Are multiculturalism and cultural identity really such brilliant ideas?
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Inevitably links go out of date.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.
-
Kenan Malik Reads Meera Nanda
Nanda is ‘particularly astute in demonstrating the reactionary consequences of anti-science relativism for the peoples of the Third World.’
-
Ruse Reviews Dawkins
And asks some rather odd questions in the process.
-
Review of Breaking the Spell of Dharma
Siriyavan Anand discusses Meera Nanda’s plea for secularising India.
-
Crooked Timber on Bad Writing
Intentions are disentangled from results, to amusing effect.
-
Science for Sale
Are market values compatible with academic values?
-
Colin McGinn on Harnessing Mental Energy
‘What I liked most about philosophy was its extremely non-local character.’
-
Oh If Only Chiang Had Won…
Counter-factuals are easy to win, David Stanway points out.
-
Culture Meets the Market
The Sarastro couldn’t sing the low notes, but could swing on a trapeze.
-
Silly Ideas About Compensation
Paying executives 532 times as much as the bottom workers is not actually all that useful.
-
A Credulous People
Only 5% of Americans realize there is no life after death.
-
What the Mind Does
Consider the link between thinking and inferring.
-
The Big Read
Ew, reading is solitary – quick, let’s get the group involved!
-
Spiked on Eagleton
He is fed up with cultural theory, but not quite fed up enough.
-
Globalisation Means Americanisation
Sonja Hegasy has fallen for the Enlightenment myth, Mona Abaza says.
-
Ian Buruma on the Israeli Left
The Left is rich and Ashkenazi, the working class is Sephardic and religious – so the left dwindles.
-
Fanonian Rhetoric on Globalisation
The wretched of the earth like new music and clothes, just as the rich do.
-
Vandalism Drives Scientists Out of UK
Why would sub-Saharan Africa need drought-resistant plants, after all?
-
New University Subject: Underpaying Labour
If administrators want to talk of truth and justice, they should talk about low wages for staff, too.
-
Ma Teresa a Celebrity, Yes, But Not a Saint
India’s Science and Rationalists’ Association held a demonstration to protest against the beatification