And I won’t be the only one doing assorted forfeits and dares if we reach various fundraising milestones. PZ Myers, Ed Brayton, and Avicenna are all offering themselves up as sacrificial lambs as well.
For my own bad self: What with being the Foundation Beyond Belief International Team’s Honored Hero for 2013, it seems right that I should take at least a good amount of the “dares and forfeits” bullet. So if the Freethought Blogs team raises $1,000, I will dye all my hair purple and green for Skepticon. Not the genteel little green and purple streaks I have now. If we raise $1,000, I will hand myself over to my hairdresser, tell her “purple and green,” and let her dye every hair on my head. (As of this writing, we’re just $30 away from that goal!)
And for every $1,000 that the Freethought Blogs team raises over that, I will do some other dare or forfeit… chosen from a list of suggestions made by you all, here in the comments. (If I don’t get suggestions, I’ll come up with dares and forfeits myself… but it’s going to be things like “Play with my cats” or “Eat a delicious donut,” so if you want something more entertaining than that, start chiming in with suggestions.)
This virtual team thing basically means you can participate by just clicking a few clicks and donating some money. And then you can walk up and down in your living room for a couple of miles, if you’re feeling left out of the whole walkathon thing. In fact… if you do take a walk up and down your living room as part of a “do it yourself” walkathon, and you videotape it and put it on the Internet, I will personally donate $50 to the FTB Light the Night team. $50 per video, capping out at $500. (I’ll also post links to the videos on my blog.) Or else you can actually take part in the Light the Night walk in your own city: as part of a Foundation Beyond Belief team, or as part of some other team, or just on your own. You don’t have to be part of an official team to be part of the walk — you can just register as an individual, either online or at the event.
That’s not an outrageous goal, by the way. In 2012, the Foundation Beyond Belief raised $430,000 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Foundation… and that was the very first year they participated in this thing. It was the largest amount ever raised by a first year non-corporate team and the 4th largest amount raised by any team in the nation in 2012, including corporate teams. So that’s pretty cool. And $500,000 is totally do-able.
So sign up! Be an official part of the Freethought Blogs Light the Night team! Get me, PZ, Ed, and Avicenna to do awesome, embarrassing, painful, or hilarious things against cancer! Let’s make use of human beings’ evolutionary tendency towards tribalism and group loyalty, and turn it towards good! Go, team, go!
