history

A while ago I was contacted by an older gentleman, Cedric, who told me over the phone that he'd heard me on the show and wanted to know if I was interested in a theory he has about the origins of the ... (500 words)

Category: News

- pseudoscience - history - māori -

A claim has been made by Noel Hilliam that European settlers beat Maori to settling NZ, and that reconstruction of skulls from a woman and man have shown that they originated in Wales and the ... (197 words)

Category: News

- conspiracy - history -

Martin Bridgstock considers a major work, which gives us all some astonishingly good news Most of us are used to being deluged with bad news. The economy is on the slide again. Violence has burst out ... (1650 words)

Category: Features

- assumptions - evolution - history - human nature - custom - statistics -

If the beliefs of a sizeable number of people turn out to be correct, this will be the final issue of the NZ Skeptic. According to a survey of 16,262 people in 21 countries conducted by market ... (483 words)

Category: Editorial

- history - hysteria - apocalypses - scares -

George Gwaze was first cleared of the murder of his adopted daughter Charlene Makaza on 21 May 2008. At the time I wrote in NZ Skeptic 88's Newsfront that it had taken since the first week of 2007 ... (454 words)

Category: Editorial

- history - sexual abuse - scares -

The Believing Brain: how we construct beliefs and reinforce them as truths by Michael Shermer. Times books, New York. 386pp. ISBN 978-0-8050-9125-0. Reviewed by Martin Wallace. Aa a member of NZ ... (456 words)

Category: Reviews

- book - history - scientific method - critical appraisal - investigation -

The Bosnian Pyramids: The Biggest Hoax in History? Directed by Jurgen Deleye. VOF de Grenswetenschap. Watch online (www.thebiggesthoaxinhistory.com): €5.95. DVD: €19.95 (excl. shipping). Reviewed by ... (331 words)

Category: Reviews

- easter island statues - archaelogy - hoaxes - history - earth - environment - rocks -

NZ Skeptic 17 (May 1990) included an item taken from the NZ Herald's "100 Years of News", published in 1963, looking back at the great New Zealand airship panic of 1909. This topic, and its parallels ... (540 words)

Category: Features

- history - hysteria - sightings - ufo -

Save the rocks, say Celt theorists THOSE zany Ancient Celt people never give up, do they? Now they're campaigning to protect some boulders on a hillside at Silverdale, north of Auckland, due to be ... (1095 words)

Category: News

- alternative health treatments - crime - history - creationists - exorcism - paranormal -

There were more than 20,000 pilgrims packed around ancient Stonehenge for the 2004 summer solstice. Among them were witches, druids, new age healers… and Hamilton journalist Russell Joyce. He reports ... (507 words)

Category: Features

- archaelogy - history - superstition -

The Enlightenment -- a period of intellectual progress in Europe and North America during the eighteenth century -- saw superstition, dogma and ignorance lose ground to reason, science and freedom of ... (830 words)

Category: Columns

- postmodernism - history -

Did the ancestors of the Celts sail to New Zealand and establish a network of megalithic survey points and astronomical sight lines? Some think so The prehistory of New Zealand is generally thought ... (2103 words)

Category: Features

- archaelogy - history -

Bob Brockie thinks he can explain why the Skeptic editor gets woken up at 2am every Saturday morning Doctors have a name for impulsive, over-energetic, risky, unpredictable, posturing, defiant ... (420 words)

Category: Features

- biology - genetics - history -

Like scientists, historians use a dependable methodology to ensure their findings are reliable. Assertions of historical fact can properly be based only on empirical evidence. Historians then use ... (791 words)

Category: Columns

- history - religious belief - education - postmodernism -

The universe we live in is vast, in both space and time, so vast as to be beyond human comprehension. Mathematicians have devised a way in which the large numbers involved can be manipulated, the ... (439 words)

Category: Features

- mathematics - education - history -

A Waikato University lecturer has been named on a website for Latter-Day Saints as anti-mormon. American history senior lecturer Dr Raymond Richards has accused the Mormon Church of irresponsible ... (261 words)

Category: News

- religious belief - history - free speech -

Ancient Phoenicians in New Zealand? A recent book makes the claim, but the evidence doesn't bear scrutiny. Ross Wiseman's book, New Zealand's Hidden Past (Discovery Press, 2001), is his personal ... (3733 words)

Category: Features

- history - archaelogy - pseudoscience -

1421: THE YEAR CHINA DISCOVERED THE WORLD, by Gavin Menzies. Bantam, $54.95. Zheng He is not a name that is well known in the west. However, his seven voyages from China, through the Indian Ocean to ... (538 words)

Category: Reviews

- testing claims - history - book -

In Darwin's Shadow: The life and science of Alfred Russel Wallace, by Michael Shermer. Oxford University Press. Alfred Russel Wallace was the co-discoverer of perhaps the most revolutionary idea in ... (447 words)

Category: Reviews

- book - history - genetics - biographies -

Netsurfer Science is a website every skeptic should bookmark. It provides a good lead-in to many science and skeptic-related sites and issues on the web. Here are a couple of recent items. Howling at ... (450 words)

Category: News

- history - hoaxes - astronomy - creation science -

When Raymond Richards included a lecture on the Mormon Church in his course on American history he ran foul of not only the Mormon community but also the University of Waikato heirarchy. He told his ... (2690 words)

Category: Features

- religious belief - history - education -

It wasn't a dark and stormy night but a gaggle of skeptics got together recently to listen to ghost stories in Hamilton. Professional story teller Andrew Wright sent shivers down the groups' ... (438 words)

Category: Editorial

- conferences - ghosts - history - health industry -

References Bob Metcalfe (Forum NZ Skeptic 54) seems to be calling for a change in editorial policy on footnotes and references. This has been consistent throughout the history of this society and any ... (310 words)

Category: Forum

- scepticism - history -

That Old-Time Religion I didn't wish to begin a debate about the issues surrounding religion in the 16th and 17th-century, nor would I ever wish to stop anyone from taking in interest in history. All ... (358 words)

Category: Forum

- history - scepticism -

A sceptical mini-history of the crashed flying saucer saga Carl Wyant Sceptics will be amused to hear that the Great Roswell UFO Cover-up has just gained a new lease on life. Yes, as if the almost ... (1409 words)

Category: Features

- ufos - history -

PC for Me, See? "US Universities, cringing under a wave of Political Correctness and an extreme form of "multi-culturalism" are abandoning programmes which present the history of Western Civilisation ... (1509 words)

Category: Forum

- history - politics - philosophy -

Cynthia Shakespeare, Tony Vignaux and I are proud to report that we held a remarkably successful winter lecture series in June. We had organised speakers for local Skeptics before, with attendances ... (550 words)

Category: News

- indigenous knowledge - pseudoscience - history -

John Jewel was Bishop of Salisbury during the reign of Elizabeth I. It is hardly credible what a harvest, or rather what a wilderness of superstition has sprung up in the darkness of the Marian ... (98 words)

Category: News

- history - scepticism - religious belief -