29 October 2024
As part of my recent delegation of the task of finding newsletter topics, where I've started asking my kids for ideas, I was given the topic of anti-ageing, or anti-wrinkle, straws. I guess with the popularity of Stanley cups and other new-fangled drinkware, it was only a matter of time before innovation came to straws.
14 October 2024
Halloween wasn't really a thing growing up in New Zealand over 40 years ago, but it seems to have taken off in the last few decades. No trick or treaters have been determined enough to find their way to the top of the hill where I live, and I've now stopped buying lollies to save our waistlines at home. If we do ever get one, we'll need to think of a really good trick - or worse, give them fruit.
16 September 2024
A couple of weeks ago I talked with a journalist about psychics, as she was looking into a story that Kelvin Cruickshank appeared to have muscled his way into. As well as giving her some information about how psychics work, and a little about Kelvin, I had also suggested to her that she should visit a psychic to get an idea of how they operate. A day later she let me know that she was planning to visit a psychic fair that weekend, and I suggested that I could meet her there to brief her on what to expect. So, on Saturday morning two weekends ago, Bronwyn and I headed to Upper Hutt and met with Virginia.
2 April 2024
I hope everyone's had a good long weekend, and was able to spend it doing the things they love. I was able to spend a day hanging out with friends, put some finishing touches to a fake tourism plaque I've been making for a prank in Wellington, and spent some time sorting and photographing my vintage necktie collection. As part of doing this I learned more than I ever needed to know about the history of tie manufacturers in New Zealand, including Parisian, John Webster, Klipper, Sander and Eskay.
2 April 2024
Have you noticed how in action movies, on any day of the year, at any time of the day, if you're running from someone you can always hide in a Saint Patrick's day parade? There must be something about St Patrick, that his legend is not even subject to the laws of physics, the space/time continuum bends around him. Seriously though, that's not how it works of course. There must be many cultural phenomena which are celebrated of which you could argue there's little or no way to tell how much of the story is historical truth and how much is just myth. So does it matter? Christmas is an example. A christian origin story fully laced with lots of extra-biblical and pagan stuff and for probably the majority of us, no 'spiritual' significance at all, but we all love it (unless you're the grinch). It's become purely culture and tradition. Most of us don't really believe a twelve year old Jewish girl got pregnant without the 'help' of a human man.
23 January 2024
It was Wellington Day yesterday, so this newsletter is a day later than usual. It's been a very warm weekend here in Wellington, but I've spent most of the weekend inside, with the air conditioning on, working on our plagiarism project (no, we're not planning to plagiarise from elsewhere to fill our newsletter!). Between Dan Ryan and myself, we have enough coding skills to be able to write software tools that are making our job of detecting and displaying cases of plagiarism much quicker - so I've been spending the weekend writing software.
25 December 2023
Although we've reduced our newsletter output to biweekly, that doesn't stop us from releasing an issue on Christmas day! Wherever you are, and whatever, if anything, you're celebrating, I hope you have an awesome day.
9 October 2023
While shopping in KMart a few weeks ago, on Saturday afternoon, I received an unsolicited text message. This isn't unusual, as I take the bold move when it comes to privacy of not trying to hide my contact details at all. I'm a believer in the philosophy of almost inviting spam, and then dealing with it as it arrives by setting up spam filters and mailbox rules. A benefit of doing this, for me as a skeptic, is that I get to see all the weird and wonderful nonsense that spammers attempt to bombard people with. And so it was with this text message:
1 May 2023
Well, hello there! Craig isn't looking and Mark is busy writing, so I thought I would slip in here and write the editorial for this week.
17 April 2023
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.
13 February 2023
It's 12th February as I write this. Happy Darwin Day! (And, a day before my birthday)
29 August 2022
It's been an action-packed week this week, with lots of interesting things happening in conspiracy circles, both here and overseas. And a lot of it seems to be in the right direction, with prominent anti-vaxxers and conspiracy mongers like Robert Kennedy Jr and Chantelle Baker having their social media accounts removed, the parliament protest something of a fizzle, the operators of Counterspin being arrested, and Billy TK and Vinny Eastwood having their day in court.
1 August 2022
I've been interested in the mention of “12,000m tonnes of water” to be shipped out every day. The figure is clearly ridiculous, but it is interesting to think of the logistics if it was to be true. When assessing a figure spat out by someone, I like to try to put it into some kind of perspective and see if it passes the “sniff test". Below are some figures that might instantly put this one to bed.
9 May 2022
For those of you who listen to our fortnightly NZ Skeptics podcast, Yeah… Nah! (which is based on this newsletter), you'll be aware that I tested positive for COVID recently. It's been a week now since my first day of symptoms, and I'm feeling a lot better than I did a week ago. Craig was kind enough to cover for me on the radio talking with Graeme Hill last week, but thankfully I was feeling good enough to get back in the saddle yesterday afternoon. For those of you who listen to the radio, I highly recommend listening to Graeme's “Hill's Weekend” show on Sunday afternoons - Graeme always manages to line up a set of fascinating people to talk to, and I'm always grateful to be able to talk with him about skepticism and some of the nonsense we find out there in the world.
