Adding legitimacy to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the first citizenship has just taken place with a new citizen wearing a colander on his head. Bjorn Oback, from Germany, wore a colander in Hamilton recently.

In September, a 70 year old man apparently burst into flames in London. It's a sad event, and a horrible way to die. The press have started calling it a case of Spontaneous Human Combustion - the idea that people sometimes just randomly burn.

A new pharmacy called Wellworks, focussing on natural health products, is due to open in Wellington in January.

Daniel Ryan from the Society for Science Based Healthcare wrote a study looking at acupuncture advertising in NZ. He ran a targeted search for New Zealand websites making claims about being able to treat a list of conditions for which advertising claims are restricted by the Medicines Act.

Sir Peter Gluckman, the PM's Science Advisor, says that NZ has a science denial problem, but that it's no worse than the rest of the world. Peter thinks that social media bubbles are contributing to this issue, by allowing people to get their news only from places that agree with their existing views on topics. He points out that traditional media is becoming more likely to be polarised as well, which is not good.

The NZ Skeptics conference was a great success, with a quiz on the Friday night and a weekend of fascinating talks. We gave all the attendees a bag of alternative medicine nonsense.

In a recent article Cracked dot com has pointed out flaws in several popular conspiracy theories.

After a ghost was spotted in a picture of a mirror being sold in a TradeMe auction, Wendy McCawe from Wellington Photographic Supplies quickly spotted that the "ghost" in question was actually a picture of the lead character from TV show Outlander. I'm impressed that she spotted it - I put the image through online forensic image tool Forensically, and couldn't see anything.

There's lots of nonsense at this year's Go Green expo, and I'll be there today sampling the weird and wonderful.

Republican Senate candidate Judge Roy Moore has been accused of sexually assaulting a 14 girl when he was 14. He has a worrying track record - as well as other accusations of sexual harassment of young girls, he's twice been promoted to the Supreme Court and then removed because of his refusal to follow church/state separation laws. He was suspended for trying to stop legal gay marriages from being performed.

Dr Libby is a nutritional biochemist, not a medical doctor, who regularly posts alternative medicine articles in Stuff. She sells books, goes on speaking tours, has promoted a Multi Level Marketing scheme - USANA over-priced vitamins - and now sells her own alt-med products

This year's NZ Skeptics conference is in Wellington in 3 weeks. We have speakers such as Cara Santa Maria from the USA, and an ex naturopath, Britt Marie Hermes. We're hoping to officially announce our $100,000 prize for evidence of the supernatural, and it will be interesting to see what kinds of applicants we see over the next few months.

Auckland council are "revisiting" their decision to use popular weedkiller glyphosate, more commonly known as RoundUp. Auckland councillor Wayne Walker seems to be pushing a move to stop using the weedkiller, despite the fact that Federated Farmers and New Zealand's EPA say that it is safe.

Two women in a yacht were rescued this week, adrift a long way off the coast of Japan. Their story is that they left Honolulu for Tahiti, and immediately hit a storm which damaged their boat. After drifting for 6 months at sea, and being attacked by sharks, they were eventually rescued by the US Navy.

My kids went out trick or treating the other day for halloween, and came back with more than just chocolate and lollies. Religious pamphlets were being handed out at some of the local houses, and my 10 year old daughter knew that I'd be interested to see them.

Doterra is a successful multinational company which sells innovative medical treatments - or at least that's what they'd have you believe. In reality, it appears to be a Multi Level Marketing scheme, based on Essential Oils, which preys on vulnerable people and makes dangerous untrue claims about their products.

The prevailing scientific opinion on lie detector tests is that they don't work well enough to be relied on in courts as evidence - in fact, they're probably not even a good way of discerning the truth. Unfortunately a Christchurch based private detective is selling tests to couples as a way of finding out whether a partner has cheated.

A company is making claims about their soap made out of breast milk.

NZ now has its second ingested product for sun protection being sold. The first hit the market a few years ago, and is from a company called Osmosis Skincare. Their product contains "harmonised" water, which is described as:

A couple of years ago I went along to a talk in Wellington about a new device called the QTB (Quantum TrailBlazer), now rebranded as a QSB - Quantum Scalar Box. Back then the device was made from a piece of sewage pipe spray painted black, with several blue LEDs around the top. We were told to believe that the device was emitting "scalar waves" (a pseudo-scientific idea) on the Solfeggio frequencies. I sat there for half an hour while the device went through a range of these frequencies, supposedly healing areas of my life.

These days, with modern technology, it only takes a matter of days after most tragic events before conspiracy theorists have converged on an "alternative narrative". For the Sandy Hook massacre, there are people who claim it was a "false flag" operation where no children were actually killed. For missing flight MH370, the aeroplane was apparently re-routed to a secret military base.

David Meade, who I spoke about last month as predicting the end of the world around the 20th of September, has given us all a reprieve. Obviously the world didn't end, but he now says that October the 21st is the real end of the world.

I recently found out that a movement which is popular in America has reached our shores. The Freeman movement, otherwise known as Sovereign Citizens, consists of people who believe that it is possible to declare yourself no longer beholden to the laws of your country, and not liable to pay taxes. Normally the process involves filling in obscure government forms, opting out of government forms of ID such as driving licenses and passports and writing signed declarations using lots of very big legal sounding words.

The Pharmacy Council recently ran a consultation about a new proposed Code of Ethics, after they tried to weaken their code a couple of years ago to remove the requirement that pharmacists could only sell alternative medicines where there was evidence that they work.

