In audio picked up by an answering machine, a volunteer for the Republican Party of Clay County can be heard calling President Barack Obama "a Muslim" and saying he wants to "get rid of your Medicare" while reaching out to voters in support of Mitt Romney's campaign.
The call was made as part of a statewide phone bank for Romney's campaign being conducted by the Clay County GOP. The volunteer, who was not identified, did not hang up before moving onto her next call.
Her pitch to the next person was picked up on the first person's answering machine.
A musical investigation into the causes and effects of global climate change and our opportunities to use science to offset it. Featuring Bill Nye, David Attenborough, Richard Alley and Isaac Asimov. "Our Biggest Challenge" is the 16th episode of the Symphony of Science series by melodysheep.
This is a wonderful animated adaptation of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot. Sagan's book was inspired by a photograph of planet Earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from a record distance of 3.7 billion miles from Earth.
The animation was created by Adam Winnik for his graduation thesis project at Sheridan College.
Bryan Fischer's latest batshit rant is about how condoning gay marriage will only lead to the legalization of pedophilia and bestiality. Not that we haven't heard that one before.
It's a common refrain with Fischer. His Twitter feed is rife with comparisons of homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality.
The anti-gay spokesman for the American Family Association has this meme he thinks is clever. To support his view that it's perfectly okay to discriminate against LGBT folks, he serves up endless examples of our intolerance of pedophilia and bestiality.
Here's the thing, Bry. In cases of child molestation or sex with a minor, the acts are not consensual. In cases of bestiality, the acts are not consensual. In gay marriage, there are two consenting adults.
I can't decide if you're willfully ignorant or just an idiot.
You could do a lot worse than to spend 3 minutes and 53 seconds of your time today listening to him.
“Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision… We can recognize here a shortcoming—in some circumstances serious—in our ability to understand the world. Characteristically, we seem compelled to project our own nature onto Nature… “Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work worthy [of] the interposition of a deity,” Darwin wrote telegraphically in his notebook. “More humble and I think truer to consider him created from animals.”… We’re Johnny-come-latelies. We live in the cosmic boondocks. We emerged from microbes and muck. Apes are our cousins. Our thoughts and feelings are not fully under our own control. There may be much smarter and very different beings elsewhere. And on top of all this, we’re making a mess of our planet and becoming a danger to ourselves… The trapdoor beneath our feet swings open. We find ourselves in bottomless free fall… If it takes a little myth and ritual to get us through a night that seems endless, who among us cannot sympathize and understand?… We long to be here for a purpose, even though, despite much self deception, none is evident. The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life’s meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable… Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop… Our commonsense intuitions can be mistaken. Our preferences don’t count. We do not live in a privileged reference frame… If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal…”
A video for LGBT youth around the country and the It Gets Better Project, featuring U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
I can't help but notice the dearth of R's in that list. That sends quite a message of its own, don't you think?
Raleigh's own Megafaun have released a new video for "Carolina Days," from the Heretofore EP. The video features an irresistible reinterpretation of the creation of the City of Oaks, starring God, tobacco, and funny underwear.
One of the most common statements from those who deny Evolution is: "How could something so complex start from something so simple?" Part of the difficulty lies in the inability for most folks to fathom millions of mutations over millions of generations.
This below video does a great job of demonstrating how, over time, something simple can evolve into something unrecognizable. The premise is simple: One person draws a straight line. The next person is asked to trace the previous line. And so on -- like a game of Telephone. Although this model doesn't actually demonstrate how evolution works, it is remarkable in its ability to distill a simple evolutionary idea into something compelling and eye-opening.
