A Public Service Announcement from the Irreverent Skeptics

As you probably know by now, the United States Supreme Court has ruled that bans on same sex marriage are unconstitutional. We applaud the bravery the Supremes made in actually reading the constitution and defending the rights of all people to marry as they so choose.

But there are those who oppose the ruling – for example, Texas Southern Baptist pastor Rick Scarborough. Dr. Scarborough made a very serious promise while talking about just how much he opposes marriage equality despite public condemnation of his position:

“We are not going to bow, we are not going to bend, and if necessary we will burn.”

As skeptics, we care about honesty and integrity, and we know Dr. Scarborough does, too. So we wish to encourage our listeners to help him keep his promise. You can do this by sending matches and lighters to him via the PO Box of his organization, Vision America:

Rick Scarborough
C/O Vision America
P.O. Box 10
Lufkin, TX 75902

If you want to help but don’t want to spend a lot of money, we suggest a 3-pack of refillable lighters for just $4.98 with free shipping. Or, if you really want to be thrifty and make sure that he catches fire and stays caught, there’s always the 300-count package of strike-on-box matches for just $4.32, also with free shipping.

Thank you for your attention on this important matter. We now return you to your regular programming.

FMB

ISP #19 – Potluck Skepticism

As mentioned in the last post, this show actually came before episode 18. But that doesn’t matter. Time is all wibbly-wobbly anyway.

In this episode:

  • McElroy reviews “God’s Not Dead” (here’s the Reasonable Doubts episode about it, too)
  • Erno talks about woo he discovered walking around his town in Finland
  • Bohler talks about the stuff he’s been researching, especially the history of civilization and how quacks cherry-pick evidence
  • We discuss the Burzynski Clinic and its record of failure and pseudoscience

No show notes this time – we were just winging it!

YUM.

YUM.

Help make skeptical and scientific content accessible!

According to the WHO, 5% of the world’s population – about 360 million people – are deaf or hearing-impaired. That’s a huge audience that isn’t being served if your videos aren’t captioned. There are also, obviously, lots of skeptics who don’t speak English but who would love the material as well.

To better serve these segments of the skeptical community, a few groups have started projects to subtitle skeptical and scientific videos, through services like Amara.org. Tim Farley, over at the Skeptools blog, has written up a post summarizing a few of the efforts that are ongoing. If you think you might be able to help out, even with just a video or two, surf on over and check it out. Find something you’re interested in and get captioning!