16 September 2024
A couple of weeks ago I talked with a journalist about psychics, as she was looking into a story that Kelvin Cruickshank appeared to have muscled his way into. As well as giving her some information about how psychics work, and a little about Kelvin, I had also suggested to her that she should visit a psychic to get an idea of how they operate. A day later she let me know that she was planning to visit a psychic fair that weekend, and I suggested that I could meet her there to brief her on what to expect. So, on Saturday morning two weekends ago, Bronwyn and I headed to Upper Hutt and met with Virginia.
15 April 2024
For those who were paying attention when reading the newsletter from two weeks ago, when I published a plea for help from an ex-member of the NZ Skeptics regarding a photo his mother had taken in Auckland, you may have noticed something odd. Despite claiming to be a skeptic, there was a strange sentence in the middle of the email we received. It read:
17 January 2022
Vangeliya Pandeva Gushterova, more commonly known as Baba Vanga, was a Bulgarian psychic. Although she died back in 1996, she was kind enough to leave behind some predictions that may or may not actually be about potential future events. Honestly, the Wikipedia Page for Baba Vanga leaves me suspicious about how much of what is attributed to her she actually said, and how much is just being made up by others (and it's also one of the worst Wikipedia pages I've ever seen grammatically - presumably it's mainly been written by people for whom English is not a fluent language).
15 December 2021
The Australian Skeptics have spent the last few years working hard on an amazing project, led by Richard Saunders, to find and analyse as many psychic predictions as they could find.
2 August 2021
Speaking of COVID grifters, an amusing take-down has emerged from the UK.Piers Corbyn is an anti-vax activist, and elder brother of the former UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
1 March 2021
Ken Ring is back selling his unproven weather, gardening, and best fishing predictions. You can also get his books on the global warming hoax, anxiety therapy, better parenting, and more on his predict weather website.
22 February 2021
Lockdown timing predictions from a Hamilton based psychic, Sarah King, have been unearthed and posted to our Facebook group this week:
4 January 2021
At the start of each year, it's common for psychics and mediums to put out a bunch of predictions for the coming year. These predictions generally fall flat, although a common strategy for some psychics is to put out so many, often vaguely worded, so that there's a chance that some of them will actually come true, at which point they capitalise on this, claiming to be the World's Most Accurate Psychic™!
29 April 2018
I was contacted by a journalist for the Sunday Star times a few days ago with some questions about Ken Ring. He's predicting an earthquake for June or July the 13th to 15th.
10 July 2016
Australian Ken Ham's Creation "Museum" has opened its newest attraction, the Ark Encounter, on Thursday.
1 February 2014
And so another year begins, and as I write this on New Year's Day 2014 there is the opportunity, as with every new year, to reflect on past years and consider the prospects for the future. 2014 will no doubt be an especially busy year for recollections and commemorations, marking as it does the centenary of the start of World War I. Few could have had any idea, on that New Year's Day of a century ago, of what the next few years would bring.
1 August 2011
The paranormal field contains both con artists and the well-intentioned. It's often impossible to tell one from the other, but in the end it makes little difference. This article is based on a presentation to the University of the Third Age.
1 May 2011
In the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquakes, Ken Ring's predictions were widely, though often inaccurately, reported. David Riddell looks at Ring's writings, and compares them with actual events.
1 August 2010
Bernard Beckett (Skeptic 95 , p8) says the ability of Creationism to make the same predictions as evolutionary psychology shows that the latter is not a scientific process. But the same is equally true of evolutionary biology. ("God made cats resemble tigers, and apples resemble pears, because He felt like it.") The fault is with Creationism, not evolution. An omnipotent Creator can be used to explain/predict absolutely anything, not only the universe as it is, but any other universe, possible or im-. You might say that Creationism, like Nostradamus and astrology, is very good for predicting the past. That is their fundamental failing.
1 May 2000
I just wanted to make a comment on the clipping from the Christchurch Star concerning "nuclear extinction" which appeared on p.9 of the NZ Skeptic periodical. In the clipping, a refutation of this possibility was based on some writings of one Bruce Cathie who is claimed therein to be a mathematician among other things.
1 May 2000
Remember the '90s? It was the decade when:
1 November 1998
IT'S BEEN a busy year on many fronts for the Skeptics, with a number of major firsts:
1 February 1997
1996 was an interesting year. Rush Limbaugh became the Republican nominee for President; Roseanne killed off her popular TV character; cures for baldness, arthritis, and AIDS were
1 February 1996
The world's best psychics seem to have cracks in their crystal balls, says the Skeptical Inquirer.
1 February 1995
From a Skeptics' mailing list comes a record of psychic slip-ups for the previous year.
1 February 1994
Are the End Times drawing nigh? Are fires and floods from heaven on the brink of seething down in wrathful purge, damning the damned and raising the faithful? Is God's finger poised on the panic button?
1 February 1994
For those of you who didn't notice, the end of the world came and went on November 14th. It also ended on November 24th, and is set to do so at the end of this year. If you've got a Christmas trip to Los Angeles planned, don't bother going -- a massive earthquake wiped out the city of the Angels as well as neighbouring San Diego at 7pm on May 8th.
1 May 1993
President Bush was not re-elected. Madonna did not become a gospel singer, and a UFO base was not found in the Mexican desert. These were just a few of the many predictions that had been made for 1992 by famous "psychics", but were dead wrong, as chronicled by the Bay Area Skeptics.
1 May 1992
Every year the Bay Area Skeptics takes a look at how successful psychics were in predicting the preceding 12 months. It looks like 1991 was as much a fizzer as previous years.
1 May 1991
About this time every year some diligent journalist trawls through all the year's events that made news and matches them against a list of predictions published a year earlier.
1 May 1989
A HAMILTON woman claims the predictions of a computerised horoscope she subscribed to were so accurate that she had a nervous breakdown.
1 November 1988
When the local paper carried a new advertisement, for 'Esoteric Astrology,' I had to reply to the number given. 'Esoteric,' of course, means 'intelligible only to the initiated' and the account given by its exponent laid her open to prosecution under the trades description act since it was clear that she, at least, had no idea what she was talking about. She said that her kind of astrology made no attempt to foretell the future, but that she used the predictions obtained to counsel people who were worried and perplexed. When I asked her what was the connection between the movement of the planets and the personal problems of people in New Plymouth, she replied in the pitying tones of a teacher talking to a backward five year old, "Well, you know that the moon is responsible for the tides." The following dialogue then ensued.
1 November 1988
Nostradamus and the Millenium. By John Hogue. Bloomsbury/Roulston Greene. 1987. 209 pp. Illustrations. $45,
1 November 1988
The Evening Post, 28 December 1987
1 November 1988
—in the New Scientist, 21 January 1988