Dan Brown apologizes and promises to become a monk in a silent order.
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Inevitably links go out of date.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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Pope: ‘Respect’ for Religion ‘Urgent’
‘Necessary and urgent that the faithful not be subjected to provocations injuring their outlook and religious feelings.’
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David Irving Sentenced to Three Years in Prison
Deborah Lipstadt dismayed. ‘The way of fighting Holocaust deniers is with history and with truth.’
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Lipstadt on the Irving Verdict
Irving can’t claim ‘to have changed his mind in the 1990s when he took me to court in 2000.’
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Irving Revises History for the Jury
Hard to claim he stopped being a Holocaust denier in 1992 after 2000 libel case exposed his distortions.
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‘I Made a Mistake’ Didn’t Do the Trick
Lipstadt says, ‘The one thing he deserves, he really deserves, is obscurity.’
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Ian Traynor in Vienna
Irving was arrested after returning to deliver more speeches despite being barred from Austria.
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The Historian Who Rejected Plain Facts
Would-be martyr using free speech arguments to peddle myths.
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The Pope of Holocaust Deniers
But not all Jews welcome the sentence. ‘Personally I prefer to treat him with disdain.’
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Inept Review of Dennett’s Breaking the Spell
Leon Wieseltier defends ‘thoughtful believers’ and other familiar totems.
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Blackmore and Midgley Discuss Memes
Midgley seems to miss the point rather…
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AAAS Issues Statement Against ‘the Wedge’
Veiled attempts to wedge religion into science classrooms are a disservice to students, teachers.
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Pseudoscience and The Occult in Public Schools
‘Medical Qigong’ taught as science in California charter school.
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Norman Levitt Considers Steve Fuller
‘In Fuller’s mind, working scientists are in an important sense intellectually deformed.’
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We Ought to Pay Closer Attention
We need to remember how freedom is lost, and what it is like to live where it has been lost.
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Sixteen People Killed in Nigerian Cartoon Protests
Witnesses said most of the dead were from Maiduguri’s minority Christians.
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Annoyed Iranians Re-name Danish Pastries
Now called ‘Roses of the Prophet Muhammad’ peace be upon his apple filling.
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Gilbert and George Don’t Take on the Theocrats
Fear of being murdered is a perfectly rational one, but it is eating away at cultural elite’s myths.
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Poll: 40% of Muslims Want Sharia in UK
40% of British Muslims surveyed backed introducing sharia in parts of Britain, 41% opposed it.
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Fanatics Tell Deeyah: We’ll Kill You
Track that promotes women’s rights has outraged hardline Islamists. Men spit at her in the street.