Advocating Reality

This blog post will serve as an ever-changing list of materials which I feel serve as excellent examples for distinguishing fact from fiction and for making educated decisions, as well as being entertaining. Skepticism / Atheism Penn & Teller's 'Bullshit!' Showtime Series -  http://www.sho.com/site/ptbs/home.do The Atheist Experience TV Show -  http://www.atheist-experience.com/ Marijuana / Drug Reform Grass: A Marijuana History -  http://www.amazon.com/Grass/dp/B0034L1N2Q Understanding Science Falsifying Phylogeny -  http://www.youtube.com/user/AronRa#p/c/0C606FE36BEDAC75/0/91UAzMNUDLU Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism -  http://www.youtube.com/user/AronRa#p/c/126AFB53A6F002CC/0/KnJX68ELbAY Cosmos:  Carl Sagan -  http://www.amazon.com/Cosmos-Carl-Sagan-DVD-Set/dp/B000055ZOB 'A Universe From Nothing' by Lawrence Krauss, AAI 2009 -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo

'Derek the Advocate' was just too plain.  This is better, I think.

I will admit, I held high hopes that California's 'Proposition 19' (Regulate, Control & Tax Cannabis Act) would succeed and open the floodgates to prove marijuana as a relatively harmless recreational substance.  I know, I was reaching, but that isn't the point.  I saw the success of Prop 19 as being a kickoff for a 'domino effect' of changes of public opinion based on reliable, accurate information. As it turns out, I wasn't thinking 'outside the box'.  It may be that the very act of putting it on the ballot stirred up support elsewhere in the United States for similar measures - South Dakota actually had a medical marijuana measure on the ballot (it failed), Arizona has Prop 203 to legalize medical marijuana (up to 2.5oz) apparently still in ballot-limbo, and two brand-new state Governors (Vermont's Peter Shumlin and Connecticut's Dan Malloy) just happen to be on the side of Decriminalization and medical marijuana. One point that I ...

For most of my life, I saw homosexuals as 'deviant' from the norm, but I never honestly considered that they were somehow sub-human because of this.  I would hear stories about Gay Rights activists not always being gay, and I accepted this reality - I didn't fully understand what it meant, however. What it means to me is this:  It is completely acceptable to advocate equality for a cause, even when it has absolutely no direct impact on you personally.  Something is either justifiable or it is not.  There is absolutely no justification for treating individuals who have a different sexual orientation as 'inferior' and thus less deserving of basic human rights. It doesn't help, of course, that so many people and organizations over the years have flat-out lied to the public about homosexuality.  Statistics have been skewed and tortured to support ridiculous conclusions, though these tactics seem to have failed so utterly that they are few and far between in this...