NZ Skeptics Articles

Happy New Year!

3rd January 2022

Happy New Year to you all, and thank you for your support over the last year. We had a very successful conference late last year, and our membership has been slowly increasing, which is great! If you’re a paid-up member, thank you for your financial support and you should be receiving a reminder to pay your (very reasonable) subscription soon. And if you’re not currently a member, you can always rectify that situation by joining us.

This year we’re continuing our monthly national Skeptics in Cyberspace meetings, where we all jump into a Zoom meeting together - and the next meeting is this Friday evening. If you would like to join us for a chin wag and some BYO beer, just ensure you’re a member of one of the Meetup groups below and RSVP to the next “Cyberspace” meeting:

https://www.meetup.com/Auckland-Skeptics-in-the-Pub/events/283005439/

https://www.meetup.com/Wellington-Skeptics-in-the-Pub/events/283005428/

https://www.meetup.com/Christchurch-Skeptics-in-the-Pub/events/283005445/

First up in this week’s newsletter we have another great Why are You a Skeptic segment, this time from Lance Kennedy. Please keep them coming! I for one am finding the telling of your Road to (Skeptical) Damascus moments fascinating, and each of them so far has included at least one topic that’s been new to me and I’ve enjoyed reading up on. With that, over to Lance and some UFO photos.

Mark Honeychurch

Lotus-Heart fined for “taking a stand”

Mark Honeychurch - 3 January 2022

Lotus-Heart fined for “taking a stand”

The Lotus-Heart restaurant in Christchurch has chosen to take a stand against vaccine mandates, by refusing to let customers know if they require a vaccine pass, not promoting use of their COVID Tracer QR Code, and not having any system in place to check vaccine passes. As a result they have been fined $20,000 dollars by WorkSafe.

An unusual vaccine endorsement

Mark Honeychurch - 3 January 2022

An unusual vaccine endorsement

A surprising endorsement of COVID vaccines came out recently - from none other than Donald Trump. Trump has a spotty history when it comes to supporting good science, and he's well known to skeptics for touting several unproven cures (including that particularly confusing press conference where he talked about bleach and an internal UV light).

Nuclear Gandhi

Mark Honeychurch - 3 January 2022

Nuclear Gandhi

As a programmer, I love a good story about buggy software. Maybe it makes me feel better about my own mistakes! So when I recently heard about a fun bug in the strategy game Civilisation, from way back in 1991, I was intrigued. Apparently the fallout from this particular code error (no pun intended) was that the peaceful world leader Mahatma Gandhi would suddenly become very fond of amassing and using nuclear weapons - a quirk that has been named Nuclear Gandhi.