Remember, Remember the 4th of September

Bridget Williams Books warmly invites you to a special BWB Talk in Christchurch for Shaun Hendy's latest book: The Covid Response: A Scientist's Account of New Zealand's Pandemic and What Comes Next.

While I've been reviewing the Telepathy Tapes there have also been updates to some of the other stories I've either covered recently (Cryonics [parts 1, 2, and 3] and Annabelle the doll), have ongoing investment in (International School of Temple Arts or ISTA), or haven't been touched in a while (The Campbells)

On a recent American Psychological Association podcast the hosts interviewed Dr Ellen Peters, author of Innumeracy in the Wild: Misunderstanding and Misusing Numbers. Her book discusses how numeracy affects people's health, financial security, and other life outcomes. She is also the author of some interesting papers in the same field, including this one that sets out a framework for interventions to improve the situation.

Someone asked me recently how I thought FC had changed since the early 1990s. My initial reaction: not a whole lot. If you're talking about the mechanics of the technique itself, very little has changed. That's why the reliably controlled studies to explore FC authorship conducted between 1990 and 2014 remain relevant. Facilitators still use physical, verbal, and auditory cues to influence and control letter selection. With some variants of FC, like Spelling to Communicate (S2C) and Rapid Prompting Method (RPM) the boards are generally held in the air, something critics of FC raised concerns about in the earliest studies of FC, but proponents chose/choose to ignore. In addition, facilitators (still) insist they can provide these cues to their clients without influencing or controlling letter selection. There was and still is no reliably controlled evidence to prove proponent claims that FC (in any of its forms) produces independent communication (e.g., communication that is free from facilitator control). And facilitators, still, prefer to market FC through popular media rather than face scrutiny under reliably controlled conditions (e.g., message passing tests that screen facilitators from test protocols).

After a successful Kickstarter campaign, a newly-formed small games development company from Adelaide, Australia called Team Cherry released the computer game Hollow Knight back in 2017. Hollowknight is a game in the “Metroidvania” genre, meaning that the core gameplay mechanics are very similar to both the Metroid Prime and Castlevania games franchises - created by Nintendo and Konami respectively. It's basically a 2D side-scrolling game with large levels, where the main character explores parts of the map, gathering special abilities on the way that allow for more exploration, collection of the resources needed to fight level bosses, etc. Here's a screenshot from my playthrough of the game:

I recently attended the yearly meeting of Ora Taiao: The Aotearoa New Zealand Climate and Health Council. This is a body made up of health professionals, organisations, and supporters who advocate for equitable, rapid, and regenerative climate action. The society is a not-for-profit politically nonpartisan incorporated society. Its objective is to lead by example in advocating for health-enhancing climate action.