Race is a fiction, therefore everyone must learn to be completely obsessed by it. Eh?
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Inevitably links go out of date.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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Say Anything and Say It Murkily
A mash note to Alan Sokal in the Guardian.
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A Recipe not a Blueprint
Matt Ridley on the way genes and experience interact.
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Bristol Reaffirms Admissions Policy
Bristol University will continue to consider backgrounds as well as academic records.
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Who Took What When?
The reporter who investigated what happened at the Baghdad Museum says the waters are still being muddied.
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A Debate on ‘Diversity’ in the Arts
Whether the arts should be judged on aesthetic grounds, or on ethnic representation.
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Atwood on Orwell
How quickly rebels can move to the other side.
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A Psychologist’s Choice
Authoritarian cults that demand sensitivity or else, or hard-headed researchers who ask questions.
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How We Do Love Female Victims
Virginia Woolf told jokes, including obscene ones, Doris Lessing points out.
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Virginia Woolf Being Unpleasant
Woolf’s early notebook reveals – surprise! – she had her flaws.
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Not New but Timely
An interview with Bernard Williams in the Guardian last November.
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A Rich and Moving Elegy
Richard Wollheim on Bernard Williams in The Independent.
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Grayling on Williams
A.C. Grayling on Bernard Williams in The Financial Times.
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Daniel Dennett Interview
The spectre of creeping exculpation, the discomfort of discontinuity, and more.
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Who Would Mate With Rational Economic Man?
Is Feminist Economics less silly than it sounds?
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Williams in The Times
Another good obituary essay on Williams’ work and why it mattered.
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Bernard Williams
‘He deconstructed as Derrida would do if he were cleverer and more pledged to truth,’ says the Guardian.
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What the Koran Really Says
Ibn Warraq calls for critical thought and a sceptical attitude in reading the Koran.
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Williams in The Telegraph
‘He wanted a moral philosophy that was accountable not only to psychology but also to other branches of human enquiry, especially history.’
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Nonsense, Not True, Made Up, Bollocks
David Aaronovitch on the looting of Iraq’s antiquities and how it was reported.