The arrest of Dr Fredrick Toben must be giving Holocaust deniers sleepless nights. Toben was taken into custody by British police last week under an EU arrest warrant issued by the German authorities. He is accused of publishing material online “of an anti-semitic and/or revisionist …
Nicky Woolf’s post below persuaded me to take a look at Steve Taylor, discoverer of the “Ego Explosion” that sent mankind on its downward spiral 6,000 years ago. On closer inspection, it turns out that only some races were affected by this disaster. Other peoples …
You are less healthy, less happy and less enlightened than a prehistoric hunter-gatherer. At least, that’s what Steve Taylor, author of The Fall: The Insanity of the Ego in Human History and the Dawning of a New Era, thinks. Does your life feel empty? Do …
A plug for the great Ben Goldacre of the Bad Science column in the Guardian is long overdue. He’s got a book out, and you should buy it. Now. Here’s one reason why. Earlier this month, Ben won a historic legal victory against one of …
As if being mauled by Counterknowledge readers wasn’t enough, now he’s had richarddawkins.net banned in Turkey for being defamatory and blasphemous. No, really. It will come as no surprise to long-time readers of this blog that the culprit is our old friend(s) Harun Yahya, whose …
Time for another sip from the deep well of wisdom that is Echan Deravy, the Scots-born, Japanese-based mystic who is leading the “Earth Pilgrims” project. Echan is proud of his Celtic ancestry. And why not? For he believes that the Celtic magic represented by the …
The Telegraph website has allowed me to have a go at Gavin Menzies, author of two fatuous books of Chinese “history”: 1421, claiming that China discovered New Zealand and Greenland in the 15th century, and 1434, claiming that it kick-started the Italian Renaissance. Here’s part …
Yet another “retired murder detective” is unveiling the truth about Jack the Ripper – and, once again, the BBC is giving him uncritical coverage, reporting it as “news”. Trevor Marriott reckons that Jack the Ripper may have struck 25 years before the 1888 Whitechapel murders: …
Here’s a little light viewing. This YouTube video shows Richard Dawkins reading some of his hate mail, shortly before confronting the unbelievably smug Wendy Wright of Washington-based Concerned Women for America. The first sixty seconds are the most amusing; the last sixty the most disturbing. If you …
She’s a self-confessed “hockey mum”; a pro-lifer, yet a supporter of the death penalty. But does Sarah Palin, John McCain’s candidate for the vice-presidency, promote the teaching of creationism in schools? In a live television debate in October 2006 (during her race for the Alaskan Governorship) the …