The fanatics look at Bali and see a load of Hindus selling drinks to a load of Christians.
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Inevitably links go out of date.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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Good News: Darfur Genocide Nearly Over
Because there’s almost no one left to kill.
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The Movie in Your Head
Is consciousness a seamless experience or a string of fleeting images?
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Look Inside: Just More Machinery
Our sense of who we are and our feelings are a product of biological processes in the brain.
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Long Alan Bennett Interview on Front Row [audio]
You don’t want to be in anyone’s pocket, that’s what it is.
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Cooing is a Human Rights Violation
Babies ‘are little people like you and me’ and don’t want to be bloody stared at ok so piss off!
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Arguing Over Whose Victims Can Be Counted
Historical simplifications have long provided a consensus about the ‘good war.’
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Norm Geras and Eve Garrard on Joanna Bourke
Bourke’s views deploy the very moral opposition she is complaining about.
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Mary Midgley on Not Getting a PhD
Is it possible to teach and learn philosophy in an atmosphere that is dominated by competition?
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Ronald Dworkin on John Roberts
Unlikely Roberts would often hold that the law is contrary to what a conservative would wish it to be.
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Ossification on the Left
Paltry interpretive frameworks for political fissures from cold war days.
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Christianity Camp
Where students are inoculated against rational thought.
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Simon Schama Teases US Self-image
He has dared to mock America’s claim to have been founded on the idea of freedom.
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The Reactionary Left
Left often seem the most conservative voices about everything from science to free speech.
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John Carey Reviews Alan Bennett
The modern jargons we invent to keep reality at bay arouse his scorn.
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Feng Shui Called Fake Science in China
Nanjing University withdraws plan to co-sponsor training in Feng shui after protests.
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Slate on Simon Blackburn on Truth
Stephen Metcalf thinks Blackburn is inventing those postmodernists.
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Slate on Simon Blackburn on Truth Part 2
Reviewer plays amateur shrink, cites prestige, wounds to ego. Err…
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Not of an Age, But for All Time
And not British, but international. The toast: Will Shakespeare.
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Nick Cohen on Luck, the NHS, and Class
‘From the BBC to the British Museum, everyone in a position of cultural power is resolutely anti-elitist.’