30 October 2023
As a major fan of Fall and Hallowe'en, the sudden absence of the holiday from my calendar was one of the few points of culture shock I had when I migrated to New Zealand. I soon found out that nothing could unite the members of this fine nation more than a chorus of tut-tutting about how corporate and how American Hallowe'en was, how tacky it was to send your kids out begging for treats, how much the holiday glorified chocolate, and so on and so forth. It can get a little grinchy sometimes, especially in the comments section of the NZ Herald website.
16 October 2023
I popped into the High Court last week to sit in on a court case where the Jehovah's Witnesses are attempting to argue that they should be exempt from the current Royal Commission enquiry in Abuse in Care. Sara Passmore and I (we're both NZ Skeptics committee members) visited for an hour, and we seem to have accidentally sat on the “wrong” side of the courtroom. Having sat down, we looked around and realised that our side of the room was mostly men in suits (including, I think, Alfred Ngaro - more on him in the article below), whereas the other side of the room was mainly women, including one with bright pink hair.
2 September 2018
On Friday afternoon I headed out to Khandallah School in Wellington as part of the Secular Education Network. SEN believes that schools should be secular, and that there is no place in our school system for Religious Instruction.
17 July 2016
Pokemon Go is a new game where people have to use their phones and walk around their neighbourhood catching Pokemon (little animals) and visiting pokestops. Many churches are pokestops, as places of worship have been registered.
13 December 2015
A Bronx priest stole more than $1M from two NYC churches, and used the cash on a wild S&M romance with his beefy boyfriend