NZ Skeptics Articles

The Omen

1st November 1998

EVERYTHING was roses and buttercups until that fateful day. An omen, it was, for sure. In July, on Friday, only 17 days before the 13th, we had born on our humble dairy farm a calfie. She had four legs, nice black and white patches, a cute butt and two heads, four eyes, four ears and two tongues.

She wasn’t in the best of health, being still born, and that in itself is probably part of the curse. If she had been skipping around the paddocks and sucking up colostrum, the mind boggles at what might have been. We would have been on Holmes, for a start. We would have blown Ruakura’s petty little cloning of a sea weed eating cow off the front pages of the local paper and captured world fame instantly. When she grew up we could have done all the gypsy fairs, charging mega-dollars for entry.

But she didn’t. And that’s where it all began. Shortly after the calf’s (or should it be calves’?) arrival, mysterious things began to happen. I lost a library book and the fruit cake I was making that day burnt. My daughter got given a tape of Aqua, the people who do the Barbie song and we have had to listen to it most days. Our best friend, for no good reason, decided to move from just down the road to the very bowels of the universe, to Te Pahu, miles from anywhere. (Actually, he did it months and months ago, but, and I stress, but if I counted backwards I would probably find the day he made the decision was the very same day the calf was conceived.)

But worse was to come. The very next day after the birth of the hydra, we discovered that our new house that we had just moved into, had cost so much more than we had anticipated, that we were stone broke. Overnight, we were transformed into peasants, complete with sack outfits, wooden teeth, boils and highly superstitious minds. Now being impoverished, we were unable to raise the funds to attend the annual gathering of the rest of the Skeptics lower down the Island.

Denied access to logical and rational thought, we sank deeper into the power of the two-headed calf. Our house has been overrun by spiders. There was an eclipse of the sun just over Gordonton the other day. After spending a morning in the alternative bookshop, The Crystal Goddesses Third Eye Healing Centre, we now know there are things we can do. We don’t have to be helpless victims. (Not that there’s anything wrong with being a victim — it looks better on your CV than “stinking, rotten oppressor.”) We can light lavender-impregnated candles, hang chunks of quartz from dangly places, plant energising herbs, floss our teeth listening to dolphin songs and change our daughter’s name to Windflower.

Let’s be honest here. It’s a lot easier not being a skeptic. You can go to parties without worrying about being cornered and viciously savaged. It’s much easier to make plans for the future when it’s all set out for you in the stars. When your life gets really crappy — because life often is — you can hope things will improve in your next one. But anyway. Things must be what things must be. I hope everyone had a thoroughly rotten time at the Skeptic’s conference and we were perfectly content sitting at home, all by ourselves. Just Moonflower and WillowWildMan and myself.

PS. The Dead Calf Collection Man came and picked up our two-headed wonder. I haven’t found out if he paid twice yet.

Annette Taylor

A Skeptic's Dilemma

Clare Codling - 1 November 1998

AS A CONFIRMED, but lightweight, sceptic, I have had to endure many jibes from friends and colleagues as I questioned information reported in the newspapers and on the news. Equally, I have had to explain what being a sceptic is really all about -- not straight dismissal of, but the opportunity to question information that is presented as fact.

Dealing with BS

Vicki Hyde - 1 November 1998

Vicki Hyde told the Conference how the Skeptics' complaint to the Broadcasting Standards Authority had progressed.

Genesis Revisited: A Scientific Creation Story

Michael Shermer - 1 November 1998

IN THE beginning (specifically on October 23, 4004 B.C., at noon) out of quantum foam fluctuation God created the Big Bang out of inflationary cosmology. He saw that the Big Bang was very big, too big for creatures that could worship him, so He created the earth. And darkness was upon the face of the deep, so He commanded hydrogen atoms (which He created out of Quarks and other subatomic goodies) to fuse and become helium atoms and in the process release energy in the form of light. And the light-maker he called the sun, and the process He called fusion. And He saw the light was good because now He could see what he was doing. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Skepsis

Neil McKenzie - 1 November 1998

Hypnotist Lawrence Follas claims he can increase the size of a client's bust by telling her to imagine her breasts are growing (Sunday News 24 May). He says his client's breasts have grown 2cm in three months, and some women in the States have added an extra 6cm by the method. The programme involves seven one-hour sessions at $75 each. A tape of Follas's hypnosis session is given to the woman who must listen to it every day.

Skeptics Conference 1998

Mike Dickison - 1 November 1998

SKEPTICS conferences are always a bag of allsorts. Having piped up at last year's AGM and suggested the next conference should be in Wellington, I was landed with organising it. Thankfully, I had the Wellington Cabal to help: Cynthia Shakespeare, Tony Vignaux, Richard Sadleir, Mike Clear, Bob Brockie and Wayne Hennessey.

The Noble Pharmacist

Jim Ring - 1 November 1998

NEW AGE theory holds that practically all cultures had a tradition of using medicines (mostly herbal) and that there is a danger that "Western medicine" will replace these, so losing irreplaceable knowledge.

Anti-Science Backlash

1 November 1998

Some of you may recall Mike plugging the following two books at the conference. Both are concerned with the anti-science backlash, promulgated mostly by the academic left in the USA: post-modernism, relativism, radical feminist critiques of science, ethnocentric science, and so on. It's a movement that's beginning to assert itself here, and we should be informed.

Skeptical Demographics

1 November 1998

The paid-up membership of the Skeptics has hit the 500+ mark, with two-thirds of the membership divided reasonably equally between Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, and Dunedin and parts south holding another 50 members.

Skeptical Intelligencer

1 November 1998

The Skeptical Intelligencer is a quarterly magazine published by the Association for Skeptical Enquiry (ASKE), the UK's skeptical organisation. Each 70+ page edition contains articles for the intelligent lay reader on paranormal, pseudo-scientific and anti-scientific claims.

Skeptical Web

1 November 1998

If you're a fan of oddities such as those showcased in Ripley's Believe It or Not, you'll love the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices. This home of quackery features some amazing fraudulent gadgets. Learn, for example, about prostate cures like the light-bulbed prostate gland warmer or the frighteningly named recto rotor. These delights and more await you at http://www.mtn.org/quack/

Forum

1 November 1998

I was interested to read the letters by Jim Ring and Felicity Goodyear-Smith to my article with the above title [NZ Skeptic 47].

Legal Eagle Required

1 November 1998

As a follow-up to inspiring comments made by David Russell at the recent conference, we are looking for someone with possibly a little legal training (or a lot of enthusiasm) to undertake some research on behalf of the Skeptics.