Ms. Information, LK-99, Thermography, Kambo and Two-by-Twos

31^st July 2023

Hi there

One of our regular readers (Hi Ray… and Paul) has requested we put a date on our newsletters, so you’ll be receiving this on 31st July, 2023.

This week I’ve got a review of the Ms. Information film about Dr. Siouxsie Wiles that I saw as part of the Auckland International Film Festival last weekend.

I also take a look at thermography, a service that is offered to women as an adjunct (or alternative?) to mammography.

This past week has also had some intriguing materials science news around the possibility of room temperature (and pressure) superconductivity, with a compound called LK-99 being announced out of a research team in South Korea. The claim is that it works as a superconductor at temperatures below 127° C and at normal atmospheric pressure. Until now the highest temperature superconductor at normal pressure has a critical temperature of 150K - about minus 123° C. Higher temperature superconductors are possible, with one having a critical temperature of -20° C, but at a pressure of nearly 2 million atmospheres!

There’s a lot of speculation around whether this is real, being a paper released on a preprint server. There’s also a lot of hype around this, and probably well justified. This has yet to be peer-reviewed, and independently replicated. If it is, it could be an exciting development. To be able to comment on it is well beyond my understanding as a science enthusiast, so I won’t give it a go. I remember hearing about exciting research into superconductivity back in the mid 1980s, and the expected extrapolations of room temperature superconductivity being just around the corner. Unfortunately, science generally doesn’t work that way, and there are often fundamental barriers which have to be overcome that might take years or decades to overcome, if overcoming them is even possible.

The interesting thing about this paper is that it claims that replication should be easy - that the materials are easily available and the process for creating the compound is quite simple. But even if it is reproduced, it might well remain a laboratory curiosity and never pan out into revolutionising industry. It would be fantastic if it did, but it won’t be an easy road to get there. This will be an interesting space to watch over the next few weeks and months.

One more thing, it may be that the compound turns out to not be the holy grail of superconductivity, but a new type of material that is superconductor-ish. It may also lead to a lot of further study in this area. Many experts are of the opinion that these developments will happen eventually.

Also this week, committee member Brad MacClure tells us about Kambo, and Bronwyn contributes another great item about the Two-by-Twos sect.

Craig Shearer

Ms. Information

Craig Shearer - 31 July 2023

Last Sunday evening, my wife and I had the pleasure of attending the world premiere of Ms. Information at the Auckland International Film Festival. OK, that sounds a little more grandiose than it was - we purchased tickets like most other people in the audience.

Thermography in New Zealand

Craig Shearer - 31 July 2023

As I've commented in previous issues of the newsletter, I listen to the excellent podcast Be Reasonable, hosted by Michael Marshall (Marsh, as he's colloquially known). In the latest episode (#083, released Wednesday 26th July), he interviewed Nyjon Eccles, a “functional medicine” doctor from the UK. He's a promoter of thermography, which is an Infra-red imaging technique used to scan women's breasts in an attempt to screen for differences in temperature from which, it is alleged, they can infer a possible tumour - that is, breast cancer.

Kambo

Brad MacClure - 31 July 2023

Recently on facebook a friend posted “Kambo, My first ceremony…” or some such, with an attached photo. Until then I'd not heard of this thing, but it seems it's been around in NZ at least since 2016. It's claimed to be at practice from Amazonian tribes (that's their feeble attempt at an appeal to antiquity). Although no doubt there's truth in that, Brazil banned the sale/marketing of the substance in 2004 so, if you have used genuine Amazonian giant monkey frog poison (yes that's what it is) just know that someone may have committed a crime in Brazil so you could poison yourself and purge though multiple orifaces…you're welcome.

Two-by-twos: The sect with 2 many names and just as many problems (Part 1)

Bronwyn Rideout - 31 July 2023

The TL;DR version of this story is that the Two-by-Twos (TBT) is an international Christian home church movement of the protestant kind founded in Ireland in 1897. Their name is inspired by their ministers, celibate and single men and women, who travel in same-sex pairs and stay for weeks or months at a time with members who live in their jurisdiction; they commonly refer to themselves as The Truth. The TBT is nontrinitarian, meaning that they eschew the Christian doctrine that the holy trinity (Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit) are coequal, coeternal, and united in a single being; readers will be familiar with larger nontrinitarian groups like the Jehovah Witnesses, Christian Scientists, Unitarian and Unitarian Universalists Christians, and the Mormons. However, not all flavours of nontrinitarianism are the same, as the wikipedia page outlines and the TBT are unitarian in their outlook - The holy spirit is a force from God while Jesus is God's fully human son. Amongst other beliefs are that the TBT knows the true path to salvation while other churches and religions are false; salvation is not attainable through the bible alone but through "works" as well.