3 July 2023
As a skeptic I love a good mystery - the kind of puzzle that Arthur C Clarke would write a book or make a TV show about. A couple of weeks ago I found a set of YouTube videos about a contrived mystery - one that's been deliberately created, rather than many of life's “mysteries” that come about because of misunderstanding and a lack of scientific understanding - or real mysteries where there's nothing otherworldly, but just a lack of information that would explain the backstory to a situation.
11 April 2022
We're currently putting together a calendar of historical skeptical events relevant to New Zealand - and we're aiming to have at least one event for every day of the year. It's been a lot of fun so far, and we've found a lot of fascinating stories about New Zealand that I'd never heard before, like:
30 November 2020
I'm sure most people saw the intriguing news that a tall prism shaped metal structure, now known as the Utah Monolith, had been found by conservationists in the desert in the US, sticking out from the rock floor of a canyon. It's been great to see sleuths figure out where the monolith is located, using flight plans and google maps satellite view (in a slot canyon in Lockhart Basin in San Juan County, Utah), approximately when it was placed, using historical satellite photos (between August 2015 and October 2016) and how it was made, with several people visiting the site (it's hollow and made from riveted stainless steel sheets). However, the mystery of who put it there has still not been solved.
1 February 1991
Popular books on the paranormal often source their supporting evidence from all over the world. While this may seem to enhance an argument's credibility by giving the impression the phenomenon in question is universal, I suspect it is more because of the paucity of evidence that the net is cast so widely. When on occasions the net reaches as far as New Zealand I find I am especially skeptical. To take a recent example, in Jenny Randle's "Abduction" a New Zealand encounter of the third kind is described thus: