Gender and vaccines, a work from home scam, and more skeptical history

Craig Shearer - 9 October 2023

9 October 2023

Hi there

This week my contribution is relatively small. Today, as I write this, is my 15th wedding anniversary, so my lovely wife and I are doing some celebrating today. But, I’ve put together an item covering some email conversations I’ve been having of the last week or two with somebody who’s coming from the other side of things, evidence-wise, and has some quite interesting beliefs.

Mark has been kind enough to contribute an item, writing about a “work from home” scam, and Bronwyn is back again with an item on our skeptical history.

As I write this on Sunday, I woke up to the news this morning of war in Israel, between Israel and Palestine. Any nation going to war, in my opinion, is a sad thing. I have very little understanding of the situation in Israel, so I’m certainly not going to give uninformed commentary on this. I do know that misinformation has already started to emerge about it. I’m sure we’ll see that emerge greatly over the coming weeks. I have made a commitment to try to learn more about the situation and the history around it though.

Of course, we’re a week away from the NZ general election. I’ve already voted. I can’t tell you who to vote for, but I think it’s important that everybody has their say. If you don’t like the result and didn’t vote, you have little basis to complain. Before MMP was introduced, one might have been forgiven for not bothering to vote if your electorate was pretty much a done deal, but with MMP everybody’s party vote crucially helps determine the make-up of parliament. Go out and vote!

Have you thought about coming to our conference yet? It’s coming up at the end of November, and we’ve got early-bird prices until the end of Labour Weekend.

For conference information and to book tickets, go to the conference website