‘I think that the orthodox are in the miserable situation of being orthodox for therapeutic reasons.’
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Inevitably links go out of date.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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India Has a Long Rationalist Tradition
Despite a tenacious western orientalism which overvalues Indian religiosity.
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More on Tête-à-Tête
These icons of intellectual honesty and individual responsibility lied a lot to the people close to them.
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Self-mockery as Ultimate Form of Seriousness
Zizek a ‘card-carrying Lacanian’ who speaks more excitedly about politics than Lacan.
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Pope Could Be Even More Reactionary
Lucky us then.
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Voltaire’s Enemy was the Infâme
Which was not JC but some of the forces of clerical reaction and feudal injustice.
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Gordon Wood Reviews Sean Wilentz
Avoids ‘bargain basement Nietzsche and Foucault’.
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Pollitt Reads Dowd, Who Doesn’t Read Pollitt
Dowd’s book is a Feminism Is Dead polemic, put through a Dowdian styleblender.
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Dowd Produces the Opposite of Synergy
Wisecracks are reductive and anti-ruminative; they don’t encourage deeper analysis, they stymie it.
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‘Analysis’ on Political Islam
What about Sudan?
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Nick Cohen Says Food is a Class Issue
A healthy eater would brand herself as a toff and be picked on for being ‘too healthy’ and ‘too brainy’.
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Epistemology Quiz
Undiscovered ants in the Amazon…
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A C Grayling on Libertines and Free Thought
Atheists were libertines, libertines were naughty, because atheists were naughty.
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Olivier Roy: Fundamentalists Conspicuously Absent
Contrary to the calls of many liberals, increased emphasis on multiculturalism is not the answer.
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French Intellectuals Speak Up at Last
Andre Glucksmann and Bernard-Henri Levy say a few words.
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Victimising Professor Mubarak Ali
Ishtiaq Ahmed on a distinguished historian of Pakistan faced with absurd accusations.
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Warning of Epidemic of School Bullying in UK
‘Children are being brought up in a society where violence is the norm in many ways.’
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Pat Robertson Pitches Fit at Dover Voters
Tells them to ask Darwin for help if disaster strikes.
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Interviewing Philosophy Teachers Can Be Tricky
He drew Plato’s cave on the board, complete with men, sun, shadows, and perhaps mice and lollipops.
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The Badness of Two Books on Prayer
People who pray the hardest – for martyrdom, purity, the defeat of the infidel – pose the greatest threat.