Watch highlights of this successful Long Beach program and see its impact on the local community. This is when people come together and work to solve issues in their communities. This is the start, we all need to be involved in the shift. This is nice to see successes.

There is a movement to take the government and your personal records into the virtual world. There is some really awesome talks, and a very beautiful beginning on starting the conversation. These video’s talk about TED and try and show what they are doing. It is billed as part of Government v2.0 – which includes a lot of kind of wildly historically private information, as well as some wild ideas for the future. Check these out.

So here is a playlist, and you can view this on YouTube, and see other talks. But provided here as a service to you. So you know.

“The talk shows with Glenn Beck and others on Fox News, I think, have deliberately distorted the news.” – President Carter

It is about time someone of prominence stood up and lambasted FOX & all those other pandering monstrosities of so-called-pseudo-news. This is the main reason we are doing this podcast. Take a listen. This one is important to share as well!

Wow, what a really interesting story.  Check this one out for all those space geeks like me out there.

Astronomers have found an alien planet confirmed to come from another galaxy for the first time, a new study finds. The Jupiter-like planet orbits a star that was born in another galaxy and later captured by our own Milky Way sometime between 6 billion and 9 billion years ago, researchers said. A side effect of the galactic cannibalism brought a faraway planet within astronomers’ reach for the first time ever.

See the original story: First Alien Planet From Another Galaxy Discovered by CBS News Staffer

Why People Believe Strange Things

Why do people see the Virgin Mary on cheese sandwiches or hear demonic lyrics in “Stairway to Heaven”? Using video, images and music, professional skeptic Michael Shermer explores these and other phenomena, including UFOs and alien sightings. He offers cognitive context: In the absence of sound science, incomplete information can combine with the power of suggestion (helping us hear those Satanic lyrics in Led Zeppelin). In fact, he says, humans tend to convince ourselves to believe: We overvalue the “hits” that support our beliefs, and discount the more numerous “misses.”

The Design of Life with Richard Dawkins

The session was titled “The Design of Life,” and the TED audience was probably expecting remarks about evolution’s role in our history from biologist Richard Dawkins. Instead, he launched into a full-on appeal for atheists to make public their beliefs and to aggressively fight the incursion of religion into politics and education (quoting Douglas Adams in the bargain). Scientists and intellectuals hold very different beliefs about God from the American public, he says, yet they are cowed by the overall political environment. Dawkins’ scornful tone drew strongly mixed reactions from the audience; some stood and applauded his courage. Others wondered whether his strident approach could do more harm than good. Dawkins went on to publish The God Delusion and become perhaps the world’s best-known atheist.

Robert McChesney explores the changing relationship between media and politics and the effects of the growing globalization of mass media.  This is a pretty big topic, in my opinion, and we need to pay attention to the money trails.  A lot is rotten in the state of Denmark!  This is from a Series: Carsey-Wolf Center for Film, Television, and New Media at UCSB [5/2005] [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 9492]

This argument that human-caused carbon emissions are merely a drop in the bucket compared to greenhouse gases generated by volcanoes has been making its way around the rumor mill for years. And while it may sound plausible, the science just doesn’t back it up.

Read more: Valcanoes Release Carbon Dioxide – The Daily Green

Ira Flatow talks with scientists and philosophers about the origins of human values, and the influence of modern scientific thought on human values. Even if science can shape human morals, should it? Or does science bring its own set of preconceptions and prejudices to moral questions?

Listen to the podcast: Can Science Shape Human Values?

The black parents wanted an explanation. Doctors, lawyers, judges, and insurance brokers, many had come to the upscale Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights specifically because of its stellar school district. They expected their children to succeed academically, but most were performing poorly. African-American students were lagging far behind their white classmates in every measure of academic success: grade-point average, standardized test scores, and enrollment in advanced-placement courses. On average, black students earned a 1.9 GPA while their white counterparts held down an average of 3.45. Other indicators were equally dismal. It made no sense.

View original story: “Rich, Black, Flunking” by Susan Goldsmith