People Worth Your Attention - Count Dolby von Luckner

I first encountered Count Dolby von Luckner (Dale DeBakcsy) at the 2013 American Atheists convention a year ago in Austin.  He had a table there, where he would draw pretty much anything requested.  His notebook of sketches was packed with awesome.  The clear standout was the Taftaroo (Howard Taft plus kangaroo), which was later paired with Tesla riding a velociraptor.

That year, JT Eberhard got Iron Man punching Jesus.  I had no good ideas until after I got back home.  But this year, I had one that I'm pretty happy with.

The inspiration for this request was one of my favorite criticisms of religion, Mark Twain's "The Fly".

To see Dale's other work:

The Vocate

Frederick the Great: A Most Lamentable Comedy Breaching Time and Space

He's also a contributors for a few publications:

The Freethinker
Philosophy Now
American Atheists Magazine
Secular World
New Humanist
Free Inquiry

People Worth Your Attention / BibleName Foto's Camera Needs Your Help

The atheist movement is jam packed with hidden heroes.  JT Eberhard's talk at Skepticon 6 was about this not well enough known fact.  One of those hidden heroes was a friend, someone who I've mentioned here before.  He's someone I've been meaning to do a People Worth Your Attention post on for a long time, so this post will double as that.

Photo credit:  @aparticularA

He tries to stay relatively hidden but cannot because his talent is on display in some notable places.  Although, it's still not what I think he deserves.  The way JT put was spot on.  He puts a face on atheism.

The thing that makes him worth your attention isn't that Keith Lowell Jensen has used his photos.

It's not that both Keith & Shelley Segal are currently using them as their profile pictures.  The magic of Biblename Foto is that his Facebook page & Flickr (for higher resolution pictures) are a constant example of the fact that atheists are real people with real personalities and real emotions.  He does photograph theists too, but him being at an atheist conference is the single best way to get a great picture of everyone there not wearing that conference's code for "do not photograph me".

My post about Apostacon being done was only a fraction of the pictures that came from that weekend.  I ended up doing another post, with more pictures, and it was still not even close to all of them.  Just for Apostacon, he had to separate it out into 5 albums.

Apostacon, Day 1! (Friday evening)

Photo credit:  Biblename Foto

Apostacon Saturday, Part I

Photo credit:  Biblename Foto

Apostacon, Sat (part II)

Photo credit:  Biblename Foto

The Meat Ball!!! (And Dueling Pianos)

Photo credit:  Biblename Foto

Sunday Is Apostaday

Photo credit:  Biblename Foto

He worked his magic at Skepticon 6 too.

Photo credit:  Biblename Foto

Photo credit:  Biblename Foto

Photo credit:  Biblename Foto

Photo credit:  Biblename Foto

Photo credit:  Biblename Foto

Photo credit:  Biblename Foto

Photo credit:  Biblename Foto

Photo credit:  Biblename Foto

Photo credit:  Biblename Foto

Photo credit:  Biblename Foto

Photo credit:  Biblename Foto

Photo credit:  Biblename Foto

Photo credit:  Biblename Foto

It's ridiculous how much longer I could go with this string of pictures, but I've got to cut it off somewhere and finally get to the reason this post is happening tonight instead of later down the road.

This weekend, Biblename's camera got broken.  Not only does did it give us all of the above photos (except for the first one, which I took and intentionally put first to show the clear difference in quality a good camera provides), but it's also his primary means of income.

With the help of a friend who works at a camera store, we can get the camera repaired for roughly $500.  An effort to raise this money has been started, with a variety of ways to donate.  If you're able and willing, the primary method is to use PayPal to send money to jcrouch702@yahoo.com.  Anything beyond what it takes to get him camera capable again will also go to him, as a "thank you" for all the work he puts into this, most often for free.

However, I do not make this request without bias.  He is one of my favorite people, after all.  But would it not be a tragedy if these photos were to end?

As mentioned above, his work can found on Facebook & Flickr.

Worth Your Attention - FFRFcrankmail

I've been planning a series of posts recommending people to follow for a while, as I've been fortunate enough to found enough such people that I had a backlog of suggestions immediately upon thinking of doing this.

This first in this series, wasn't intended to be first, as it's someone I discovered just a few days ago.  But, because people reading hate mail is one of my favorite things, I like this one enough to want to share it right away.  I'm talking about the the YouTube channel "FFRFcrankmail"^[1].

The concept is simple.  Freethought Today^[2] is a publication by the Freedom From Religion Foundation^[3].  As is common for atheists in public eye^[4], they get hate mail.  They publish some of that hate mail in Freethought Today.  The woman behind this channel reads that hate mail for our entertainment.

The best part is that neither of them correct grammar or spelling.  It's printed exactly as written and she reads it exactly as printed.  Including when it's in all caps.  The voices she gives them puts a nice twist on it too.  They attitude she gives the authors of these letters seems to fit pretty well.  She does it well enough to have gotten the attention of Freethought Today^[5].

For your viewing convenience, I've included a playlist of the entire series^[6] (23 so far).

Perhaps the channel will eventually get popular enough that she's reading her own hate mail^[7] like some other atheists^[8].

She can also be found on Twitter as @ffrfcrankmail^[9].  And thank you to Hemant Mehta for sharing^[10] this for me to have found.

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1.  https://www.youtube.com/user/FFRFcrankmail
2.  http://ffrf.org/publications/freethought-today
3.  http://ffrf.org/
4.  https://www.facebook.com/davemuscato/posts/10151583163244004
5.  http://ffrf.org/publications/freethought-today/item/13958-ellie-says-crank-up-the-sound
6.  http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQOFbrCYlDeh4Xz4xewP9bdtDESOJZJEQ
7.  http://youtu.be/-ZuowNcuGsc
8.  http://youtu.be/Oit78WtbKEg
9.  https://twitter.com/ffrfcrankmail
10.  https://twitter.com/hemantmehta/status/332596832507154432