24 January 2022
If you spend any time on social media you'll have no doubt seen fairly enigmatic posts with a grid of yellow and green squares in various combinations. This is Wordle - a daily word guessing game that has taken the world by storm (or at least, that seems to be what I've been seeing!)
27 December 2021
Welcome to the NZ Skeptics newsletter.
27 December 2021
Continuing on from Mark's item last week, long-time skeptic and former committee member Barry Lennox gives us his views…
22 November 2021
This weekend was our joint Australian and New Zealand conference, Skepticon 2021. Thank you so much to those of you who joined us, it was an amazing weekend with fascinating talks and I hope you enjoyed it all as much as I did.
17 March 2021
The AstraZeneca vaccine has made the news recently, as several European countries have halted its rollout temporarily due to reports of blood clots. These issues are real, but it's important to look at how many incidences of this issue there are, and how that compares to other vaccines. It turns out that not only is the incidence of reported clotting similar to that seen with other COVID vaccines, but it's also similar to what you'd expect from a population that haven't received any medical interventions. Both deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism levels for the millions of people who have taken the vaccine are about what would be expected of a random selection of people in their day to day lives. Sadly some people just get blood clots at times, and people can have exacerbating medical conditions that mean they're more susceptible to this issue.
15 February 2021
In recent weeks there's been a bit of controversy on the airwaves in the form of talkback radio. Talkback radio's an interesting format - where else (apart from letters to the editor) do you get to voice your opinion on any matter to such a big audience? A few weeks ago we saw the removal of John Banks from the Magic Talk radio network after his abhorrent racist remarks (and not shutting down those of a caller).
28 December 2020
What day is it? Is it still 2020? Damn.
30 November 2020
There's an interesting article published by Dr Deane Galbraithe this week about Billy Te Kakiha's evangelical influence, and how this may explain his adoption of so many conspiracy theories in his talks. For those who don't remember, Billy TK started a political party earlier this year, the Public Party, with a platform based on conspiracies and other unscientific nonsense. Deane has been talking in our Facebook group about his article, and, although it's not mentioned in the article itself, on Facebook he's talked about someone who has messaged him to let him know that Billy TK has a history with the Seventh Day Adventist Reform Movement.
9 November 2020
I'm sure most skeptics will have heard of QAnon by now - the anonymously named Q who posts online about shadowy organisations, and talks about how president Trump is fighting dark forces in the US. QAnon tends to use lots of code names and obscure references, including the oft used acronym used as the title of this section - it means Where We Go 1, We Go All. Here are a couple of examples of QAnon messages:
1 May 2020
Lockdown made me think of what it would be like to travel to Mars. Stuck in familiar confines, the same people around every day. The same food. A slowly diminishing blue marble the only vibrant object in a black sky hung with tiny white stars.
14 October 2018
The Aussies have just had their skeptics conference, and have given out a Bent Spoon award to Sarah Stevenson, for her Sarah's Day brand of nonsense.
5 August 2018
This weekend was the Humanist Conference in Auckland, with some great international and local speakers.
29 January 2017
Robert Hunt spoke on behalf of Creation Ministries International this morning at Upper Hutt Baptist Church.
10 July 2016
Australian Ken Ham's Creation "Museum" has opened its newest attraction, the Ark Encounter, on Thursday.
26 June 2016
Tony Robbins is a very popular motivational speaker, and charges US$1,000 or more for a high energy day of talks. Events have names such as "Date with Destiny", "Life and Wealth Mastery" and "Unleash the Power Within". Tony's website has testimonials from famous celebrities, such as Hugh Jackman, Bill Clinton and Serena Williams. Video of Tony Robbins events look a lot like evangelical christian sunday services - lots of music, jumping around and highly emotional sermons.
1 February 2014
And so another year begins, and as I write this on New Year's Day 2014 there is the opportunity, as with every new year, to reflect on past years and consider the prospects for the future. 2014 will no doubt be an especially busy year for recollections and commemorations, marking as it does the centenary of the start of World War I. Few could have had any idea, on that New Year's Day of a century ago, of what the next few years would bring.
1 May 2013
A homeopathic preparation of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) is gaining popularity in New Zealand (NZ Herald, 2 March), despite costing upwards of $3000 per litre.
1 February 2013
So the world didn't end on December 21. While the supposed Mayan Apocalypse attracted considerable media attention most of it, before and after, was light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek. The NZ Herald (20 December) marked the occasion by asking NZ Skeptics media contact Vicki Hyde 12 questions - part of a series involving "well-known faces".
1 May 2011
There are times when the world seems to run along quietly from day to day, with very little happening. Then there are times like these. There are the ongoing aftershocks in Christchurch, many of them big enough in their own right to qualify as major quakes at any other time. There was the far larger earthquake in Japan, with its ensuing slow-motion nuclear disaster. There are wars and revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa which seem set to transform the politics of those regions. Millennial anxieties are on the rise once more.
