Our recent Skepticon saw Richard Saunders, from the Australian Skeptics, present the results of The Great Australian Psychic Prediction Project.

No doubt this week you will have seen the “sting” executed by Paddy Gower from Newshub.

It has emerged that there's a man who's been showing up to receive the COVID vaccine on behalf of other people (for which he's being paid), having up to 10 vaccinations in a single day.

NZ Skeptics occasionally received email asking about skeptical topics:

We love getting feedback on the newsletter, and hearing others' perspectives. And, we think that others would like this too.

As I write this there's news breaking about a new variant of concern of the COVID virus, now named as Omicron.

Dr Sam Bailey has been in the news this week, which involved in a court case petitioning the High Court to stop the New Zealand Medical Council from investigating her.

Back on YouTube channels again - you may have heard of the YouTube channel Veritasium. This one is a generally good science channel which has nearly 11 million subscribers.

It's been revealed this week that you can wash disposable masks, and reuse them. The current advice from the Ministry of Health is that disposable masks should be used once then thrown away.

For those readers who are members of NZ Skeptics (as off 1st April 2021 - that was our cut-off date), you will have, by now, (hopefully) received your Skeptic Card in the mail, along with a couple of stickers.

If you've been reading the newsletter for any time you'll be aware of the joint conference we ran with the Australian Skeptics last weekend. I hope you had a chance to attend and to view the talks. If not, you can still purchase a ticket.

NZ Skeptics has its Annual General Meeting on Sunday 12th December. We'll be holding this online, and we'd encourage any interested members to come along.

Craig Shearer announced the winners of our annual awards at the beginning of the second day of our conference, and it was accompanied by the following press release:

Our fantastic online conference - Skepticon 2021 - in conjunction with the Australian Skeptics is fast approaching.

In my last newsletter from two weeks ago, I wrote about the vaccine exemptions that anti-vaxxers wanted to use. They intended to use the wording of section 7A of the COVID response act to exempt themselves from the requirements to be vaccinated for work in professions where the vaccination has been mandated - teaching, healthcare, etc.

This coming week has the threat of action against the government with yet another protest organised by Destiny Church and its leaders Brian (variously adorned with the title of Bishop, or Apostle) and Hannah Tamaki.

It continues to amaze me the lengths science deniers and anti-vaxxers will go to to try to convince people of vaccine harm. This week, Daniel published some pictures from an anti-vax group on our Facebook page, purporting to show extreme bruising after the COVID vaccine. You can take a look at Daniel's post here but here's a taste of the claimed bruising

Over the past couple of weeks, I've seen articles about Dominic Bowden on a new podcast about “wellbeing” called WellBeings. Dominic Bowden is a bit of a celebrity - having appeared on The Bachelor NZ amongst other shows.

Last week Mark published an item from Stuart Landsborough, from Wanaka's Puzzling World about his recent epiphany about how we can deal with climate change. I found Stuart's item contained some great points, and it resonated with me. I'm worried about whether we'll be able to prevent catastrophic climate change.

This week has seen the introduction of the Traffic Light System to replace the COVID lockdown levels currently in place. This will take effect once all of the country's DHB's achieve a 90% fully vaccinated rate for their populations.

Last week Sue Grey (lawyer) was back at the High Court challenging a “no jab, no job” order on behalf of aviation security workers who lost their jobs at the end of September for refusing the vaccine.

I'll preface this by saying that this is a topic I'm certainly not qualified to talk about.

A recent article on the Ars Technica site details the story of a so-called ethical hacker who was employed by a company to build a pro-Trump fake news empire. (Note, this is the real fake news, as in news that isn't true - compared to the “fake news” that Trump infamously categorised unfavourable coverage of him as.)

Our Prime Minister has quite a reputation around the world, but did you know she's also able to cause earthquakes?

If you're a regular reader of our weekly newsletter you'll know by now that we're running a conference in conjunction with the Australian Skeptics. Because of COVID-19 restrictions we made the decision to run it entirely online.

We've been promoting the up-coming conference in conjunction with the Australian Skeptics for a few months now.

This past week has seen an appeal of the Peter Ellis child sex abuse case being heard in the Supreme Court.

In the last newsletter I wrote, I discussed an open letter, penned by Mary Hobbs. Since publishing one of our contacts wrote to supply some more details. It appears that Mary and her husband are Scientologists, and deeply involved in that organisation, even making regular trips to Sydney to clear out a few Thetans, or whatever it is that they do. They even hosted Tom Cruise some time ago on a visit to NZ.

