Anyone been to the Kaimanawa Wall?

Mark Honeychurch - 3 February 2025

In just over a month’s time, Bronwyn and I will be driving up to Auckland to visit New Zealand’s second Mormon temple. We’re also going to try to visit the Kaimanawa wall on the way, so if anyone’s been there and has any advice about driving the gravel road to the nearby camp site, I would love to hear from you. While in Auckland we’ll try to organise a Skeptics’ get together - maybe brunch somewhere on Sunday the 9th. So, if you’re in Auckland, we’d love for you to join us for a chilled out chat.

In this week’s newsletter, I draw some parallels between some old news of a scam, and some much more recent news of a very similar scam. Al Blenney tries to square his experience of seeing a cryptid in the South Island with the reality of being a skeptic. Katrina warns us about an asteroid that may hit earth in a few years’ time - and I’m trying to get my head around the reality of what the probability of it hitting us means. I’ve written a review of the recently released movie Heretic. We have the second and final part of Hamish’s look into claims of pre-Māori visitors to New Zealand. And finally we’re reproducing a second part of John Maindonald’s booklet about stats - this time chapter 4, focusing on medical statistics.