Articles tagged with "piece"

In the last newsletter, one of the articles that I said was included was a piece by Bronwyn, the third and final in her series about The Telepathy Tapes. Unfortunately I forgot to actually add the article to the newsletter! So, in this issue we have two articles about Facilitated Communication. The first of them is the second part of Janyce Boynton's article on whether FC has changed since the early days, and the second is Bronwyn's article.

Just over a week ago we hosted two segments of the second annual Global Skeptics in the Pub Online - an event organised by Californian skeptics to coincide with their annual conference. It was a fun event again, with some really interesting perspectives, and it's always nice to hear what other skeptical groups are up to.

I'm going to keep my intro short this week, because our articles are pretty long and I don't want to bore you all before you even get to the first one - which is an article from someone we've not heard from before, Darren Bird. Darren's written about ACT's new proposed bill attempting to legislate the use of bathrooms - and if you think it sounds suspicious, you'd be right. After Darren we have a piece from Craig, who has looked at someone who's fascinated me for a little while now, Don Murray; I've spent some time clicking through his website over the last few months, and still can't get to grips with him and what he thinks his special powers are. Thankfully Craig's done a nice job of summarising some of his nonsense.

Last week Stuff Circuit, part of the Stuff media organisation, released their Fire and Fury documentary.

It's me again, Mark, for a third week running - as Craig is unavailable to do the newsletter again. This time it's COVID, and I can't blame him at all for not wanting to write a newsletter while getting over it.

I have a good friend who often helps me out by sending me articles that might be of interest to Skeptics - and they sometimes come in handy both for this newsletter, and for my regular weekend radio chats with Graeme Hill on Today FM. He's is one of quite a few skeptically minded friends I have who have no interest in the organised skeptical movement in New Zealand - he just lives his life being wary of the nonsense that surrounds us.

I rarely watch broadcast TV, but on Wednesday night I happened to see a little of TVNZ's Seven Sharp programme. They featured a segment on acupuncture as an alternative to botox for reducing facial wrinkles.

The Chinese launch vehicle - Long March 5B has been in the news over the past week. The rocket was launched at the end of last month to carry the living quarters of China's independent space station into orbit.

A few weeks ago I wrote about big cats reported sighted in Canterbury, and opined that what had been seen was likely a feral cat.

7 Sharp have interviewed Marta Fisch on Waiheke Island, who has built an ugly looking metal box - three side walls - in her garden, to keep out "radiation". Radiation in this sense is the kind of electromagnetic energy that is used to send TV signals and offer WiFi, and also background radiation from nature.

A couple of years ago I went along to a talk in Wellington about a new device called the QTB (Quantum TrailBlazer), now rebranded as a QSB - Quantum Scalar Box. Back then the device was made from a piece of sewage pipe spray painted black, with several blue LEDs around the top. We were told to believe that the device was emitting "scalar waves" (a pseudo-scientific idea) on the Solfeggio frequencies. I sat there for half an hour while the device went through a range of these frequencies, supposedly healing areas of my life.

In November Wellington's Dominion Post newspaper ran a piece (in my opinion...) of misleading propaganda they passed off as a cartoon which can be summed up as naturopathy vs science.

It was an eye opener. Under the stern glare of past headmasters of Kings College, the NZ Skeptics were holding their annual dinner that always goes with the annual conference.

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.