Holi: Festival of Colors

2012's Holi has come and gone (the Hindu festival takes place each spring), but I recently stumbled across this breathtaking video from the folks at The Good Line. It's a wonderful bit of filmmaking.

The filming took place in Spanish Fork, Utah.

Enjoy:

Holi. Festival of Colors. 2012 from Good Line on Vimeo.

Carl Sagan's 'Pale Blue Dot' - Animated

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.

Watch:

Pat Robertson's Advice To Man With Marital Woes: Become A Muslim And Beat Her

How do the producers of the 700 Club continue to allow Pat Robertson to give advice?

“Well you could become a Muslim and beat her," said Robertson. "I don’t think we condone wife-beating these days but something has got to be done.”

Watch:

SBM Worldwide: You Too Can Prevent Homosexuality

SBM Founder, Stephen Bennett

Via SBM Worldwide:

Stephen Bennett, 49 years old, struggled with same-sex attraction (SSA) throughout his teenage and young adult years, living an openly-gay lifestyle for more than 11 years until he was 28 years old. In 1990, Stephen, happy with his homosexual lifestyle and in a committed "gay" relationship for several years, was lovingly and biblically engaged about his lifestyle and evangelized with the gospel of Jesus Christ by a Christian friend. Two years later, much to the shock of everyone who knew him — especially his family and friends — Stephen was born again and completely surrendered his life to the Lord. It was at this time that Stephen made the decision to walk away from his homosexual lifestyle, never to return. His journey of "coming out" of homosexuality then began — dealing with many painful, emotional issues he had buried — including being molested at the age of 11. Stephen would never be the same again. 

Stephen left his male partner and began his new walk with Christ in January of 1992. He began dating Irene in October of that year, then the two were married the following year, in June of 1993. Today, more than 20 years later, Stephen no longer struggles whatsoever with homosexuality. He shares his story of freedom and complete change at churches, conferences, events, and in the media worldwide. His encouraging message is that individuals who desire change can know that change is completely possible.

SBM Worldwide describes its organization as "an evangelistic, educational, exhortational, and encouraging Christian ministry dedicated to ministering to homosexual-identifying men and women who are seeking change. SBM Worldwide provides biblical, practical, and prayerful support and resources for men and women who are looking to overcome their unwanted same-sex attractions and identity."

Bennett and his wife Irene appeared on the CTN program "Homekeepers" to talk about Bennett's 'transformation.' Host Arthelene Rippy used the opportunity to plug the NARTH-endorsed Parents' Guide To Preventing Homosexuality.

Watch:

Richard Dawkins Speaks to CNN About Scientific Literacy, Morality & Creationism

CNN has a nice in-depth video interview with writer/biologist Richard Dawkins. It's definitely worth your time if you care about scientific literacy.

A few highlights:

On whether or not evolution should be taught to young children:

You can't even begin to understand biology, you can't understand life, unless you understand what it's all there for, how it arose - and that means evolution. So I would teach evolution very early in childhood. I don't think it's all that difficult to do. It's a very simple idea. One could do it with the aid of computer games and things like that.

I think it needs serious attention, that children should be taught where they come from, what life is all about, how it started, why it's there, why there's such diversity of it, why it looks designed. These are all things that can easily be explained to a pretty young child. I'd start at the age of about 7 or 8.

There’s only one game in town as far as serious science is concerned. It’s not that there are two different theories. No serious scientist doubts that we are cousins of gorillas, we are cousins of monkeys, we are cousins of snails, we are cousins of earthworms. We have shared ancestors with all animals and all plants. There is no serious scientist who doubts that evolution is a fact.

On the source of morality:

We have very big and complicated brains, and all sorts of things come from those brains, which are loosely and indirectly associated with our biological past. And morality is among them, together with things like philosophy and music and mathematics. Morality, I think, does have roots in our evolutionary past. There are good reasons, Darwinian reasons, why we are good to, altruistic towards, cooperative with, moral in our behavior toward our fellow species members, and indeed toward other species as well, perhaps.

There are evolutionary roots to morality, but they’ve been refined and perfected through thousands of years of human culture. I certainly do not think that we ought to get our morals from religion because if we do that, then we either get them through Scripture – people who think you should get your morals from the Old Testament haven’t read the Old Testament – so we shouldn’t get our morals from there.

Nor should we get our morals from a kind of fear that if we don’t please God he’ll punish us, or a kind of desire to apple polish (to suck up to) a God. There are much more noble reasons for being moral than constantly looking over your shoulder to see whether God approves of what you do.

Where do we get our morals from? We get our morals from a very complicated process of discussion, of law-making, writing, moral philosophy, it’s a complicated cultural process which changes – not just over the centuries, but over the decades. Our moral attitudes today in 2012 are very different form what they would have been 50 or 100 years ago. And even more different from what they would have been 300 years ago or 500 years ago. We don’t believe in slavery now. We treat women as equal to men. All sorts of things have changed in our moral attitudes.

Watch:

Oh, for Xenu's Sake: Scientologists 'Helping' Vietnam's Agent Orange Victims By Providing 'Hubbard Method' 'Detoxification'

Via Washington Post:

Vietnamese with ailments linked to Agent Orange are undergoing a “detoxification” treatment involving saunas and vitamins that was developed by the Church of Scientology and which has been criticized as pseudoscientific.

Scientologists use the “Hubbard Method” to try to cure drug addiction and alcoholism. The church set up a center in New York after the 9/11 attacks offering a similar service for first responders who may have been exposed to toxins.

A group of 24 people arrived for treatment at a military hospital in Hanoi for a month, free of charge, Dau Xuan Tuong, deputy administrator at the Vietnam Association of Agent Orange Victims, said Thursday. He said 22 people underwent the treatment in 2011 in northern Thai Binh province.

“Their health has improved after the treatment, and some saw their chronic illnesses disappear,” he said. “We need to do more scientific research to determine its impact.”

Ya think, Doc? You do realize that science and Scientology don't really have anything to do with each other, right?

And who's funding this garbage?

U.S. Embassy spokesman Christopher Hodges said Washington was not funding the program and said “we are not aware of any safe, effective detoxification treatment for people with dioxin in body tissues.”

It wasn’t known what other medical care the participants were receiving. Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard opposed psychiatry and the use of drugs for mental illness and addictions, but church members accept conventional medical treatment for physical conditions.

Actor Tom Cruise co-founded the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, where participants were each given vitamins and nutritional counseling and participated in daily exercise and sauna sessions. He defended it at the time as helping the workers recover.

Critics, many of them scientists, have said there is no evidence the “Hubbard Method” does any good.

It was unclear if the Vietnamese government was aware of those concerns before agreeing to try the project.

Full story here.

Pat Robertson: Democrats Are The 'Party Of Gays, Godlessness And Whatever Else'

It's gotten to the point that it would be newsworthy if Pat Robertson didn't say something completely insane in his broadcast. He's a broken record of bigotry, senility, and illogic.

That being said, Robertson is downright outraged that the Democratic platform openly embraces marriage equality and the right to abortion.

Robertson, speaking on The 700 Club:

Back in the 1850s or 60s there was a charge that one party was the party of rum, Romanism and rebellion. I don’t know what you label the Democrats now but it’s the party of gays, godlessness and whatever else. I mean, same-sex marriage is in the platform, they want to go along with that as a right, I’m just astounded.
…
They can’t defend it and you ask yourself, you’re going to go before the American people and that’s going to be the face they’re going to present to America. You have insulted the Catholic Church with your rules, you have insulted right-to-work states, you have insulted certain union groups with your stand on the pipeline and now you’re going after God, it makes no sense but that’s what they want to do.

Watch: