Lifestyle topics
False news travels much faster online than the truth because of our craving for novelty. In the largest-ever study of how news spreads on social media, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology analysed 126,000 stories on Twitter from between 2006 and 2017. They found that false stories were 70% more likely to be retweeted …
Letter to The Guardian The flaw in the argument for denying far-right propagandists a platform is the failure to address how else the mass of us who oppose the unacceptable views can turn voters away from supporting them if we do not engage with their facile and untenable arguments. The strategy of ignoring them or …
Continue reading ‘Argue with them, don’t just write them off as ignorant’ »
A recent opinion poll suggests that 70 per cent of people in the UK are worried about air pollution and half want the state to do more. The British government does nothing. The main problem are highly polluting diesel vehicles. Air pollution will gradually fall as the oldest, most polluting vehicles are replaced. Yet the …
Continue reading ‘Air pollution is a killer. Tax the polluters.’ »
It goes without saying that raising children is one of the most important things humans do. But there is so much bad advise on how to raise your children. In this post I’ll try to address what both the liberal secularists and the religious conservatives get wrong on parenting, and how to do it in …
From Bryn Glover, Kirkby Malzeard, North Yorkshire, UK “May I report a highly effective way to counter interruptions while talking? “In the 1980s, I sat on the council of the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs trade union in England. Meetings were always attended by the extrovert and voluble general secretary, Clive Jenkins. He …
