8 June 2026 - Approx. 1 min read
…if you're a student. Come on, you knew there was going to be a catch! But, if you are a student or know one who might be keen, please check out Lee Traynor's article below where he explains a little about his very generous offer of covering the ticket costs for up to 20 students coming to our conference. Lee's been to some of our conferences in the past, visited us at the Wellington Skeptics in the Pub, and also helped out with our still-to-be-finished-off (and the fault here lies entirely with me) plagiarism project.
6 June 2023 - Approx. 3 min read
This weekend I think I may have finally managed to reach the end goal of my time in the Eastern Lightning (Church of Almighty God) group in New Zealand. Having been asking for months now if I could get my hands on one of the many books that the church prints, I finally have a copy.
16 May 2022 - Approx. 9 min read
On May 17th, 1894, news of an arrest made in Petone the previous night hit the broadsheets and started spreading across the country and even over the ditch. While it wasn't a case of murder, there was certainly no small amount of mayhem and mystery which left reporters hoping for some scandalous revelations to be made.
30 November 2020 - Approx. 1 min read
Thank you Mark Fletcher for letting us know that you had a copy of the video of James Randi's 1993 Christchurch talk. He'd even transcoded the video from VHS to DVD several years ago, which made it a lot easier for me to get it onto YouTube. Thanks Mark, I owe you a beer!
9 November 2020 - Approx. 2 min read
If the US election hasn't caused you enough stress, you could read a recent “take down” of James Randi titled The man who destroyed skepticism, published soon after his death on the popular Boing Boing blog, that is sure to make your blood boil. I for one was very surprised and disappointed to see the Boing Boing website, which normally has a reputation for good quality reporting, hosting this hit piece written by Mitch Horowitz. Mitch is a believer in the spiritual realm, and his own website describes him as “a historian of alternative spirituality and one of today's most literate voices of esoterica, mysticism, and the occult”. The article includes such gems as:
1 February 1995 - Approx. 1 min read
'Twas James who bent a tablespoon,
1 November 1993 - Approx. 2 min read
A selection of the song competition entries presented at the Skeptics Conference.