Dark Girls

A preview of an upcoming documentary called Dark Girls about how skin color is judged both by other ethnicities and within the black community as well. Intrablack racism is a direct consequence of slavery and the institutional racism that America has had since its beginning. A very painful topic, but one which needs to be addressed.

Dark Girls: Preview from Bradinn French on Vimeo.

Katharine Hayhoe: Evangelical Christian, Climate Scientist

A wonderful post at Biologos about a climate change scientist who is also an evangelical Christian. Please be sure to watch all three videos at the link. This video needs to go viral and shatter the false dichotomy between faith and science so prevalent in the popular media.

Happy Scientifically Accurate Mothers Day!

An excellent interview with Francis Collins about Science and Faith

Here's the link to the full video of Francis Collins talking about the Human Genome Project, but in this link, he also speaks about the relationship of faith and science. Well worth checking out.

Some excellent Websites dealing with Conspiracy Theories

Here's a round up of a few websites I've discovered that deal primarily or at least occasionally with the issue of conspiracy theories.

Mind Hacks is a mind science website that post frequently on issues relating to cognition. Always entertaining, very insightful, and sometimes hilarious.

A website I only discovered this evening because of a facebook friend Paul Kimball, who writes quite often about the paranormal and UFOs, is called Skeptico. It doesn't primarily deal with conpsiracy theories, but it does touch on that kind of thinking in many of its posts, so it's definitely worth checking. I look forward to reading/listening to more in the days ahead. Looks fascinating.

There's also the always good factcheck.org website that deals primarily with political issues, and of course one of their biggest fact checks has been about President Obama's birth certificate. Consistently good stuff here.

And then there's the more general fact checking website known as Snopes, which also has a great track record of exposing some truly bizarre conspiracy theories. They cover political, scientific, and just about every other cultural expression of bad thinking and crazy logic and amazing hoaxes.

And of course my favorite blog dealing with conspiracy issues has got to be Muertos, which has written extensively on the bizarre conspiracy theories associated with the Zeitgesit Movement, and it's spin off movement, the Venus Project. Thankfully it seem these crazy movements seem to be splitting apart amidst internal squabbling.

If you know of any other good websites dedicated to exploring conspiracy theories and their adherents and the psychology/sociology behind them, I'd very much appreciate the feedback. In a world filled with 9/11 Truthers, Obama Birthers, and now bin Laden Deathers, we need more than ever to work at helping those who are reality impaired and deeply fact aversive.