At three schools in California, 80% of parents have signed a “personal belief exemption” to keep their children from being vaccinated.
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Inevitably links go out of date.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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Nick Cohen notes: David Cameron is not middle class
For a half a century, the British elite has pretended that it does not exist.
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Hitchens is still doing words
Talking, writing and perpetuating the belief he has upheld throughout his life: in “free inquiry, open-mindedness and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.”
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Hauser inquiry: privacy v reliable evidence
Harvard is keeping its findings secret, which leaves other researchers unsure which of Hauser’s experiments can be relied on.
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Russell Blackford on “let’s hate the new atheists”
There’s obviously a market for such pieces as long as they attack an easily-demonised group such as outspoken atheists.
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Another “let’s hate new atheists” rant
They think they’re nonconformists but ha. They mock believers and love Satan. They are smug, shallow and arrogant.
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Malaysia: two found guilty in church arson attack
The attack on a church in KL was the first of a series following the ridiculous upset over who gets to say “Allah.”
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Let’s not mistake oppression for fashion choices
Every school day in Malaysia, little Muslim girls stand around at recess. They don’t skip or run much. They can’t. They’re hobbled. -
Questions about Marc Hauser’s research
Two scientific journals acknowledge problems in Hauser’s articles brought to light by an internal Harvard inquiry.
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Exaggerate much?
Toby Young says no prominent Western feminist has spoken out about Ashtiani, then cites Jane Fonda.
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Iran to world: Stoning? What stoning?
We never, and so do you.
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Ashtiani “confessed” on Iranian state tv
Sure she did.
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Hitchens on the dispute over the “Ground Zero mosque”
The way to respond to such overtures is by critical scrutiny and engagement, not cheap appeals to parochialism, victimology, and unreason.
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Hitchens talks to Jeffrey Goldberg
Hitch may not be certain about god, but he is certain that the pope knows no more about it than he does.
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CBC radio’s Promised Land presented by Natasha Fatah
Brilliant programmes based around a simple idea: “an escape that starts anywhere in the world but always ends in Canada.”
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Hitchens and the epistemology of religious truth
Are humans at their best when they are healthy and free or when they are suffering and captive?
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Dispute between Polonsky, Service, Figes and Palmer settled
It is inappropriate that a lecturer teaching about the lies in public life in Stalin’s USSR should himself be so menacing and dishonest.
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A philosophical primate reads Simon Critchley
Academic theologians like Critchley seem willfully blind to the pernicious real-world consequences of faith beliefs.
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Concerns about “honor” killing
“The Foreign Office said it distinguished between forced and arranged marriages.” Often a distinction without a difference.