Should big PR firms that represent drug companies also run scientific societies’ media operations?
Category: Latest News
Welcome to our archive of news stories relevant to the project of fighting fashionable nonsense. The stories are drawn from the electronic pages of the world’s media. On this page, you’ll find links to those stories that have been featured on Butterflies and Wheels during the current year. At the bottom of the page, you’ll find links to separate archives of stories from previous years.
We’re always pleased to hear about news stories that you think should be featured on Butterflies and Wheels. Just send an email here, if you want to point one out to us.
A note about links
Inevitably links go out of date. We suggest, therefore, that you make hard-copies of the stories that particularly interest you.
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Ben Goldacre on why cigarette packs matter
Cigarette packaging has been used for many decades to sell the crucial lie that cigarettes which are “light”, “mild”, “silver”, and the rest, are somehow “safer”.
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Tudge reviews Flannery on Darwin
And recycles every dreary cliché there is.
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HRW report
On Islamic dress code for women in Chechnya.
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Rosenhouse reviews Collins and Giberson
Their book is not a good defense of theistic evolution.
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A more hopeful view of women and Egypt
But she wrote just before going to Tahrir Square for the March 8 Million Woman March…
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Why are atheists so angry?
Because theists keep asking why they’re so angry.
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Daily Mail: did “supermoon” cause earthquake?
Ben Goldacre finds this question tasteless. Extremely fucking tasteless, actually.
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Chechnya: women bullied into dressing “modestly”
Chechen authorities are enforcing a compulsory Islamic dress code for women and condoning violent attacks on women deemed to dress immodestly.
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Rahila Gupta on feminism and secularism
Some on the left have developed an anti-racist politics that gives succour to religious extremism rather than challenging it.
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A memo from Fred Halliday to LSE
Halliday wrote this memo to LSE’s governing body in October 2009 to try to convince them not to accept a grant from the Qaddafi Foundation.
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Philadelphia: 21 priests suspended
A grand jury last month indicted three priests and one lay teacher on charges of rape, assault and other felonies related to minors, mainly in the late 1990s.
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Newt Gingrich considers secularism “elitist”
“In America, religious belief is being challenged by a cultural elite trying to create a secularized America, in which God is driven out of public life.”
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Governor of Illinois repeals death penalty
“We cannot have a death penalty system in our state that kills innocent people.”
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A scary theocrat
But can the tension between religion and state always and at any time be resolved with a bias in favour of the law?
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Sean Carroll on modal logic and the ontological proof
The OP is perfectly logical — that is, the conclusions follow inevitably from the premises. It’s the premises that are a bit loopy.
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CFI’s Living Without Religion campaign
Too many people think atheists are miserable or savage or both.
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Theocrats come to Harvard
The April 1-2 Social Transformation Conference ostensibly aims to employ “faith-based principles to better our society.”
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Cairo: women’s rights marchers report attacks
A mob of angry men beat and sexually assaulted women marching for political and social equality, witnesses said.
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Sally Feldman on shiny new anti-feminism
Catherine Hakim of LSE recently caused a furore with her “Feminist Myths and Magic Medicine,” in which she condemns moves towards gender equality.