Shock-horror at tampering with the speed of light; coarse and flippant attacks on peer review.
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Inevitably links go out of date.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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Tocqueville Updated
Niall Ferguson reviews Fareed Zakaria’s book on the rivalry between democracy and freedom.
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Pope Lays Down the Law
More ridiculous rules and strictures from the guy at the Vatican.
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Susan Greenfield on Scientific Literacy
Science as exciting as football, as fun as going to the cinema.
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Anthony Gottlieb Reviews ‘Rational Mysticism’
But attitudes of reverence and wonder need not be ‘mystical’.
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Strike! Give Will His Due!
Teachers’ union considers a boycott of English test that dumbs down Shakespeare.
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Sheffield, Baltimore, Florence
Single women supporting art, eccentric women traversing Europe to buy shocking paintings: Michael Palin’s sort of thing.
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Library Burnt
The fire at the National Library in Baghdad destroyed manuscripts many centuries old.
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Archaeologists’ Letter in Guardian
Nine archaeologists urge protection for Iraq’s antiquities.
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They Saw It Coming
Archaeology Magazine worried about the looting of Iraq’s antiquities before the war began.
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James Watson on Using Genetic Knowledge
Conservatives want to stop improvement, Watson says, but enhancement means making better.
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Human Genome Cracked (again!)
Three years ago a first draft, this time with 99.999% accuracy.
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Lunch With Cosmides and Tooby
Louis Wolpert talks to the pair who have helped to make the blank slate model obsolete.
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What Is It Like to Be a Black Nerd?
Especially a female black nerd. One boyfriend tried to get her pregnant to solve the problem…
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National Museum of Iraq Emptied
Nothing of value left, say tearful officials.
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‘Conservation Support’
Let us help you loosen your ‘retentionist’ export policies! That’s a nice statue there, for instance…
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Yank Troops Baffle British Colleagues
How US soldiers behave, Daddy’s popsicle stand, and other views from world newspapers.
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Don’t Panic
SARS is not another 1918 flu, and breathing through a piece of cloth is a drag.
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Gloomy Reality
Azar Nafisi and her students escaped the ‘relentless fictions’ of the mullahs by reading Lolita.
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Recognition for Hazlitt
The brilliant, radical, nonsense-teasing essayist gets a little overdue grave-tidying.