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Sometime last year, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback was interviewed on a call-in radio show. A listener asked him on air if he would ever consider meeting with atheists, and Brownback said he would. Was he just trying to be nice?

It didn’t matter. Local atheists worked for months to get that “promised” meeting with him and yesterday a small group of them (along with one Christian) finally met with the Governor:

(From left to right) Fred Heeren, Michaelyn Everhart, Cole Morgan, Gov. Sam Brownback, Adam Brown, and Amanda Brown

To no one’s surprise, Brownback didn’t change his mind on the major social issues. But you have to give him some credit for taking the time to listen to atheists’ concerns, even if there wasn’t much more to it than that.

Staks Rosch spoke with meeting attendee Adam Brown and wrote about the evolution conversation:

[Christian Fred] Heeren spoke to the Governor about getting Creationism our of science classes. Brownback is a supporter of “teaching the controversy” and so Heeren pointed out that among the science community there is no controversy. Brownback admitted that he does accept the science of evolution, but not as it related to human origin. Heeren pushed for the view that God guided the evolutionary process and tried to get Brownback to acknowledge the scientific view of the age of the universe.

Amazing that we still have to talk about basic science with some politicians in this day and age…

Amanda Brown was also at the meeting. She tried at one point to get the Governor to at least mention atheists in his speeches as part of the makeup of Kansas, thinking that would be an easy-to-accept position. He didn’t go for it, but he did say something else that was surprising to hear:

[Brownback] said he has never given any particular group a mention during his speeches. He has just never thought about it. After speaking with us [atheists] he understands how being included would help for the state to start working together. He wanted us to know that he really did appreciate us coming out and although he had some misconceptions of how we would act, what we would look like/be like, and what we would say he was now glad to have gone through with the meeting and will be happy to meet again in the future. He even agreed to come out to a special “Town Meeting” with other “nones” in the Kansas City Metro Area. To hear directly from this new constituency what direction we would like to see the state go and what we feel he can do to help.

Again, this may just be the empty promises of a politician, but it’s still a nice gesture. And you can bet the atheists will follow up with his staff.

No matter what you think of Brownback, this is the sort of meeting that needs to happen across the country, regardless of the Governors’ parties. They need to hear our concerns and demands. Sure they can (and probably will) ignore us, but it’s a lot easier to dismiss us if you haven’t spoken with us and heard our stories.

Huge hats off to the atheists here for never giving up on this meeting and making it happen.

What does art look like in the age of "hacked matter," when anyone can print anything on-demand? That's the question Shane Hope, a New York-based visual artist, is trying to answer. In "Nano-Nonobjective-Oriented Ontographs and Qubit-Built Quilts," his new show at Chelsea's Winkleman Gallery, Hope is showing a collection of amazingly intricate paintings, each containing thousands of individual 3D-printed models. More »

We've written before about the historical and social aspects of conspiracy theories, but wanted to learn more about the psychology of people who believe, for instance, that the Boston Marathon bombing was a government "false flag" operation. Psychological forces like motivated reasoning have long been associated with conspiracy thinking, but scientists are learning more every year. For instance, a British study published last year found that people who believe one conspiracy theory are prone to believe many, even ones that are completely contradictory.

Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive scientist at the University of Western Australia, published a paper late last month in the journal Psychological Science that has received widespread praise for looking at the thinking behind conspiracy theories about science and climate change. We asked him to explain the psychology of conspiracy theories. This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

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The Christian group Faith2Action just released a segment they filmed for an upcoming documentary. And if this clip is any indication, the entire film is going to be a trainwreck:

The joke isn’t on gay people. It’s on Faith2Action for thinking this is a valid comparison. (Hell, adulterers can at least get married in every state.)

This is the sort of video you would expect an LGBT group to make to mock Christians’ narrow-minded thinking on the subject… Instead, the Christians here went ahead and did the work for them. They’re proving to the world how badly they don’t get it.

There’s a lot to be offended by — in addition to the awful acting — but they don’t care. They have their stereotypes and illogical talking points and they’re not backing off. It’s the sort of thing that has young Christians fleeing the church in record numbers.

I hope this film gets wide distribution. People need to see the depths the Christian Right will sink to in order to delegitimize LGBT people.

Sex apparently is like income: People are generally happy when they keep pace with the Joneses and they're even happier if they get a bit more. That's one finding of Tim Wadsworth, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder, who recently published the results of a study of how sexual frequency corresponds with happiness...

We all know about echolocation, but way more is happening when a bat takes flight, and some bats don't echolocate at all. So how do they have so much precision in their flying and what's different about bats and birds? More »

Sure, you've seen the master mutant powers of magnetic putty before and how its snake-like unhinging ability can completely engulf an object. It's the work of magic! Or the closest thing we have to magical powers (magnets). PBS Digital Studios and Shanks FX teamed up to have a bit of fun with magnetic putty and shows it in all of its gory detail. Shot in macro and placed against a titillating soundtrack, seeing magnetic putty swallow things is, um, a lot of fun. [Joey Shanks] More »

Plasma dances across the sun and Earth’s air glows in this week's best space pictures.

Imagine walking into a room and stumbling straight into a wasp nest that's nearly 22 feet big. That's what happened in the Canary Islands. Neighbors had been growing concerned over a vacant home so they notified the police. When the police entered the home, they discovered the home wasn't empty at all. Rather, it was home to millions of wasps and the most alien looking nest ever. More »

Let's all admit it: we love movie trailers. A minute or two of bite sized scenes showing off great looking shirtless actors with even better looking almost topless actresses combined with explosions, laughs, mind blowing sequences and a tinge of sex is a wonderful formula to get us hyped. Even if all movie trailers are cut the same way, I'll never not get excited to watch them. Animation Domination High Def creates a song and exposes a formula in this silly animation on how to make a movie trailer. It's hilarious. [Animation Domination High Def] More »

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