9 October 2023
This week my contribution is relatively small. Today, as I write this, is my 15th wedding anniversary, so my lovely wife and I are doing some celebrating today. But, I've put together an item covering some email conversations I've been having of the last week or two with somebody who's coming from the other side of things, evidence-wise, and has some quite interesting beliefs.
3 October 2022
In my last newsletter I mentioned the local body elections which are currently underway. The elections have some candidates standing who are aligned with various “freedom” and anti-vax groups. The media has done a fairly good job of identifying at least some of the candidates representing dodgy positions.
19 September 2022
Finally this week, I received my local body elections pack. I have the opportunity to vote for candidates for the Mayor of Auckland, and members of the Auckland Council, for a local board, and also a liquor licensing trust (where I live in Auckland, we're a “dry” area - where we can only purchase alcohol from licensing-trust-run businesses).
14 February 2022
The other day I noticed that the medical misinformation site NZDSOS - where a few anti-vaccine doctors promote their “alternative” COVID ideas - had changed its look. This is an issue for me, as a few months ago I created a spoof site called NZD-SOS which I made to look like the original site. My site pointed out that there are more doctors called Sarah, Michael or Kate, for example, that have signed an open letter in support of COVID vaccination, than there are doctors who have signed the NZDSOS open letter warning against vaccination.
9 November 2020
Another newsletter, another election. This time the US appears to have, narrowly, come to its senses and chosen to vote out their current science-denying leader - and my guess is that most skeptics are breathing a sigh of relief. Those of us at Wellington Skeptics in the Pub on Friday certainly did a thorough job of dissecting the election, along with its many rules, regulations, polls, predictions and polemics.
1 November 2015
The anti-fluoride circus made a new home this spring in the Coromandel locality of Thames (population 6,700). This circus did not feature any elephants though, or monkeys, or even humans performing under duress, neither were there any dramatic highwire acts or somersaults, unless you were to count the verbal gymnastics of those seeking to remove artificial fluoridation from the town's supply. In the hours before the referendum results were released, the Advertising Standards Authority found that Fluoride Free New Zealand (FFNZ) and their supporters had made a series of misleading claims during the campaign.
1 May 2007
After a bloodless coup, the NZ Skeptic has a new editor. This doesn't mean much in practical terms; for many years I've been working closely with previous ed Annette Taylor. She will now take on the roles that I used to-subediting, proofing, making cups of tea, cooking dinner and the like. It won't be long before we can enlist the daughter into the production of this fine publication.
1 February 2005
In the Autumn 2004 issue of the NZ Skeptic, we reported on Vicki Hyde's prediction in the Dominion Post that George Bush would win the US presidential election. Given that this was at the height of the scandals over Abu Ghraib prisoners and the lack of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, it seemed a bold claim indeed, on a par with her prediction that the All Blacks would miss the 1999 World Cup final. But once again, history has shown our chair-entity to be better at the prophecy game than almost any of the professional seers.