Why is there a ‘reality gap’?

Much is being written about fake news and so there has been a dawning realisation that we live in an age where there is a very distinct reality gap. Steve Benen writes on MSNBC about how disconnected some are from reality. He describes it as follows … what struck me as especially notable about the … Read more

How many get fooled when Fake News goes viral?

Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist blogger who used to be a maths teacher, plucks out a gem regarding fake news going viral from a presentation by blogger Dan Meyer. Dan’s keynote presentation is mostly a talk by a maths teachers to other teachers, hence Hemant’s interest. Be warned, unless you are into teaching, it will mostly … Read more

Daily Mail Fake Claim: El Nino drove 2016 record temperatures – #climate #rebuttal

The Daily Mail recently (on 26th Nov) published the following claim … Stunning new data indicates El Nino drove record highs in global temperatures suggesting rise may not be down to man-made emissions  Global average temperatures over land have plummeted by more than 1C  Comes amid mounting evidence run of record temperatures about to end … Read more

There are hints of a new and far better arabic spring

In response to a religiously motivated attack the traditional response within the more serious portions of Arabic media has been the adoption of the stance that those that perpetrate such crimes against humanity are not “true” Muslims and nothing to do with Islam. Sadly such a stance is a denial of reality and helps to … Read more

Shock announcement from credible source – NASA has discovered alien DNA

While surfing Facebook the other day, a posting that caught my eye was entitled … Marijuana Contains “Alien DNA” From Outside Of Our Solar System, NASA Confirms My immediate thought was “That’s Bullshit”. If it had been via DavidIcke.com or some other similar dubious source then I would have simply rolled my eyes and moved on, but since this was … Read more

Claim: Twitter at War with Conservatives – #JeSuisMilo

Meanwhile over at Breitbart, a very right-wing conservative outlet, we have the rather strange claim that Twitter has an “open war against Conservatives” (yes, those are their words, that is the title). They write some quite weird stuff… Just as the value of its stock has dipped to an all-time low, it has picked a fight with conservative … Read more