1 February 2009
Annette Taylor learns it's not enough to have your cake, you have to test it too.
1 February 2007
Garfield was right-there's nothing like a piping hot lasagne on a winter's night. Especially when eaten with good wine and fine people.
1 August 2006
Jim Ring takes another look at Bishop Ussher's famous date for the creation.
1 November 2004
The Break Free tour will be coming soon to a city near you. The week-long tour of lectures and book selling will start in Christchurch at the end of November and proceed to Wellington, Taupo, Hamilton and Auckland. The person who will head the tour is Phillip Day, who supposedly is "an award-winning author, health researcher and world-class speaker."
1 November 2003
It's been another busy year, mostly working behind the scenes, with the occasional burst into the public arena.
1 August 2003
Had an email the other day from someone we hadn't heard from in a while. Among other things, he took the opportunity to ask why we heard so little from the Skeptics in the media, and made unfavourable comparisons with the Consumer's Institute. Given the breadth of that organisation's support base and consequent level of funding, that hardly seemed fair.
1 August 2003
The World Health Organisation has issued a new warning against non-essential travel to the entire Western Hemisphere following renewed concerns about the spread of Severe Loss of Perspective Syndrome (Slops).
1 May 2003
These are nervous times. By an astounding coincidence, as I wrote that line and paused to think of what to put next, I had a call from a friend to tell me there was a Sars case at the Waikato Hospital and to ask whether, in my other role as a subeditor at the Waikato Times, I would want to pass that on.
1 November 2002
The year got off to a good start with a series of successful meetings run by our Auckland colleagues in conjunction with the Rationalists, and I thank those involved for their efforts. I'd also like to thank Claire le Couteur and others who, in conjunction with Philip Catton of the Canterbury Society for the History and Philosophy of Science, organised a local Darwin Day celebration at short notice. That was on February 12, and was our first participation in an international effort which should see us mark the occasion each year, culminating in 2009 with the 150th celebration of the publication of Origin of Species.
1 May 2001
My brain hurts. I haven't used it in some years, so there's no surprise really. After managing to avoid external employment for a goodly time, a job has finally got its teeth into me and won't let go. Which is not to say I've been totally lazy at home these past years, there's been free-lunch work to do and projects such as the NZ Skeptic to help pass time. But all of these could be done in the privacy of one's own home, dressed in striped jarmies if the mood took and it often did.
1 February 2001
Astronomy is the science of stars and outer space stuff. Not everybody knows this and so astronomers get insulted when they get called astrologers. Astrologers will tell you that astrology is also a science, but is it?
1 November 1998
IN THE beginning (specifically on October 23, 4004 B.C., at noon) out of quantum foam fluctuation God created the Big Bang out of inflationary cosmology. He saw that the Big Bang was very big, too big for creatures that could worship him, so He created the earth. And darkness was upon the face of the deep, so He commanded hydrogen atoms (which He created out of Quarks and other subatomic goodies) to fuse and become helium atoms and in the process release energy in the form of light. And the light-maker he called the sun, and the process He called fusion. And He saw the light was good because now He could see what he was doing. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
1 November 1998
Hypnotist Lawrence Follas claims he can increase the size of a client's bust by telling her to imagine her breasts are growing (Sunday News 24 May). He says his client's breasts have grown 2cm in three months, and some women in the States have added an extra 6cm by the method. The programme involves seven one-hour sessions at $75 each. A tape of Follas's hypnosis session is given to the woman who must listen to it every day.
1 February 1998
THERE'S no denying it. We're a strange lot. Sitting in the small hall during the annual Skeptics get-together and listening to the varied, and often colourful, discussion, it struck me how dissimilar we all are.
1 November 1997
IT'S BEEN a quiet old time in the Waikato, these past few months. My cat hasn't channelled any past lives, nor has she been abducted by aliens.
1 August 1996
Yes, it is frustrating, even positively nauseating. There you are struggling day in day out, doing your best and striving for the real breakthrough in science. Yet the real breakthrough never comes. Lack of talent, originality, or just not the right friends? Who knows? And who cares?
1 August 1993
Several of my friends are orchardists, and two of them lost their crop last year due to a hailstorm.
1 November 1992
At the Skeptics Conference in Christchurch in 1989, Denis Dutton mentioned that women's magazines offered horoscopes but men's magazines did not. There were two significant exceptions: the feminist magazine Broadsheet did not, but the gay (and nominally lesbian) Pink Triangle did -- a particularly bland and space-wasting one:
1 May 1992
Juan Perez may not be one of the most well known Great Skeptics of History, but he was one of the bravest. Hilary Evans tells his story in "Visions, Apparitions, Alien Visitors". Towards the close of the eighteenth century, Perez, a Madrid workman, was arraigned by the Inquisition for denying that there existed a Devil with power to seize the human soul. He admitted this sin and explained why: