Tiramisu - The Easy Way

Tiramisu is one of those desserts that has the elegance and class of gourmet, and the mystique and essence of being a talented baker. With this recipe, you can make tiramisu to impress your family and friends.

These can be found at your local liquor shop and s

For your ingredients, you will need:

• 2 cups strong black coffee
• 1/2 cup marsala
• 3 eggs, yolk separated
• 1/3 cup caster sugar
• 250grams marscapone
• 300ml thickened cream
• 2 large packets of sponge fingers

To make the tiramisu, you:

1. Prepare the black coffee and add the marsala. Mix these two together and set aside.
2. Beat the yolks together with the caster sugar until it is pale and thick. Whip the thickened cream together. Add the marscapone, whipped cream and mix together gently until almost combined.
3. Separate the eggs and set aside your egg whites. - It's easier to move the egg in between the egg shells over a bowl until the whites have dissipated -.
4. Beat the egg whites in a medium bowl until soft peaks form. Once this has happened, fold the eggwhites into the egg yolk mixture.
5. Dip the biscuits into the coffee and marsala mixture that you had set aside and lay them down in your baking dish. - Be careful while you do this, as the biscuits become very soft and easily breakable once dipped in the liquid -. Place the cream mixture over the layer of biscuits, place more biscuits on top of that layer, and so on until the baking dish is full, and ending with the cream on top.
   
6. Cover the dish with cling wrap and refrigerate for a minimum of 2 hours. – 4 – 6 hours is the optimum time frame for chilling.
7. Once you have chilled the tiramisu, garnish with a chocolate covering. – I find that Cadbury’s Flake is perfect for garnishing.

Bon Appetit!

Amy Stephens

Find more easy recipes like this at https://dishonthedishes.wordpress.com/

A Word on AFL

I believe that Aussie Rules Football is the greatest sport invented and played in Australia. However, like many other Melbournites, I am probably biased. In Melbourne, we love our football. I would venture to say that our attendance at games is seen by many as an alternative religion.

Given their training regime, I reckon that AFL players are probably overall, the fittest athletes in Australia. The trouble is the injury rate is also pretty high. If players just trained and didn’t play football, they would be near peak fitness condition. However, luckily for us spectators, the game is played at a professional, elite level.

It seems that it is not so much the rules that attract people to the game as the communal sports supporting experience. You only have to travel as far as NSW or QLD to see that Rugby is their most popular code of football. And soccer is played and supported professionally all over Australia. So though the rules may be different, fans still have that communal mind-set.

The rules of AFL are still in development. It seems that AFL headquarters is bringing in new rules every season. Sometimes they seem more like a government than a sporting body.

All in all, whatever happens, I, as many other fans will not lose my interest in AFL.

by M.S

The Politics of Climate Change Part 5

Science has generated a psychological omnipotence or an arrogance in industrial societies regarding knowability and control humans can exercise over the physical and metaphysical worlds,  but its ongoing discoveries simultaneously undermine the very sense of knowability and control it creates. Climate change implies finiteness in our control and mortality of our very existence. The political, social, economic and cultural forces marshalling for and against the IPCC and the scientific community could be seen as reflecting these existential anxieties and the human desire to repress or overcome them.

If there is an outcome in all is, just as science, its discoveries and applications tend to jump ahead of a societies readiness to accept them, the exploiters of science tend to overcome the suppression of it. Maybe the alternative energy science and technology industries and environmental policy makers will triumph over the vested interests seeking to suppress them. What ever happens with the progress of climate science and the climate change debate, if the average citizen continues to be excluded and misinformed by the politics of science, the real danger is the rise of the anti-enlightenment movements reflected in the conservative fundamentalist political and religious movements across the globe will return science and public education of it to the time when human knowledge was held in the hands of a few to control the many, rather than in the hands of the many to free all.
CD

The Politics Of Climate Change Part 4

When science is perceived to be able to create new forms of political, economic, social and cultural power particularly by those who don't have it or are seeking it, there is an exploitative response. The exploitative response is both public-political, but primarily private and economic. It could be said that the entire human economic industrial and technological advancement is an exploitative response to the progress of scientific discovery.This dynamic of suppressive and exploitative responses are not mutually exclusives processes as it can be said that all scientific-technological advancement has faced some suppression when in its infancy, but it is when science directly interacts with the existential foundations of a human society is where the suppressive response is at its strongest.  Nuclear weapons could be one example, but I think Climate science has become the most recent example.

