Reading Time: < 1 minute Brilliant: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI[/youtube]
The News
Posted inThe Secular
FOX stoop to new lows
Reading Time: < 1 minute Urghhh. This was so painful to watch. They should be had up in court for misinforming and mischaracterising. This is evil propaganda of the worst sort. What can be done about it? It’s so depressing that such a widely watched channel can spew forth such vitriolic nonsense. I am angry now. Thanks FOX.
Posted inEthics and Morality
Clarkson should do one. I have no time for him.
Reading Time: 5 minutes Jeremy Clarkson, right wing pundit and presenter on the ever popular everyman BBC TV money spinner car show, Top Gear, has not had his contract renewed. He has always been controversial, and the last incident was the brick that broke the weary camel’s back. He has a long line of things he has got up to, which I will later list. Essentially, he is a very rich man who doesn’t seem to have a care in the world for anyone or anything, whether it be the environment, foreigners or fellow workmates. As the Economist reported:
Posted inPolitics
Sara Firth quits RT over “lies”
Reading Time: 5 minutes This is yet another case of a defector from RT, the Russian news media organisation. Liz Wahl recently quit over the Crimea conflict and demands on her journalistic integrity in the context of what management and Putin were demanding of the network and its conclusions:
Posted inComedy
The success of John Oliver and Last Week Tonight
Reading Time: 4 minutes If you, like me, have been really pleased that the state of comedy and satirical news is in rude health, and if you have been comforted by the emergence of John Oliver and his research- and fact-based show (Last Week Tonight) , then you will find this a good read. I have loved John Oliver’s comedy. The writing is astute, and chimes with so much of what is going on in the liberal, secular, intellectually invigorated community.
Posted inScience
At Last!!! BBC staff told to stop inviting cranks onto science programmes
Reading Time: 2 minutes This is an issue that plagues every single media institution. Because the BBC is THE port of call, for me at least, for news and views, whether from their excellent website, r from their news coverage, it is infuriating, from a skeptical point of view, that equal airtime is given to dissenting views which do not hold equal proportion of adherence in the relevant fields. That a creationist might receive 1 on 1 battle time with an evolutionary bioligist is misrepresenting the state of affairs, as can be seen here:
Posted inPolitics, Psychology
The extreme right: UKIP and the evolution of ideas
Reading Time: 7 minutes “I’m not a racist, I’ve got coloured neighbors and they’re fantastic neighbors” – An interviewed UKIP voter on the BBC.
Local elections have just taken place in the UK for a proportion of local councils where the electorate can decide which councillors will represent their interests in local wards by winning seats on their local council. UKIP (the UK Independence Party), essentially a break-away faction of the Conservative Party, the right wing mainstream party of the UK, originally set up to take the UK out of membership of the EU, made massive gains.
Posted inThe Secular
Being skeptical about Chinese ‘persecution’ of Christians
Reading Time: 5 minutes Some of you may have heard news reports like this one from Yahoo News about a church being ‘knocked down by the Communists’. This is how they report it:
Posted inPolitics
Truly Chilling Holocaust Reminder: Russian Backed Eastern Ukraine Looks to Have Fascist Factions
Reading Time: 3 minutes This is truly chilling stuff. The Second World War had some pretty terrible moments (a huge understatement), but the lead up to the Jewish Holocaust and how it was organised and delivered, especially with knowledge of the consequences as we now have, was spectacularly scary to the point where you think something like that would have no chance of ever happening again. Perhaps we too easily forget our history.
Posted inSex & Gender
Proof (again) that the Daily Mail is a Racist, Sexist, Bigoted Diatribe
Reading Time: 3 minutes I am no fan of the right-wing espouser of nonsense and lies that is the Daily Mail. It is a horrible UK paper. For those across the pond who don’t know, it has a rather chequered history, supporting the Nazis way back when and then continuing in the vein ever since. Not really chequered, ac
++tually. All bad. I have written myself to the Mail about a misrepresentation of statistics once in their headline article which effectively amounted to lies.