Back to COVID seriousness now. It's been a frustrating week where we've seen the Delta variant now escape Auckland and head out to other parts of the country.

As I write this on Sunday morning, we've now switched over to New Zealand Daylight Time, putting our clocks forward by one hour until early April next year. The touted benefits are that we can enjoy more time in the evenings outside when it's still light, and the sun isn't rising so early in the morning.

As everybody will know, the COVID pandemic is still here. This week we've seen the number of active cases continue to fall, and Auckland/Tāmaki Makaurau has moved down into alert level 3.

This week I came across an article about a COVID anti-viral pill. There's some hope that an antiviral (similar to the well-known Tamiflu) could work that would be used to treat people with COVID. The action of the pill would work to reduce the viral load.

And speaking of anti-vaxxers, there's another one that's emerged from the woodwork.

As mentioned in the Mary Hobbs response above, there's now a group of doctors in NZ standing up for vaccinations, mostly it would seem in response to the handful of those who are against them.

Saturday this weekend marked the 20th Anniversary of 9/11 in the US. Of course, because of time zones it was Wednesday 12th September here in New Zealand when it happened, just after midnight.

As I've written in the past, NZ Skeptics often receive comments in our inbox and people often criticise us for parroting the mainstream media (usually abbreviated to MSM). Recent commenters have criticised us for sharing articles from the BBC, amongst others.

Billy Te Hakiha is in the news again. You'll recall that he was recently arrested, with his “partner in crime” Vinny Eastwood, for violating the lockdown, and holding a protest. Billy and Vinny spent some time in jail, but are now out on bail awaiting trial.

I've written in the past about Sue Grey, the lawyer and past candidate for The Outdoors Party. She's an out and out conspiracy theorist and her Facebook page is a magnet for the most rabid anti-vaxxers.

In the good news department this week, it was announced that there's been a shakeup at the Magic Talk network - a radio station that specialised in talkback.

This week NZ Skeptics submitted our view on the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill. This bill proposes prohibiting so-called conversion therapies which aim to change a person's sexuality, gender identity or gender expression. Curiously, the direction of conversion seems to be exclusively in the direction of becoming “straight” or identifying with and expressing the gender which aligns with the genitals you were born with.

Our annual conference is coming up in November, on the weekend of the 19th - 21. As we've previously publicised, we're holding it in conjunction with the Australian Skeptics. COVID willing, we'll be having an in-person conference in Wellington, and they'll have theirs in Sydney.

The COVID Delta outbreak in Aotearoa New Zealand continues, with Auckland (where I live) and Northland being remaining in level 4 and the rest of the country moving to level 3 from Wednesday 1st September.

Most skeptics will be aware of the Steisand Effect - so called because of the unintended consequence of trying to suppress information - which happened to Barbara Streisand back in 2003 when she tried to suppress pictures of her Malibu mansion.

Finally this week, and related to the Streisand Effect above, comes the tale from David Farrier, of the popular Webworm blog.

Last weekend I got my first shot of the COVID vaccine. Given my advanced age of 55 years, I became eligible to book a vaccine, which is done through the “book my vaccine” website. I found the process to be pretty smooth, and they allowed my wife (who is younger than me) to ride my coattails and also receive her vaccine.

This past week has seen the release of the IPCC's 6th assessment report on climate change. The report is issued every seven years. It's become increasingly obvious with successive reports, that the world is in danger of severe consequences of climate change, and it's increasingly certain (to the point of virtual certainty) that humans are the cause of it.

On a lighter note, this week there were two earth-shattering events that were meant to happen. The first was the Global Prayer to End Atheism, and the second with the prediction of Trump's reinstatement as president on Friday 13th.

We've talked about purported psychic medium Thomas John before. He's a shady character whose real name is Thomas John Flannagan. Previously convicted of stealing security deposits from renters after posting bogus apartment ads on Craigslist, and having also worked as a drag queen, he's moved on to being a celebrity psychic medium.

In good news this week, Facebook has finally shut down the anti-vax, conspiracy-theory-mongering group Voices for Freedom's page. They're upset:

Speaking of COVID grifters, an amusing take-down has emerged from the UK.Piers Corbyn is an anti-vax activist, and elder brother of the former UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.