NZ Skeptics Articles

Articles tagged with "sun"

Sun protection pill goes on sale in NZ

8 October 2017

NZ now has its second ingested product for sun protection being sold. The first hit the market a few years ago, and is from a company called Osmosis Skincare. Their product contains "harmonised" water, which is described as:

The Apocalypse has been moved

1 October 2017

David Meade, who I spoke about last month as predicting the end of the world around the 20th of September, has given us all a reprieve. Obviously the world didn't end, but he now says that October the 21st is the real end of the world.

The Spectre of Kahurangi

1 May 2001

Goethe's Faust is a tale of the supernatural. According to a famous passage, on Walpurgisnacht a witch's sabbat was celebrated on top of the Brocken, a mountain in the Black Forest. Old maps show this point circled by witches on broomsticks. Although probably not a very ancient tradition, it grabbed the imagination of 19th century romantics. They claimed at certain times magical visions could be seen from the peak. Even though no witches were visible on the mountain, gigantic shadowy figures were projected onto the clouds; the Spectre of the Brocken.

The Home Schooler's Guide To The Galaxy

1 August 1998

IT'S a damned rotten trick, I know, but I rang up my mum and asked her a simple question, does the Earth go round the Sun, or is it the other way around? She wasn't sure, but felt the most obvious, correct answer was that the Sun orbits the Earth.

Forum

1 May 1991

A strange phenomenon is again manifesting itself in the pastoral areas of our borough. October has once again brought appearances of what we Mt Eden Skeptics call "Crop Rectangles" — bare, rectangular patches of earth amongst the normally verdant parklands. They have no reasonable explanation, but they do have a common, peculiar feature, which leads us to believe that they are associated with some sort of meteorological cult.

Belief in the Stars is not a Good Sign

1 February 1989

The recent revelations that the United States President's wife consults astrologers in scheduling important presidential events have embarrassed the U.S. Yet this startling discovery reveals only the tip of the iceberg. Throughout the world people make investments, change jobs, select their mates, and seek medical treatment on the basis of astrological forecasts. Virtually everyone knows the "sun sign" under which he or she was born. Yet very few people understand the origins and tenets of this ancient practice. Especially disturbing is the fact that according to a 1986 Gallup poll, 52 percent of teenagers polled accept astrology as true.