23 December 2024
If you are like me, you would have thought that Men in Black (MIB) was a delightful fictional creation appearing in Marvel comic books, as well as several television series which have embedded Men in Black characters, e.g. Section 31 (in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Enterprise), and the Silence (in Doctor Who). And we must not forget the two comedic films starring Will Smith as Agent J, with Tommy Lee Jones as Agent K; Protecting the Earth from the Scum of the Universe.
25 October 2022
In just a few days a curious annual internet event will begin: No Nut November (NNN). For those not in the know, nutting is a colloquial term for a man ejaculating - and No Nut November is the idea that it's good for people to take time off from ejaculating during November. At places like Reddit's “NoFap” group (fapping is a slang word for masturbating), people talk through November about how well they're doing with the challenge, which has somehow morphed from being an internet joke to something that many young men are taking seriously.
25 July 2022
Just a friendly reminder that the Covid pandemic is not over. We continue to see cases and an alarmingly high daily death rate, which had an all time high of 32 people dying one day last week.
21 April 2021
A friend sent me an article about a paper published recently in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion called:
8 April 2018
A new locally made diet pill has gone on sale in NZ, and will soon be available in the US as well. Its makers are promoting the product at the moment
4 October 2015
One in 13 men will develop prostate cancer before the age of 75.
1 February 2011
I'm a men's health promoter working out of Christchurch and have some reflections after reading the discussions about the Cartwright report.
1 February 2008
Intersecting as it does sex, religion, blood, medicine and masculinity, circumcision is a subject that is hard to discuss rationally.
1 May 2004
Two fortune tellers apparently failed to foresee the end of their alleged scam in Christchurch (The Press, January 29).
1 February 1997
Dr Mann's essay in this issue will annoy some readers, but it belongs here because it deals with one of the key debates of our time.
1 February 1996
Walter C Clark, Chuck Bird and Nicky McLean criticise Hitting Home for not investigating women's violence towards men, that is, for not being another piece of research altogether. When biologists can produce papers about the hairs on the legs of one species of fruit-flies, this does not seem excessively specialised. One reason that that was not done is simply money. To have achieved the same accuracy would have required interviewing 2,000 women, doubling the cost.
1 February 1996
One of the arguments presented in favour of this year's Bent Spoon award was that the NZ Skeptics increasingly provide an early warning system against strange notions from abroad. For example, Skeptical activities helped New Zealand develop some early immunity to the worst excesses of the "repressed memory" virus. While many members supported the Hitting Home award on similar grounds, some members may have wondered whether Hitting Home was no more than a local aberration and that we were seeing international demons where none existed.
1 November 1995
We have made a big mistake. Hitting Home is careful, thorough, mainstream scientific research. It may be alarming, but it is not, as we said, "alarmist". It is a serious attempt to measure men's attitudes towards, and the extent of, their violence. It is social science, not "hard" science, but it has done its best to attach figures to subjective psychological statements. If it can be criticised, it is for accepting the men's reports of their own violence at face value, when the biggest problem associated with men's violence is men's denial. ("I just gave her a bit of a tap" -- and she spent three weeks in hospital.)
1 November 1995
My feeling after having read the report is that when it was ready for the printer, the authors had in fact reached the point where they were about ready to consult with people experienced in such research, as a necessary preliminary to the main investigation. I would have suggested a smaller pilot sample. This should have disclosed the pitfalls that lay in wait for them. By taking such steps they could have avoided the traps that they later fell into.
1 November 1995
This year's Bent Spoon Award has ruffled a few feathers. In a controversial decision, what the Skeptics described as an "alarmist" Justice Department report on domestic violence in New Zealand has received the award.