Articles tagged with "anyone"

This week, long time skeptic Felicity Goodyear-Smith tells us her story...

Women's gifting circles have made the news again this week as they are now officially considered a pyramid scheme by the Commerce Commission.

Englishwoman Doris Stokes was a medium - by which I don't mean her dress size was between small and large. She claimed she spoke to people "on the other side," to use the euphemistic jargon of the darkened drawing room. She was a sort of cosmic Telecom operator, only I suspect her charges were a good deal higher than 99c a minute plus GST.

On Saturday, July 10, Cynthia Shakespeare died in a car accident on the way to a tramping trip. With her death we have lost a wonderfully enthusiastic and energetic member of the Skeptics.

Britain's The Skeptic magazine celebrated its tenth anniversary with a Top-Ten survey of paranormal phenomena of the decade.

A selection of the song competition entries presented at the Skeptics Conference.

During my recent visit to America, I had the pleasure of making contact with several of the Skeptics in the San Francisco area. The editor of BASIS (Bay Area Skeptics Information Sheet), Kent Harker, entertained me for a day and gave me the information from Free Inquiry that has been put together to make the article on American Faith Healers. I also had a happy evening with Bob Steiner, the founder of the Bay Area Skeptics, He is a chartered accountant but now spends more time on his magic shows and the affairs of the skeptics. He is currently demonstrating to local policemen how sharks work the 'three-card-trick' or 'thimble-rigging' and how accomplices work with them. Numbers of these sharps can be seen in action on the streets of New York, but not to my knowledge elsewhere. Most interestingly, Bob showed me the video of his appearances as 'Steve Terbot', the American psychic on the Bert Newton show in Australia. He was on three shows. In the first two he demonstrated his powers and then allowed himself to be unmasked. He also appeared at some local halls and was showered with money (which he returned) from earnest believers. I have several issues of BASIS, dealing with the matter but will not repeat them here as it was fully covered in the June 1984 issue of the Australian Skeptic which many members will receive. However, if members would like to know more, please let me know. I have several phone numbers of Bay Area skeptics. If anyone is visiting there I am sure they will be as warmly welcomed as I was.

By all accounts the first annual meeting of the Society at. Dunedin recently was a great success. This edition of the Skeptic has been designated as a conference special as we thought that members would welcome a permanent record of an historical occasion. The timing of the conference was determined by David Marks' departure and this meant that several of us were unable to go. 1 could not go because I had to supervise the dress rehearsal of the school play (If you want to know, Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco and a great success).