From the Chairman

For those who were not at the AGM in Auckland, I should tell you that I was elected as Chairman and Phil Bradley as Secretary at that meeting. Other Committee members are listed elsewhere in this edition. I cannot hope to emulate Denis Dutton or David Marks before him but I'll certainly do my best to keep the momentum of the Skeptics going.

He Told You So!

Congratulations to Denis Dutton whose 1986 prediction of the probable date of the Cloth of Turin (AD 1305-1365) was confirmed by Carbon dating tests (95% confidence range AD1260-1390) carried out in a number of laboratories with the permission of the Vatican. He has had a reasonable press and an informative article by him was published in the Wellington Evening Post on Saturday October 22. What he calls the "Shroud Crowd" are already counter-attacking—a letter in the Evening Post argued that obviously the C14 dating had been affected in some way by the "miracle" and a report from Hong Kong said the testing "was all wrong". Still we cannot hope to convince everybody; people will go great lengths to 'save the hypothesis'.

We have been pretty busy this past period. The Turin Shroud was an extra. Denis Dutton had already prepared a Truth Kit for the visit of Whitley Strieber (author of "Communion") and circulated it to the media. We found that indeed it had been used at least by some of the interviewers on radio. We don't know if the newspapers had used it. Denis Dutton took part in a talk-show interview with him,

The Truth Kit included copies of articles on the other side of the argument without any real comment from us—allowing the reporter or interviewer to make up their own mind but perhaps suggesting some pertinent questions. We think it is a good idea but we need to prepare further kits on, for example Creationism, Astrology, Palm Reading, Iridology, and other Psychic Phenomena. This should not be too onerous if anyone has already collected a few articles. Could we have volunteers?

We were also visited by Aliens in a poor TV spectacular (including live interviews with Russians, though unfortunately not aliens). I made my first Press statement as Chairman (it was dreadful!) which went round the NZPA thanks to Denis's pushing. I also took part in a UFO talkback on Radio Pacific for a couple of hours one evening.

The Skeptics got a good write up by Martyn Gosling in his column "That's Life" in the Dominion Sunday Times together with a Shroud-oriented cartoon (Fakers and fakirs under scrutiny, 16 October, 1988) . The AGM resolution confirming our faith in Santa Claus was reported in the spirit with which it was made.

We are not getting press cuttings sent in to Phil Bradley. It is most important that we have a good record of what is going on in the country. Most of us feel "Oh, someone else will surely have cut it out" and don't bother. I suggest that in each region one member be responsible for cutting out material in a particular paper and sending it to the Archivist. I look to Committee members in regions either to do this themselves or to finger people to do it for a month or so at a time. Please, please, we must get your cuttings.