There was news earlier this week that the Disciplinary Tribunal hearing the case of Sue Grey has found her not guilty of both misconduct and unsatisfactory conduct. There had been several complaints about her in relation to her both starting and spreading unfounded rumours around COVID, including nonsense about vaccine injuries. I have to admit that, although I think Sue is a dangerous person who spreads horrible misinformation, her defence that her spreading of nonsense wasn't done as part of her work as a lawyer, but rather in her capacity as a politician, seems to be a good one - and it obviously convinced the tribunal. At least we can be fairly confident that her political career is unlikely to take off, and that her ability to spread misinformation will most likely remain limited.
Speaking of misinformation, myself and some other skeptics in Wellington went to watch Ms. Information last night, as part of the NZ International Film Festival. As Craig said last week, Ms. Information is a documentary about Siouxsie Wiles, created by Gwen Isaac and her crew who followed Siouxsie on and off for around two years, starting at the beginning of the pandemic. The documentary focused less on the content of the misinformation that Siouxsie and others tackled during the early days of the pandemic, and more on the abuse that was hurled at her - up to and including quite a few death threats. Not only has Siouxsie been a long-time skeptic, speaking at several of our conferences and helping to run the Auckland Skeptics in the Pub group for many years, but her husband Steven, also featured in the documentary, was a committee member of the Skeptics for several years.
The movie was a great watch - if you've seen the documentary short Siouxsie and the Virus, you'll have some idea of what Ms. Information will look like:
We were treated to a Q&A session with Siouxsie and Gwen after the showing. I'm not sure if/when the movie will see a general release, but I'd recommend seeing it if it comes to a cinema near you.
A few months ago we put out a call for anyone who might have a copy of our missing newsletter issues, as part of an effort to digitise and make available online all of the articles the NZ Skeptics have written. Long time member John Welch answered our call, and was able to supply us with a stack of old issues. These issues have now been scanned to PDFS, and so this week I've been converting the digital images to text. It's been great to read our old articles, and it's been a reminder of how sisyphean our job as skeptics is, battling pseudoscientific nonsense one year, only to have it pop up again 5 or 10 years later. In concert with this digitising effort, I've also written some software to process our other articles - newer, digital journal articles, email newsletter pieces, radio appearance scripts and more. The entire back-catalogue will be imported into our website using a plugin for Wordpress I've authored for the job, but we have one minor “issue” (pun not intended)…
We're still missing issue 5 of the NZ Skeptic journal. We are so close to having a full archive, but this one missing issue is keeping me up at night. So, this is an impassioned plea for all of our long-time members, who have been receiving journals since way back in the ‘80s, to please spend a few minutes going through your old paperwork and seeing if you have a copy of Issue 5 of the NZ Skeptic journal. If you have a copy, please contact us at news@skeptics.nz, and we'll do whatever we can to get the journal from you, digitise it, and return it to you again.
With or without this missing issue, you'll be hearing from me again in the next month or two once our entire archive is online - and you may start seeing us reprinting some old “archive” articles, as and when they become relevant again because someone in NZ is reinventing the pseudoscientific wheel and trying to convince people that they have some magical superpower.
As well as my challenge for you all to find me our missing journal issue, in this week's newsletter I've also set you all some homework of finding out what the heck “District of Freedom, #8573311~!#” is all about. Courtesy of Robin Capper, we have a real life mystery that I couldn't solve with my mad google skillz - so I'm asking you all if you can help figure it out.
We also have a book review from reader James Brown, who has read Dylan Reeve's recent book Fake Believe - and thanks to him, I now have something to add to my Santa's list for this Christmas.
I've written up the rest of my experience with the Global Flourishing movement, and part 2 is in this newsletter - the third and final instalment will be published in a couple of weeks. And it appears that my eldest daughter is a chip off the old block. Not only have I heard back from the Freemasons, who want to meet me for coffee next week, but also my daughter was walking through Wellington central the other day and was approached by a young gentleman. He told her the Good News of Christ's return as a Korean man called Ahnsahnghong, and gave her a piece of paper with a couple of bible references and a link to the church's website - watv.org. When she came home she excitedly told me that she'd found me a new cult to join, so it turns out my concern that I'm running out of cults to join is unfounded!
Finally, Bronwyn continues her series on the Two By Twos, looking at the issues they face and some of the tactics they use to try to avoid being held accountable for their actions.