22 July 2024
In 1215 the Catholic Church's Fourth Council of the Lateran, which had been announced two years prior and so was very well attended, introduced many new rules. Many of these were focused on fighting corruption within the clergy, by limiting when and how clergy could charge fees for their work (e.g. no fees for reversing someone's excommunication, consecrating a bishop, or offering “superfluous services”), and banning certain practices like getting drunk and nepotism (specifically, priests handing their job down to their sons).
17 October 2022
In Part 1, I hoped to have painted a picture of Dr. Bronner as an Ideas man above all else. Sure, he had the skills necessary to make a decent soap product but it was secondary to his message. His family came a distant third to that same message while operational requirements of running the whole Dr. Bronner's magic soap outfit came fourth.
8 August 2022
Alex Jones has been sued by parents for his claims on his TV show that the Sandy Hook school massacre was faked by the government as a way to take away people's gun rights. These parents are suing because, as a result of Jones' rhetoric, they have spent years dealing with abuse up to and including death threats - and this is after they lost their children in a massacre that Jones has been telling people never happened.
27 December 2021
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has successfully launched!
6 December 2021
Rex Warwood sadly died late last week. He was a long time reporter, and later editor, for the Franklin County News, and was apparently well liked. However in recent years he appears to have succumbed to conspiratorial thinking, and he became a vocal critic of vaccination against COVID, saying things online such as:
22 November 2021
For those who use Facebook - you may have seen a video advert recently using Jacinda Ardern as a way to promote a cryptocurrency. Obviously this is fake - Jacinda does not want you to “invest” your money in any crypto currency, and it's very likely that there's not even a real crypto currency or crypto company - just a website that will get you to transfer your hard earned money to scammers. Even if there was a real cryptocurrency involved, you would likely lose most or all of the money you risked. I saw people talking about this scam on Facebook, but I have enough layers of ad blocking at home that it proved too hard to get Facebook to show me any adverts at all, so I don't have a copy of the video.
10 July 2016
Australian Ken Ham's Creation "Museum" has opened its newest attraction, the Ark Encounter, on Thursday.
10 July 2016
This weekend's lottery Powerball jackpot was worth $40 million, with 3 winners. The NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB reported on Richard Lustig, a US man who has won several prizes and written a book explaining how to win the lottery.
1 August 2015
In recognition of the Apocalyptic theme of the upcoming Skeptics Conference, Vicki Hyde looks back in the vault to 2012 to see what doomsday predictions we managed to survive.
1 May 1997
Britain's The Skeptic magazine celebrated its tenth anniversary with a Top-Ten survey of paranormal phenomena of the decade.
1 November 1993
A jury which in August ordered the Christian Science church to pay $US5.2 million ($NZ9.6 million) in damages in the diabetes death of an 11-year-old boy followed this by adding a further $US9 million in punitive damages.
1 November 1991
Most people have great difficulty in conceptualising low frequencies and low concentrations. Pesticide concentrations are reported in parts per million (ppm), parts per billion (ppb) and parts per trillion (ppt). One television personality accused an industrial spokesman of releasing effluent with "15 parts per trillion" (his emphasis, implying a very large, rather than a very small concentration).
1 May 1991
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
1 November 1988
—in the New Scientist, 21 January 1988
1 November 1988
SEELISBERG, Switzerland (Reuter). — Followers of Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi have staged what they called Europe's first European yogic flying" competition, describing it as a demonstration of their leader's programme to end violence on earth.