A few months ago, I attended a talk given at the Wellington Humanists about consciousness. In the middle of the talk we were shown a short, 5 minute segment of a documentary piece that shows animals, from elephants all the way down to caterpillars, getting drunk after eating fermented marula fruit.
Liza Schneider has written an article for the BoP Times, printed online in the Herald, which promotes nonsense therapies for animals.
"The results argue for more trials of the fish skins for burns", the vets said.
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.
The Tertiary Education Commission was suffering from "dilutions of grandeur" when they identified homeopathic training as a nationally important strategic priority for New Zealand. That's the reason the NZ Skeptics have given the TEC the Bent Spoon Award for the most publicly gullible action of 2005.
New Zealand soils are deficient in selenium and this can cause serious health problems for animals. A 500kg animal needs about 1mg selenium daily. There is no evidence that New Zealand adults need selenium supplements and this situation has been described as "a deficiency in search of a syndrome".
Scientific studies suggest "organic" foods are neither healthier nor safer than genetically modified products or those grown conventionally.
John Riddell finds some creationist claims really are testable, unfortunately for them.
SKEPTICS conferences are always a bag of allsorts. Having piped up at last year's AGM and suggested the next conference should be in Wellington, I was landed with organising it. Thankfully, I had the Wellington Cabal to help: Cynthia Shakespeare, Tony Vignaux, Richard Sadleir, Mike Clear, Bob Brockie and Wayne Hennessey.
It is rare that Nelson interests the world's news media. The "sheep suspended from pine trees" story was sufficiently bizarre to get their attention.
By Graham Phillips. Pan, 1990. 168pp. $9.95 (paperback).