The Herald published an article about someone's prediction that the world will end in a few weeks. David Meade, described as a Christian numerologist, claims that on or just after September the 20th (my birthday!), the world will meet a fiery end.

Last week an article was published on Stuff talking about how a young New Zealand woman who has had cancer (acute lymphoblastic leukemia) since she was 14 is going to spend $20,000 on an alternative treatment for her cancer - Ozone Therapy. The clinic says about this therapy:

Newshub published an article about an 80 year old picture showing a native american man holding something rectangular with flat edges. Although it conceivably looks like an iPhone 5, as the article concedes it's much more likely to be a mirror or blade.

Another crazy conspiracy theory I'd never heard of - that Saddam Hussein owned a Stargate, and that the US had to invade to take it from him.

Stuff has a great article about a Naturopath who has been involved in treating the cancer of two patients who have died recently. The patients have both spoken out about how they think they made a mistake in trusting the naturopath.

It looks like the book has finally been closed on one of the most famous Satanic Panic cases in the US - that of the Kellers.

Lori Harris from the UK has sold all her belongings to pay for treatment for her mother, Lisa, who has stage 4 ovarian cancer. The Go Fund Me page for the fundraising effort for this treatment, which asks for £200,000, talks of needing money for immunotherapy in Germany, and links to a great article describing how this new therapy has the potential to allow us to treat some cancers in a novel way.

Debbie Merrick bought a doll for £5 and then placed the doll on eBay, after making international news by talking about the doll being haunted. Apparently the doll scratched Debbie's husband, although the doll was not seen causing the scratches - the husband simply woke up with scratches on himself. The determination that the doll caused the scratches came from a psychic friend.

Vinny Eastwood has suggested that the new head of the Labour Party is in league with the Freemasons:

There was a nice story about the 30th anniversary of the Lotto this week from Stuff. The article talked about how the fact some numbers come up more often than others is likely chance (Lotto take this seriously, and apparently regularly wash and weigh the balls to ensure there's no bias). The difference in frequency between the most drawn ball, number 1 (16.91%) and the least drawn ball number 34 (13.97%) is not huge, and I suspect the number frequency draws a bell curve.

There's a lack of rural doctors in NZ, and one doctor has spoken on Radio NZ this week about the trials and tribulations he's suffered trying to renew his visa to stay in the country. Dr Feller is a GP at Mountainview Medical Centre in Hawera, and the medical centre is badly in need of the service he provides. Losing him would not be good for the local community.

Last week I learned about a new conspiracy theory from Weather Wars International, a Facebook group dedicated to spreading nonsense about government control of the weather. A video posted to the group shows a field and trees, along with a light halo and what appears to be a rotating planet in the background.

Emails have been released about the show Sensing Murder from OIA requests, and have brought to light (unsurprisingly) that the show has not materially helped the Police, and in some circumstances is considered to be a potential problem for ongoing cases.

I'm hoping that the anti-GMO crowd don't sink the new GMO banana before it has a chance to be properly tested. The banana has had genes inserted that allow it to create alpha and beta carotenes, which allow our bodies to create vitamin A, which should help some of the quarter of a million children who die every year due to a lack of the vitamin.

Women's gifting circles have made the news again this week as they are now officially considered a pyramid scheme by the Commerce Commission.

The Spinoff did a great job of looking into Hamilton Councillor Siggi Henry's views on a variety of topics. It turns out that she's anti fluoride, anti-fat (she recently said that obesity was a risk to others as fat people could fall on you and hurt you) and anti-vaccine.

The group responsible for bringing Vaxxed, an anti-vaccine movie, to Australia and New Zealand is still causing issues in our country. There are more screenings of Vaxxed coming up, including one in Wellington that I will try to attend:

A mother in the US was found by doctors to be causing her child to fall ill because she was taking pills made from her own placenta. A company in the US makes the pills from dried placenta, and you supply them with your placenta after your child's birth.

Alex Jones, anchor man of the news outlet InfoWars in the US, hosted Robert David Steele on his show this week, and talked about Robert's theory that NASA are holding slave children on Mars. This has led to NASA officially denying the accusation, along with another recent claim that there are no active rovers on Mars.

Since I attended the opening of the new Scientology building in January, I have been called occasionally by a church member called Will who has been inviting me to Auckland Scientology events. However, I'm in Wellington and so I've been waiting patiently for a local event to be announced.

A breatharian couple, Camila Castello and Akahi Ricardo, have publicly claimed that they live on "cosmic nourishment" from the "energy that exists in the universe and in themselves". They claim that they didn't eat at all for a period of 3 years, and that they hardly ever eat. When they do eat, it's a piece of fruit or some broth.

An article in the Herald this week talked about several innovations that were showcased at the Hamilton Fieldays event. Unfortunately, one of the products, DermaShield, appears to be very much pseudo-scientific.

The Jehovah's Witnesses came around for an hour or more yesterday, having previously chatted with me last week.

The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God has been handing out cross shaped vials of a "holy oil" which it says have been blessed in Jerusalem and can "activate people's faith" in order to treat medical conditions such as depression, addiction, heart problems and chronic pain.

Nigel Antony Gray is a Scientologist who believes he can predict earthquakes and that the weather is controlled by the government - and recently that fidget spinners send out harmful "frequencies". Nigel has decided that he will allow skeptics to join his secretive Facebook group - Spiritual Awareness New Zealand - as long as they follow his instructions.

Radio NZ published an article this week that seemed to accept, without evidence, claims that traditional Maori medicine can help with medical conditions including cancer.