spiked | ‘Evil’ Iran vs a British mum

spiked | ‘Evil’ Iran vs a British mum

"The press seems outraged that the Iranians have treated British soldiers like, well, soldiers. Turney is referred to everywhere as ‘a British mother’, as if she wandered into Iranian (or Iraqi) waters by mistake while shopping at a Middle Eastern branch of Iceland. ‘A British mother paraded on state TV’, says the Daily Mail; ‘Let mummy go’, said the Sun, imagining what Turney’s three-year-old daughter might be thinking. This ‘mummy’ has been in the Navy for nine years. Some claim the Iranians are behaving scandalously by pushing Turney to the front of their propaganda videos; it could be that they are exploiting the British media’s transformation of Turney over the past week into the nation’s Victim Mum."

confirmation bias & forer effect

confirmation bias
ie. people only pay attention to evidence that confirms their beliefs

&

The Forer Effect
ie. reading general statements as highly specific to yourself

Freegan.info

Freegan.info

Don’t hire this man as your lawyer

Don’t hire this man as your lawyer

Your religion sucks.

Your religion sucks.

So the next time someone blows up a building, or shoots an abortion doctor, or prevents young girls from learning to read, in the name of God, I hope that you won't get too self-righteous about it. In fact, you and they are peas in a pod. You enable this person to do what they do. You promote in society a tolerance and understanding for this behavior. Your failure is their failure. Your willing ignorance is their excuse. Your desecration of society's respect for the truth, for our responsibility to be intellectually diligent, for judging what might be true against what we can discern with our senses to be true, your faith is the exact same thing that makes what they do OK. Your guilty pleasure, your insistence on ignoring what your senses and your intellect tell you removes you and helps remove society from any position in which it is sensible to pass moral judgment on anyone else for believing in the absence of evidence, and then acting on these beliefs, however loony, because you do precisely the same thing they do.

Your religion is everyone's religion, because you've rejected the validity of rationally judging ideas on the basis of our senses and minds. You do it. You OK it. You bring it on. Thanks a lot.

Sweet and sour roasted red onions

From here...

Sweet and sour roasted red onions

Caramelised on the outside and super-soft within, these are delicious alongside almost any meat or fish. Serves three to four as a side dish.

500g small red onions

2 tbsp olive oil

1 stick celery, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

1 tsp rosemary, picked and finely chopped

1 tbsp concentrated tomato purée

3 tbsp cider vinegar

3 tbsp light muscovado sugar

Salt and black pepper

Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/gas mark 5. Peel the onions and cut them in half from root to tip. Put into a small oven dish, so they fit snugly in one layer.

Heat the olive oil in a small saucepan over a medium heat and add the celery and garlic. Fry gently for about 10 minutes, until soft. Remove from the heat, add the rosemary, tomato purée, vinegar and sugar, and stir so the sugar dissolves. Season generously, then pour over the onions and mix well. Roast for an hour, until soft and caramelised, stirring halfway through. Serve hot, warm or cold.

Store It At Rowlays - Self storage units in Lytham St Annes

Store It At Rowlays - Self storage units in Lytham St Annes

A Collection of Newspaper Masthead Clip Art - a photoset on Flickr

A Collection of Newspaper Masthead Clip Art - a photoset on Flickr

How to talk to gloabl warming skeptics

How to talk to global warming skeptics