Articles tagged with "someone"

The Six weeks of Scamming

21 January 2025

_After 6 weeks of searching, the scammers gave to me…

I was thinking the other day about the lyrics of the Mark Knopfler song “Sailing to Philadelphia” . It's a gorgeous song, recorded as a duet by Knopfler and James Taylor. It's all about the chaps who surveyed the Mason-Dixon line. You should have a listen.

The Short and Long of It

27 May 2024

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.

Silent Solo Skeptical Activism

13 November 2023

In the social media age the “Am I the A$@&@ole?” (AITA) post sub-genre provides a sincere 'check-yourself' calibration and a moment of schadenfreude. I think it originated in the Reddit dungeons, but has spread across many apps and an endless number of YouTube channels. A recent moral quandary of the AITA variety recently hit me and I thought I'd look for skeptical input.

Secularising the city

30 January 2023

For years, my hobby has been to walk the streets and collect up religious propaganda – most commonly, multicoloured 'Free Tickets to Heaven'.

Am I woke, or just morally broke?

7 November 2022

Ok, the title doesn't really reflect this article as you think it does…

Cleaning out my mailbox

11 April 2022

I recently had a clear out of my email inbox, as I'd reached about 20,000 unread emails. As a part of this onerous task, I unsubscribed from a large number of mailing lists. Many of them were from online stores where I'd never agreed to be emailed in the first place, but a bunch of them were from conspiracy groups where I'd signed up for more information, or filled in a form to get access to a series of nonsense videos (like “_The Truth About Cancer_” and “_GMOs Revealed_”, two truly awful video series). It was obvious that several of these mailing lists I hadn't even signed up for, so I assume there's some crossover and sharing of mailing lists between these groups. There are also some groups that I've decided to still receive emails from, such as Family First and Voices for Freedom, because I think it's important to keep an eye on them.

Newton's Flaming Laser Sword

6 September 2021

During lockdown, the Wellington Skeptics in the Pub group have been meeting online every week. It's been great to be able to continue our social meetings, but I also think it's a good way to keep us all sane! That connection of being able to chat and have a fun social time with others seems to be really good at helping with the feelings of isolation and worry that lockdown can bring to some of us.

The case of the missing VHS - FOUND!

16 November 2020

Good news! We have found someone who has a copy of the video (VHS tape) taken of James Randi speaking at Canterbury University back in 1993. Next steps will be to check if it's good to digitise, and if so, we'll look to publish it to our YouTube channel. Keep posted.

The Homeopathy Challenge

16 November 2020

In Homeopathy news, Edzard Ernst, retired academic physician and specialist in complementary and alternative medicine (and skeptic hero) has created a “challenge for all homeopaths of the world”. In a similar way to the James Randi Educational Foundation's one million dollar paranormal challenge, Ernst has come up with a scientific way for homeopaths to “prove” their worth. What entrants need to do is identify the contents of 6 homeopathic solutions that they have chosen, but that have been transferred into containers marked 1 – 6 by a notary and sent back to them.

WWG1WGA

9 November 2020

I'm sure most skeptics will have heard of QAnon by now - the anonymously named Q who posts online about shadowy organisations, and talks about how president Trump is fighting dark forces in the US. QAnon tends to use lots of code names and obscure references, including the oft used acronym used as the title of this section - it means Where We Go 1, We Go All. Here are a couple of examples of QAnon messages:

Influencing skeptics?

1 August 2018

I was having a flu jab the other day (because I believe in the amazing power of vaccines to prevent illness and protect vulnerable people in our community from infection) and told the nurse I was the editor of the NZ Skeptics (I know what a bragger!), and guess what, she assumed I didn't believe in vaccines. I soon cleared things up and she seemed genuinely relieved and shook my hand. It made me wonder what type of negative experiences she's had with people when they found out what her job is, and also if the idea of skepticism perhaps needs a bit of positive P.R.

Supermarkets & nutritional advice

1 November 2017

I rather like our local supermarket. Lovely staff, generally excellent products, and close to home as well.

Gifting Circles now illegal

16 July 2017

Women's gifting circles have made the news again this week as they are now officially considered a pyramid scheme by the Commerce Commission.

Kelvin Cruickshank talks to Jonah Lomu

23 April 2017

Kelvin Cruickshank has made the news because he's promoting a new book - "Surrounded by Spirit". In the book he claims he talked with the spirit of Jonah Lomu at a show last year, apparently unaware that Jonah's brother John was in the audience:

My Visit to faith healer Father John Rea

5 March 2017

Six of us skeptics went along to Father John Rea's healing event on Tuesday in Tawa, Wellington. John is a well known healer in New Zealand, and he's appeared on my skeptical radar in the past for making claims about being able to treat cancer.

Scientology out on the streets in Grafton

5 February 2017

I was messaged this week by someone who works near the new Scientology centre in Auckland. They told me that there are lots of Scientologists out on the streets at the moment, including outside the nearby hospital, trying to bring people into the church. The way they do this is quite disingenuous, normally starting with offering a free personality test - the Oxford Capacity Analysis test (nothing to do with Oxford University)

Donald Trump nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

7 February 2016

Someone has put Mr Trump forward for this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Supporters said in the submission that Mr. Trump deserved the prize for:

Thoughts on a billboard

1 May 2012

On a recent visit to New Plymouth I was rather taken aback to see a billboard outside a central city church posing the question: "Evolution? How come we still have apes?" It wasn't so much surprise that someone could know so little about evolutionary theory that they would think this was a persuasive argument - versions of this are often to be seen in the less sophisticated creationist publications - it was more that they should feel the urge to display their ignorance on a busy street corner.

Superstitious? Me? That depends

1 February 2009

When the Sunday Star-Times decided to survey the nation on how superstitious New Zealanders are and about what, I got used as guinea pig. Having done a lot of survey design and analysis during the course of my hodge-podge of an academic career, I often end up writing more about the questions than answering them. Add to that the tendency for being, as Margaret Mahy once characterised our group, "a person in a state of terminal caution", and you can imagine the result.