14 April 2025 - Approx. 5 min read
I had YouTube running as background noise while marking some essays the other day, and my playlist decided to reward my lack of attention with a new video by one of my favourite channels, Keya's World. It's a great channel that follows the various scams and scammers in the entrepreneurial and health & wellness spaces. Keya has an interesting perspective on it all, having once been deep into the woo. Her commentary style won't be to everyone's taste, but I'm always fascinated by what she finds; her videos on Matthew McConaughey's foray into motivational speaking/self-improvement are appointment viewing. This time, however, it wasn't McConaughey that pulled me away from my stack of essays.
8 July 2024 - Approx. 5 min read
Originally published in Issue 26 of the NZ Skeptic, February 1993
2 December 2018 - Approx. 2 min read
On Wednesday a group of us skeptics visited the Ark Man, Rod Walsh, who has been over in New Zealand from Australia on tour. Rod's schtick is that god told him in the '90s to build a scale model of Noah's Ark from Genesis. Apparently the day after he was told this by god, he turned on the radio and two people were having a conversation about the ark - which proved to him that god's voice had been real. Rod has now built 6 scale replicas of Noah's Ark over the last 20 years, and has been touring the world with his scale models since the '90s.
1 August 2007 - Approx. 4 min read
It's often said that scientists long rejected the idea of meteorites, but the evidence for this assertion is far from convincing.
1 May 2005 - Approx. 1 min read
Julia Mahoney, 9 November, www.stuff.co.nz
1 August 2004 - Approx. 10 min read
Did the ancestors of the Celts sail to New Zealand and establish a network of megalithic survey points and astronomical sight lines? Some think so
1 August 2003 - Approx. 17 min read
Ancient Phoenicians in New Zealand? A recent book makes the claim, but the evidence doesn't bear scrutiny.
1 August 1998 - Approx. 2 min read
There is no "face" on the Red Planet, according to pictures sent back from the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor. The BBC's science correspondent says the news will dampen down the controversy that has raged since images were transmitted back to Earth in 1976 from the Viking spacecraft.
1 August 1996 - Approx. 4 min read
Surely the Kaimanawa Wall story was one of the great beat-ups of all time. Here was a natural rock outcrop, which experts immediately told us was of a kind common in the area, raised to status of "great mystery" and worthy of the other "X Files puzzles" of Easter Island, South America and so on.
1 February 1993 - Approx. 5 min read
New Zealand Skeptics walk happily on red-hot embers, protected by the laws of physics. Fijian firewalkers, however, are said to stroll across white-hot stones. How do they do it?
