It’s been a year now.
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Inevitably links go out of date.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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Psychiatry No Better Than Astrology?
Richard Bentall differs from Laing because he is a scientist.
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Orthorexia Nervosa?
‘Cooking food is not natural.’ Neither is living in a house or reading books. So?
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A Scientist in Arts Faculty Territory
Where opinion is sacred while facts have a long leash.
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Postmodernists in the Bush Administration
Truth is a construct, therefore who knows, maybe tax cuts for the rich will create jobs.
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Radical Islam is Not Modern but Modernist
Postmodernists despise facts as ‘positivist’ but they are a vital weapon, Terry Eagleton says.
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Susan Greenfield Interview
Is there a tension between popularisation (and celebrity) and serious research?
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Putting the Boot In
Clive James ponders Twain on Cooper, Macdonald on Cozzens, and finds it good.
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The Quiche Party
When political commitments get confused with consumer choices, rhetoric is in play.
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Non sequiturs
‘Science can’t provide all the answers.’ Oh and religion can?
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Molière was Really Corneille?
Statistics prove it! No they don’t, say scholars, and the argument is on.
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The Myth of Repressed Memory
Wendy Grossman interviews Elizabeth Loftus.
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How Embarrassing
Archaeologist’s worst nightmare – that 2000-year-old carving was done by one Barry Luxton in 1995
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Calls to Make Hard Choices
They may be a mask for strategies no one wishes to acknowledge.
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Donald Davidson
The New York Times obituary.
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Ishtiaq Ahmed on Human Rights
Does the adoption of the human rights programme means Westernisation?
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Erin O’Connor on Creeping Illiteracy
‘There is no book worth reading that is not somehow partial to something.’
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People Make Daft Mistakes
Rational choice theory versus behaviouralists, prospect theory, the endowment effect; economics is not a placid field.
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Bad Behaviour in Secondary Schools
Occasional violence and routine swearing and rudeness – is it any wonder teachers don’t stay?
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Michael Ruse on Creationism
‘Scientifically Creationism is worthless, philosophically it is confused, and theologically it is blinkered beyond repair.’