By all accounts the first annual meeting of the Society at. Dunedin recently was a great success. This edition of the Skeptic has been designated as a conference special as we thought that members would welcome a permanent record of an historical occasion. The timing of the conference was determined by David Marks' departure and this meant that several of us were unable to go. 1 could not go because I had to supervise the dress rehearsal of the school play (If you want to know, Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco and a great success).

We are interested in monitoring the activities of Mr Emond Harold, who is currently touring New Zealand. He energises crystals with thoughts of love, and helps alleviate the effects of repetitive strain injury and leukaemia, while turning a bob or two for himself. Though he knows lots about people heating their homes (with volcanoes) in Atlantis, we doubt if he has read the medicines act of 1981. Please send any news or cuttings regarding Mr Harold to Bernard Howard, P.O. Box 13, Lincoln College, Canterbury.

Former Star news editor Josh Easby has collected . an award for journalistic excellence for his "psychic duel" with an Auckland clairvoyant.

In the after glow of our first annual convention, NZCSICOP members will have to feel pleased by the progress of our organisation. The meeting itself attracted considerable media attention, all of it favourable, and discussion of our aims and purposes continues to reverberate in letters weeks later. Our membership now stands at just short of a hundred and it is still growing. And well it must, for a group such as ours has much work to accomplish. Unless we have enough people scattered nationwide who are willing to take an active part in our projects we cannot flourish.

You have as much to gain by showing that someone has paranormal powers. David [Marks] and I would win a Nobel Prize if we could prove that. We've nothing to gain by just refuting another case.

Enlightenment or deception? Illusion or delusion? HOWARD WARNER paid $25 for 30 minutes to find out.

Pseudoscience in its various manifestations is now enjoying enormous popularity, is increasingly well organised and politically powerful. We can not identify pseudoscience by its errors. Seven hundred years ago Astrology was as wrong as now but was not pseudoscience, we might call it protoscience. The discovery of Polywater and the rush of confirming experiments was not pseudoscience. We know now that it was due to contaminated apparatus and wishful thinking and no one now has any evidence for it, so eventually its errors became known,

A group called New Zealand Skeptics has called on newspapers and magazines in New Zealand to carry a disclaimer with their astrology columns.

This tape was very intermittent and parts of this account will seem disconnected and bitty. In addition, Gordon had some excellent slides and diagrams which obviously we can not reproduce here.

I would like to thank Dr David Marks and the Committee of the N.Z. Skeptics for inviting me over and to Dr Dennis Dutton and Ricky Farr for their hospitality. I am glad to be at the first convention of the New Zealand Skeptics. Having organised the first two conventions in Australia, I know how much work is involved and am glad someone else, Dr David Marks, is organising this one.

I return this born-again spoon to you as a symbol of the power of the press. I assure you I have no knowledge of what sleight of hand unbent it. I only left it in the newsroom for a few moments, too.

David gave an account of three psychics he has studied, Kreskin, Geller and Colin Emery. It has taught him a great deal about human nature.

Any medium who demonstrates communication with spirits under controlled conditions will be able to collect $232,000, Dr David Marks, the chairman of New Zealand Skeptics said yesterday.

We now have nearly ninety subscribing members. When | divide them according to their addresses, and also for the difference in population between the North and South Islands, it appears that South Islanders are about four times more skeptical than are North Islanders.

I wedged the car between two others. We'd found a park at Jast. It was an orderly suburb. Street lights flickered to life. A boy swished past on a skateboard.

An Auckland astrologer who predicted the space shuttle accident says the American space shuttle accident says the American space programme will face further disasters this year.

An Australian-based mining Company is in turmoil after recent revelations by the Australian Skeptics that it paid the magician, Uri Geller, to search for gold.

Claims that energy from quartz crystals can treat diseases may be illegal, says the New Zealand Skeptics Society. The newly formed society is considering its first legal action as a result of claims by touring healer, Mr Edmond Harold.

A Christchurch expert on the Shroud of Turin, Dr Denis Dutton, was yesterday elected chairman of the New Zealand Skeptics Society, which investigates psychic claims.

Thank you for your letter of 21 August and your expression of concern about our "Tonight Show" broadcasts by Mary Fry.

The first Wellington psychic Mary Fry knew of her terminated contract with Radio New Zealand was when a friend rang up and said her husband had seen it in the newspaper.

Since 1981, recipients of MacArthur Foundation grants, the "genius awards" that permit five years of financial freedom. have included poets and composers, scientists and even a mime. Bula prestidigitator? Last week James Randi, a.k.a. "the Amazing Randi." whose sleight of hand has exposed psychic gimmicks. hoaxes and claims of the paranormal. was among this year's 25 winners, picking up $272,000 for his crusade to protect sick people from unscrupulous faith healers. The award came as a total surprise. "You can bang your head against the wall, call Sophia Loren or take it soberly." he notes. "It takes about 48 hours to settle in. All the time I was saying, 'I really won?' Now that the question has been answered, Randi, 57. is wasting no time in putting the money to work, expanding his office, hiring a full-time researcher, and planning for a college scholarship so that more debunkers can be set to work. The Great Doubter has become a true believer in his benefactors: "They reached very far out, perhaps dangerously so, in giving it to a magician instead of some academic. I feel a great responsibility to the foundation."