Climate change and climate science (as an extension of environmental science) seems to me be following the same dynamics I have been describing through this piece: 1).Environmental science has always faced a suppressive response in capitalist societies because it is perceived to be a threat to capitalism's basic tenants. Capitalism seeks to exploit science and natural resources to maximise economic gain, while environmental science leads to environmental public policies that seek to limit and control access to resources and thereby economic activity. 2). The political battle for control over climate science and climate change policy may also be reflected in the public and private science duality. As climate science is associated with public science and therefore in the realm of public and government, the exploiters in the private science and economy spheres have not yet built the economic and political capital to overcome the suppressive response and change perceptions in the financial and political worlds that the environmental sciences have direct private economic benefits. 3). Climate science and its discoveries has now taken this political dynamic to whole new level because it interacts with another crucial aspect of the impact of science which are its existential elements.

CD

The Politics of Climate Change Part 3

As the practice of public or private scientific research generates discoveries and knowledge from intended and unintended processes, science can therefore threaten or undermine the very economic, social, political and cultural activities it was being funded to protect or develop. Scientific discoveries have always had a habit of jumping ahead of a societies readiness to accept them. A contemporary example such as genetic science and engineering has various implications for agriculture, health care and medicine, insurance, family planning, social ethics and population policy just to name a few. Much public policy still remains unresolved around many of these matters. This jumping ahead of a societies orthodoxies produces powerful responses that reveal the hidden existential forces in human societies and how science like psychotherapy exposes these frailties to a resistant consciousness.

These responses can be categorised into two common forms. Suppressive and Exploitative. When science is perceived to threaten established political, economic, social and cultural norms or power, there tends to be a suppressive response.  A suppressive response takes many forms but common ones include, discrediting the science, its practitioners and its institutions, defunding, economic-corporate market anti-competitive behaviour, religious doctrine, political lobbying, political donations, social-political moments, legislative obstruction and mass media misinformation. Genetically modified food, weapons technology, cloning, nuclear energy, aids research, abortion and birth control technology, stem cell research, egg fertilization technology and alternative energy technology could be some well-known examples facing this type of response.
CD

The Politics of Climate Change Part 2

The history of science parallels the evolving nature of a society it exists within. The relationship between science and society is one of interdependency. One can not live without the other. This interdependency does not imply harmony. If anything it is the disharmony and friction it creates is its' true power and value. This is the essence of human evolution.

This friction in political terms is played out in two key ways: 1). how it is organised within a society i.e. the realms of public science and private science, and 2). the ownership of scientific knowledge. Public science dominated by government funding on behalf of its citizens reflects the belief that scientific knowledge must have some public ownership and public policy goals to maximise its benefits for the social welfare of society. Private science dominated by private funding from corporations and investors reflects the belief science should have some private ownership and private goals in order to maximise economic gain for themselves and the broader economy. In practice, public and private science is interdependent, both feeding the goals of the other.  But at times it creates its own disharmony, often displayed in the politics of control over scientific knowledge. The controversy over patenting genes could be one example. The politics of control of science does not just reflect is utilitarian value in political, economic or social terms but also its metaphysical value. The faith-based explanation of the world and its conflict with the scientific explanation, suggests the human desire for a unitary understanding of the world that is, the "why" of existence is an important element in determining a society's ability to accept science as enhancing meaning not undermining it.
CD

The Politics of Climate Change Part 1

The Climate Change debate has become one the most conflicted public policy debate in recent years. In Australia it is a most virulent one, trapped in short-sighted electoral politics. Trying to understand it as an average citizen is near impossible with constant conflicting information coming from many sources with many agendas. If you're trying to make an educated decision as a voter on what is the best way forward for public policy its like looking for an oasis in a desert. Observing this debate as incoherent as it seems, I can't helping wondering if it is about science and a society's relationship with it, that is at the heart of the maelstrom.

Science doesn't just have a crucial role in the political, economic, social and cultural life of a society, it has a psychological and spiritual one. Science reflects the psychology of consciousness, the who, what, how, when and where. It also reflects the spiritual, existential and transcendental, i.e. the why and the meaning of our existence. A society's appreciation of this is a society that looks beyond just the tangible results science creates especially economic ones, but seeks to understand its processes, methods and significance to human life. In other words, science does not have just a utilitarian value but a metaphysical one. This then allows science to become a key engine in a societies enlightenment and its social and economic progress.
CD