Last weekend I roped (no pun intended) my kids into a fun little project, making a mystery/conspiracy board as a decoration for our house. For the low cost of $22 for a cork board, $4 for a pack of 200 pins, $4 for a box of 400 sticky notes and $4 for red yarn (all from The Warehouse), along with a bunch of free community newspapers and promotional brochures, we spent a couple of hours putting together a great looking board:
With local council elections closing this week, there was concern that Voices for Freedom's efforts to have their members run for office without disclosing their affiliation would result in councils being stuffed with conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers. Thankfully that appears to not be the case, as a Stuff article claims that fewer than a dozen VfF aligned candidates were voted in.
The Ministry of Education are finally getting close to publishing guidelines for schools about allowing Religious Instruction classes.
Mark Hanna has written a great blog post detailing the issues the Chiropractic Board has had getting their members to abide by their codes and New Zealand law. While I'm not surprised to hear about Chiropractors' efforts to circumvent laws designed to protect patients, it is disappointing to hear. The Chair of the board wrote in their newsletter about a worrying experience she had:
Chris Savage, an ex police officer from Australia, has a long history of being outright dangerous. He's anti-vaccine, and claims to be able to treat autism and cancer with magnesium (chloride) and DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide) infusions. He's currently in New Zealand, and has been treating people while claiming he's a doctor.
Mark Hanna and I wrote a letter to the New Zealand Medical Journal about research we had completed showing that the majority of chiropractors break the Chiropractic Board policy on advertising. The policy states:
In the United States, the Texas board of education is very important because the state is so large. This means that the board has a large sway over which textbooks are used nationwide in schools. Historically Texas has been a battleground for creationism, with efforts to get as many fundamentalist Christians onto the board of education as possible.
A new group set up to counter ritual abuse and satanic worship has applied for almost $40,000 from the Government and the Lottery Grants Board to set up an office and send members to a conference in the United States.
A fiasco over a 'Natural Therapy Clinic' at Wanganui Hospital was finally resolved satisfactorily - but for the wrong reasons.
The small Pennsylvania town of Dover has become the latest battleground in the creation/evolution war. If it survives a legal test, this school district of 2800 children could become the first in the US to require that high school science teachers at least mention "intelligent design" (ID) theory (Dominion Post, 31 December). In October, the board passed this motion: "Students will be made aware of gaps and problems in Darwin's theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design. Note: Origins of Life is not taught."
I sent a copy of the advertisement to the Minister, asking him to confirm my impression that claiming to cure cancer is illegal, and also to protest vigorously if his limited funds were being used to "investigate dubious therapies". Almost before the Minister's secretarial staff had time to send me a formal acknowledgement, I had a letter from the Advertising Standards Complaints Board; the Ministry's routine policy is to refer all such letters as mine to this board.
When I received through the mail a coloured brochure from Time/Life advertising a series of videos and cassettes titled "Growing Younger", I was surprised to see that I could learn from Time/Life via their series how to develop an "ageless body". In addition I could learn to "help reverse ageing" and that the series could "open the door to a life free from the effects of aging" (sic).
Ray Carr was a fine example of an active Skeptic.