVM, biology grad student Samantha Alger, had likewise received a generous research grant. 
 
 Nicholas texted her — catching her, it turns out, completely by surprise. 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1CzdhCL ||||| This May, I was in my usual spot on the couch in Bisbee, Arizona, drinking plastic jug vodka and watching CNN jam microphones into the faces of distraught victims of the Oklahoma tornadoes. They all thanked the Jesus for sparing them, for taking their homes and belongings instead of their lives, and for killing their neighbors instead of them. 
 
 There was a video that had just gone viral of Wolf Blitzer repeatedly asking a meek and polite young lady if she thanked the Lord for her good fortune in not being killed. She stammered and then said, cute as a button, "Actually, I'm an atheist." As always, Wolf looked like a big smacked dick. 
 
 As I was watching, a crawler at the bottom of screen told me how to send money to the Red Cross via text message. I thought how funny it would be to have a fundraiser for just that one chick—fuck all her Okie-Christian neighbors. They're with God. We're atheists. We don't have Christ. We gotta take care of each other. 
 
 CNN is very fickle in how long they give a fuck about any given tragedy, so I jumped on the computer, figured out how to use a fundraising site—not an easy task for a guy who still uses Hotmail—and by morning had "Atheists Unite" on IndieGogo.com. A few tweets and Facebook posts later from myself and thousands of other ordinary, caring people—plus some big shots like the Richard Dawkins Foundation, Penn Jillette, and Ricky Gervais—and the virtual cash register started chiming away. 
 
 $50,000 dollars in the first day, almost $126,000 by the time it was done. Enough for her to move the fuck out of Jesus country—where she says she'll never return—like Tom Joad with a trust fund. 
 
 I can't remember being happier in a shitload of years, repeatedly hitting refresh in those first days and seeing the numbers go up every minute. Charity feels good, even when you're doing it as a big “Fuck You” to Christians who you've pre-judged, and not because you care about someone losing their shit. Realizing you've actually changed an individual's life. It was pretty goddamned thrilling. 
 
 You don't get the same feeling when you buy the pink label mustard at Safeway in October. That just makes you think your lottery ticket has better karma. You won't open the paper the next morning expecting headlines that breast cancer has been defeated because you ate a ham sandwich. 
 
 I've noticed that the more you’re made aware of a disease, the more you realize that a lot of people are making a bank heist of money from you supporting their foundation. Having a cause is chump work. Having a foundation is where you make the salad. 
 
 Nobody is a bigger wishing-well penny-catcher than the Breast Cancer Awareness carnies and the road agents that bear the hideous ribbon. Their motives are questionable, what they promote is dangerous. They don't so much want to prevent cancer as make sure you look for it, find any early stage of it, and treat it. Prevention would be bad for business. 
 
 I’m often asked to perform at charity functions and I almost always decline, because the type of people who attend charity functions are the exact opposite of my target audience. "Thanks for coming out to help little Billy's lymphoma laugh-athon. But did you ever think life isn't really worth living anyway?" The big novelty thermometer on the stage showing the amount raised would start dropping with every word I said. 
 
 Another paranoia I get is that I often find that the most charitable people are unknown artists who want you to come to a show that you don’t want to see, or buy a download of a song you don’t want to hear to "help the victims" of such and such. It's one thing to be Sting using your fame to bring attention to a cause. It's quite another to use a famous tragedy to get your attention. And I am no Sting on the fame level. 
 
 There's a worldwide group called the Women in Black who are against bad things in general, war and bombing and the like. I remember seeing them every Wednesday in Trafalgar square when I was doing a lengthy run in London, five or six of them standing in the rain and cold around a statue, silent and maudlin (and in black, of course) with handmade signs doing their preaching. I envied them. To have a cause that you are so committed to yet still be content in doing so little about. 
 
 "This is bad. It has to stop. Let's stand around once a week and do absolutely nothing. PS: No men allowed." And then go home with all the self-satisfaction of someone who bought a pink Dallas Cowboys jersey off the NFL website and felt like a war hero. 
 
 Remember that in a free-market society, there is already a financial incentive for someone to find a cure for cancer on their own. Pfizer didn't come up with boner pills because of candlelight vigils and flaccid-cock symbols on juice boxes—they knew there was money in it. If you want to throw money at a disease, try donating to a disease almost nobody has and therefore nobody is trying to cure like Tree Man and Cock Face or the guy with the 130-pound balls. Almost nobody has these diseases and it'll be a long time before the NFL has players wearing bark jockstraps to raise awareness. 
 
 Me, I prefer to spend my charitable donations close to home, where you see the results, or on individuals where you can see the smile on their faces. Most people are assholes so maybe cancer's only sin is the collateral damage. 
 
 Doug is on a comedy tour, and you can get the dates at his website. Also, follow him on Twitter: @dougstanhope 
 
 More on the virtues of charity: 
 
 Bob Odenkirk's Page: Most Neediest Forgotten Charities 
 
 Mother Teresa Was a Jerk, and So Were a Bunch of Other Saints
– Maybe you should open up that next "Lucky Winner!" email you get and not automatically dump it in the trash. Because for University of Vermont researcher Charlie C. Nicholson, his spam folder turned out to hold more than the usual dream-job and porn messages. On Tuesday, the National Science Foundation announced its annual divvying-up of graduate research grants worth nearly $140,000 each, and it turns out the 26-year-old doctoral student was one of the recipients—except he had no clue, because the email from the NSF had gone right to spam, the Burlington Free Press reports. "I started getting cryptic texts from friends," Nicholson says, per a UVM press release. "At first, I had no clue what they were talking about. Then a friend who didn't know my middle name texted: 'If your full name is Charles Casey Nicholson, you just won an NSF [grant]." It is, and he had. Nicholson checked his spam folder and there was the cheerful NSF missive announcing his award. The money—about $100,000 to him, $36,000 as an allowance to the school—will go toward three more years of his project studying the pollination of blueberry crops by native bees, the Press notes. He'll also be able to have a real meal now and then. "It's a pay bump. I'll be eating less pizza," he tells the paper. And the good luck keeps on buzzing: While he was on the NSF website, he noticed that his friend and UVM colleague Samantha Alger had won some cash of her own. He was the one who texted her to fill her in, per the Press. (Read another wild email story involving a smuggled cellphone and an "ingenious" scheme.)