Rael ‘once claimed that he travelled by flying saucer in 1975 to share lunch with Jesus, Buddha and Confucius’ and now claims to have cloned a human.
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Inevitably links go out of date.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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The Great Age of the Big Notion
The Lonely Crowd was one of a crowd of Big Idea books that were long on speculation but short on evidence.
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A Skeptical Look at ‘Diversity Liberalism’
A New Democrat thinks the US doesn’t pander to religion enough.
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Meet Me at the Volcano
A sportswriter and race car driver discovers aliens speak French, starts new religion.
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Separation of Politics and Science
Daniel Smith reviews Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate in The Boston Globe.
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Raelian Bishop Announces Cloned Human
Clonaid, connected to Raelian sect who say aliens created all life on Earth through genetic engineering, claims it has followed suit.
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Do We Define Ourselves By Way of our Tastes?
Red wine or white? Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter? (Hang on, where is ‘neither’?)
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Catholics Here, Protestants There, Please
Plan being considered to split Scottish school into two, one Protestant one Catholic, has local people worried.
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Is Religion Adaptive?
Perhaps, or perhaps it’s a spandrel or a virus, instead, says biologist David Sloan Wilson.
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Gossip Displaces Ideas
Shallow misunderstandings of Arendt, Heidegger, Foucault and others by writers more interested in laundry-inspection than analysis of thought.
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Competing Goods
Should conservation trump treaty rights, or the other way around?
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Simon Hoggart is Not Amused
What is the Observer doing running an astrology column, even though it is semi-jokey?
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Economists Beginning to Learn: Humans Not Rational
The invisible hand is invisible, at least in part, because it is not there, says a winner of last year’s Nobel Prize in economics.
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Don Boffin’s Cod Twin Study
Statistics, nature v. nurture, ethical considerations, Luce Irigaray: it’s all there.
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Pseudo-investigation
A show of journalistic digging without the reality lets the powerful off the hook.
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Abductees Go to Harvard
Do we construct memories of sexual abuse the same way we construct memories of alien abductions? Harvard researcher finds the question is highly political.
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Scientists Against Boycott
The universality of science is too important to give up lightly, four Oxford professors say.
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Unprized
Historian de-prized after panel concludes he did “unprofessional and misleading work.”
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What Do You Mean, You Don’t Want Your Bones Back?
It’s not the indigenous peoples themselves who want their ancestors’ remains back, it’s caring academics who insist on returning them.
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Manipulation
The therapeutic and market world-views converge, when “personal well-being” is our only goal.