Craig Shearer

There's a few things I'd like to promote this week.

The Therapeutic Products Act is the most significant shift in the regulation of medicines, medical devices and natural health products in almost 40 years. It will replace the Medicines Act 1981 and Dietary Supplements Regulations 1985 with a new regulatory regime.

At the prompting of Mark and Bronwyn during last week's podcast episode, I attended a church meeting last evening. This was an event called “Lean In: Christianity and Politics - Meet the Candidates”. This was held at the Windsor Park Baptist Church - only a few kilometres away from my home. The venue itself was pretty un-chuchlike, in that it was previously the Windsor Park Tavern.

I might be behind the times (I usually am!) but this week, while doing some YouTube surfing, I came across a video on Fractal Wood Burning - specifically warning of the dangers of it. (And, of course, the YouTube algorithm, which I liken to a toddler, has now filled my page with other videos like it!)

Last week we saw a psychic spat between Sue Nicholson and Kelvin Cruickshank. These two alleged psychic mediums were once co-performers on the awful Sensing Murder TV show - you know the one that didn't solve any murders, despite running for 47 episodes over six seasons.

I've mentioned the Voices for Freedom bunch a few times in this newsletter, but looking at the latest Reality Check Radio had me amused. From their email:

OK, so another item related to climate change. I've recently started listening to an entertaining podcast - The Climate Denier's Playbook.

One of our members emailed us last week asking about a climate change denier's blog article.

This weekend the Yeah… Nah! Podcast crew - that is me, Mark and Bronwyn recorded an interview with Melanie Trecek-King who is one of our international guests at our conference in November. (You can get tickets here!) We've released the podcast as a bonus episode.

Most kiwis will be aware that it's election year, with the general election only a few months away, scheduled for Saturday 14th October.

It's been a little while since I've checked in on the antics of the Voices for Freedom bunch, but, checking my email I have set up to monitor their comms, and from others who do the same, there's been a bit of activity lately.

As I've commented in previous issues of the newsletter, I listen to the excellent podcast Be Reasonable, hosted by Michael Marshall (Marsh, as he's colloquially known). In the latest episode (#083, released Wednesday 26th July), he interviewed Nyjon Eccles, a “functional medicine” doctor from the UK. He's a promoter of thermography, which is an Infra-red imaging technique used to scan women's breasts in an attempt to screen for differences in temperature from which, it is alleged, they can infer a possible tumour - that is, breast cancer.

Last Sunday evening, my wife and I had the pleasure of attending the world premiere of Ms. Information at the Auckland International Film Festival. OK, that sounds a little more grandiose than it was - we purchased tickets like most other people in the audience.

So, I'm a Diet Coke drinker. I don't drink hot drinks, and never have for my whole life. At least from my teenage years, when hot drinks were introduced in the form of tea, I always found them too hot and would burn my mouth. So, at least for the past few decades, I've consumed a reasonable* amount of Diet Coke.

As I talked about in my introduction, I managed to catch an episode of Black Mirror on Netflix - an episode titled Joan is Awful. I'm going to discuss various plot elements, so SPOILER ALERT!

As I mentioned in my introduction, my wife Susan and I have been on a month-long holiday in the US and Canada. I thought I'd give a few of the highlights which relate to skepticism that we encountered on our trip.

We've ragged on “apostle” Brian Tamaki many times in the past, but this week has seen a new crusade emerge.

A few weeks back I published an item that reviewed the book A Manual for Creating Atheists, by Peter Boghossian.

The last time I wrote the newsletter, I announced our NZ Skeptics conference happening in Dunedin on the weekend of 24th - 26th November, at Taito Otago Settlers Museum.

No doubt everybody knows about the news of late last week about the indictment of former US president Donald Trump on various federal charges relating to his wilful retention of classified documents, hiding documents, and obstruction of justice. In my opinion, this is a cause for celebration, that they've finally built a case that they can prosecute.

You'd have to have been living under a rock to not have noticed the rise of AI (artificial intelligence) technology recently. It seems that hardly a day goes by without some new announcement about it, or some controversy caused by it.

In the past, we've covered the Disinformation Dozen - a group of twelve people internationally who were/are responsible for promoting a lot of mis- and disinformation, who rose to particular prominence during the peak of the Covid pandemic.

As many readers will know, NZ Skeptics hold an annual conference. We hold these in various locations around the country, and this year we're holding it in Dunedin.

As I mentioned in my introduction, this week I was interviewed about superstitions on the RNZ Nights programme. You can listen to the item here.

Sorry, but I'm going to write again about Tesla cars…

Of late I've been seeing some very scammy advertising online for a product that makes astounding weight loss claims. Yes, I know, there are a ton of them out there!

The last time I wrote my newsletter, I wrote about the NZ Skeptics $100K challenge. We'd just launched it, in conjunction with the NZARH (New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists), who are putting up half of the prize money.

