The skeptics having been invited to Mr Beta's lecture, I went along to clutch, if not wave, the flag. I duly arrived at the local spiritualist church, a commanding fading edifice at 14, Gullible St. A chap with a withered leg hobbled up the front steps; things were auguring well. An audience of approximately 100 slowly assembled, 90% women, mostly middle aged.

Zecharia Sitchin's 12th Planet, called "Nibiru" by the Sumerians and "Marduk" by the Babylonians, if it exists has five times the mass of Earth, travels an elliptic orbit around the Sun every 700 to 1000 years, and was known to the Sumerians 6000 years ago. Our little Moon produces tides of 10 meters (32.8 feet) or so. Nibiru would produce a "Super-tide" on Earth, pulling the waters of our oceans up to where Noah's Ark was found on Mt. Ararat at the end of the "40 days and 40 nights" of rain. Of course, rain could not have produced such a flood as the Great Deluge, but Nibiru could have.

This will be the last editorial that I write as in September, my wife and I will leave for Thailand, where we shall be doing voluntary work. The first issue of the Newsletter went to 80 members, the last one went to 180 (with another 55 going in bulk to the U.S.A.). Such growth in just over 3 years is very gratifying and the credit for that belongs to our members who have so faithfully sent in articles and cuttings. (Especial thanks to Malcolm McCleary who has just sent me more material on the infamous Time Life series of loony books. $35 a throw). I am not naturally efficient, and if I have failed to use your contribution, I apologise. It was my policy to use everything sent to me and if I failed in this it was not intentionally. Thanks are also due to Mark Davies and his gang at Vic who, apart from the first few issues, typed out the material, duplicated it and stapled it together. If you look back over the past issues, you can immediately tell when Mark took over by the startling improvement in the layout and appearance of the newsletter.

With this issue we farewell our editor Keith Lockett, who has served us so well in the nurturing and development of the New Zealand Skeptic. We have all seen how, from modest beginnings, the Newsletter has grown in stature and contents to a periodical that can hold its head among like journals internationally. Even the bleak patches when Keith was desperate for contributions proved temporary and recent editions demonstrate that we have a lively and informative journal that we will be proud to place in libraries in New Zealand and exchange with groups overseas.

For those of us who cannot communicate by paranormal means, email is a useful alternative to letters, FAX, and phone calls.

Grant Duncan in his letter in the June 1989 N.Z. Skeptic has I feel been unfair to me in what I wrote about homeopathy; and he seems bent on being unfair to himself too.

Recently your newspaper has featured several articles on the UFO phenomenon, with special reference to the theories of Jan Pajak from Dunedin.

As you know, we occasionally get copies of the Newsletter of overseas skeptical groups. We recently received a copy of Skeptiker (2) 1989, a beautifully produced newsletter from Germany.

I wonder if scepticism toward pseudoscience has any contribution to make to the abortion debate?

The Skeptics have organised some splendid meetings over the years, but our 1989 conference at the University of Canterbury promises to be the hottest ever—peaking at about 900 degrees celsius, to be precise....