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It's just not feasible to strip Sir Fred of his knighthood

It's odd, don't you think, that so many people seem to take extremely seriously things which they otherwise make a great show of professing to find ridiculous?

There are lots of examples of this tendency – the vehement opposition of militant atheists to what they call the fantasies of religious believers, say, or the vicious hatred of the educational establishment for ludicrous, outdated notions like grammar, or times tables, or knowing the dates of historical events.