Bronwyn, being the troll that she is, asked if I'd be writing about EV fires this week, after seeing news articles, here and here posted about a fire on the Auckland Harbour Bridge, which involved an EV.

I've written about Voices for Freedom many times in the past. For review, they're a group of anti-vaxxers and “freedom” lovers and generally anti-government agitators. They started back in 2020 during the first year of the pandemic. They claim to have quite a following, though of course, that's unverified.

There's been a recent hubbub around the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of infectious diseases, with Covid being the most obvious one.

We've been promoting making submissions to the Therapeutic Products Bill. The NZ Skeptics committee has met and put together its official submission, and I've put in a personal submission.

If you live in Aotearoa/New Zealand, which most of our readers do, it's time for the 5 yearly census.

We've written about Liz Gunn before. For a refresher, she's a former lawyer, then broadcaster/presenter on Television New Zealand (Breakfast and Good Morning shows) and Radio New Zealand. She disappeared from view for a long time, but recently popped up as an anti-vax conspiracy theorist.

It's 12th February as I write this. Happy Darwin Day! (And, a day before my birthday)

Part of the fun of being on the NZ Skeptics committee is that we get sent emails from folk with some “interesting” views. In many instances the emails we get are provocative trolling messages, or sent from overseas accounts and blasted out to multiple skeptical organisations around the world.

I began my weekend on Friday night with a trip into the Auckland CBD to try to catch roving fundamentalist evangelical preacher Lincoln Russ.

Over the past couple of weeks, people have been reporting getting unsolicited messages via Facebook Messenger from various religious accounts. I got one myself, and thinking it was just ridiculous, immediately blocked the account. Here's a couple:

One of the most frequent questions I encounter, whether serious or not, is about driving an EV in the rain, or through a carwash. Of course, EVs are well built, and the normal expectation of driving is that they encounter wet weather all the time. Of what use would windscreen wipers be otherwise?

This past week has been quite sad for me. We had to say goodbye to our dog Darwin. I hope you'll indulge me in some reflections on the experience.

As most readers will know, I live in Auckland, which has been subject to torrential rain this weekend, resulting in wide-spread flooding, and three people dead, so far. It was certainly a record-setting event, with close to 300 mm of rain recorded over a 36 hour period at one site, and nearly 250 mm of rain at Auckland Airport (which was closed due to the resulting flooding). It's fairly safe to say that the amount of rain we got can be attributed, at least partly, to climate change. Expect more of the same in coming years.

Today I satisfied one of my pleasures - watching horror movies - and viewed M3GAN (obviously pronounced Megan) which opened late last week. I'd categorise the movie as science-fiction horror with a lot of camp and comedy (mostly intentional, but some unintentional), and social commentary thrown in.

There's a new bill being introduced to parliament that is intended to replace our Medicines Act 1981 and the Dietary Supplements Regulations 1985. The bill is the Therapeutic Products Bill (TPB) and it's currently at Select Committee stage, meaning that the public is able to provide submissions on it (currently 30 days left as this is published). This presents a rare opportunity to provide input on legislation directly linked to our interests as a society, and we are unlikely to be involved in a legislative change of this magnitude encompassing therapeutic products again for quite some time.

It's been a while since I've written about the former president of the US, Donald J Trump, but he's recently announced his candidacy for the 2024 presidential elections, likely in an attempt to shield himself from potential legal consequences of investigations into his involvement with the January 6th insurrection, and the Mar-a-Lago classified and top-secret documents case (and likely many other crimes).

In the good news department, Billy Te Kahika and Vinny Eastwood, professional conspiracy theory grifters, who organised protests during the Covid lockdowns in August last year, have now been found guilty of intentionally failing to comply with the Covid-19 Public Health Response Act.

Last Monday (12th December) there was a tragic incident in Wieambilla, Queensland, leaving six people shot dead.

You would have to have been living under a rock for the last couple of weeks to not have heard about the case of the 4 month old baby at Starship Hospital needing heart surgery and, as part of that, donated blood products.

This past weekend I visited the Go Green Expo, which is a show with the general theme of “green” or being ecologically mindful. Such things are usually a magnet for companies promoting bogus products in addition to those with genuine solutions to becoming “greener”.

Many skeptics will be familiar with the practice of some Christian fundamentalists to stand on street corners warning the public of their impending doom in hell should they fail to repent and believe in Jesus as they do. Usually, these are reserved for inner cities where they can target vulnerable young people (at least, that's what I've seen happen).

Last week we found out about a new short documentary that has been produced - Believing is Seeing.

In depressing (but expected) news this week, it seems that it's highly unlikely we'll be able to constrain global warming to 1.5C, and that we're on a path of irreversible damage to the climate which may well lead to catastrophic failure of the climate and likely extinction of vast numbers of species including humanity. It may not happen in my lifetime, but I do worry for the future young people today.