This is the last week to pick up tickets for our conference in Christchurch at the end of July at a discounted price - from the 1st of June, the tickets will go up to their full price. So if you want to come and see the SGU, their entourage, and some engaging and informative local speakers, book now to avoid disappointment!
On the weekend Bronwyn and I, along with my 12 year old daughter, visited an open home to see a house that's currently on the market - a little subterfuge, acting like a happy family, all in the name of skepticism. However Bronwyn's asked that I don't talk about any of the details yet, so all you're getting for now is this teaser!
Our first article in this week's newsletter is from Patrick, who has summarised a recent Nature article about potential underestimation of sea-level rise over the next 60 years. Patrick's article ends with a quote from Edison that, when I read it, seemed too good to be true. So, like any good skeptic, I jumped onto Google to see if there was any truth to the quote. It turns out that it's likely to be true, at least in broad strokes.
Before Christmas I suggested to one of our readers that they write an article for us about a visiting climate denier who was giving talks about climate change around the country, hosted by Groundswell. That person has done an amazing job of writing up the event, showing just how bad some of Dr Happer's arguments are. I'd love to thank them by name, but their article is written under a pen name so I will carry the secret of their true identity to my grave.
We're living in strange times, with so much upheaval in the US that it's already having global repercussions.
In the last newsletter, one of the articles that I said was included was a piece by Bronwyn, the third and final in her series about The Telepathy Tapes. Unfortunately I forgot to actually add the article to the newsletter! So, in this issue we have two articles about Facilitated Communication. The first of them is the second part of Janyce Boynton's article on whether FC has changed since the early days, and the second is Bronwyn's article.
In lieu of my usual blathering, this week we have an update from our chair, Bronwyn, about our plans for our conferences this year and next:
Thank you to everyone who filled in our recent survey about the possibility of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast hosts coming over to New Zealand next year, and whether this might have an effect on our conference plans for this year and next. We've been discussing your responses as a committee, and will be able to let everyone know fairly soon what our plans are.
In my efforts to wrestle with the push to include AI content in our newsletter, I've been chatting recently with our newest regular contributor, Patrick Medlicott, about why I prefer content that is written by humans. One new reason that popped into my head is that I know, from editing people's stories every fortnight, that each of our writers leaves their own distinct fingerprints on each and every article they write. Bronwyn, Katrina and Patrick each have their own tell-tale signs that they have written an article - certain repeated typos, punctuation choices, use (or lack of use) of commas, sentence length, repeatedly used words and phrases, etc. Each of these things has become very familiar to me, and through my editing I try to clean up each article without losing too much of these fingerprints.
Okay, so maybe cats aren't cryptids, but we own two of them and sometimes I wish they were mythical beings rather than very real little monsters who regularly tear holes in my furniture.
Last weekend I travelled down to Christchurch for the DeCult conference, and it was fascinating to hear so many personal stories about the many ways in which cults coerce and mistreat people, as well as some of the ideas people have about how we may be able to minimise the damage that cults are able to do. There were lots of brave people who, having gone through hell while members of these groups, still had the energy to stand up to them and fight once they realised the wrongs that had been done. I was able to say hello to quite a few survivors of different cults who I've met over my years as a skeptic in New Zealand, and also some of our NZ Skeptics members who had made the trip to the conference. And our chair, Bronwyn, gave a great talk about ISTA and Highden that I was able to hear. Although I was volunteering to help at the conference, and had been rostered to work in a different room while Bronwyn was speaking, I managed to organise someone to cover me and my daughter so that we could sit in and hear her telling everyone about just some of the weirdness around Highden and Bruce Lyon.
A couple of weeks ago I talked with a journalist about psychics, as she was looking into a story that Kelvin Cruickshank appeared to have muscled his way into. As well as giving her some information about how psychics work, and a little about Kelvin, I had also suggested to her that she should visit a psychic to get an idea of how they operate. A day later she let me know that she was planning to visit a psychic fair that weekend, and I suggested that I could meet her there to brief her on what to expect. So, on Saturday morning two weekends ago, Bronwyn and I headed to Upper Hutt and met with Virginia.
We've had a bit of a changing of the guard over the last couple of weeks - Craig Shearer has decided to step back from his major responsibilities with the NZ Skeptics, as he plans to focus more on some of his other hobbies and endeavours. Craig will no longer be writing regular articles for us or hosting and editing our podcast, although he has said that he'll write something for us if and when he feels sufficiently impassioned by something annoyingly unskeptical, and he's planning to remain on the committee.
We're currently looking at streamlining this newsletter, and one promising option we're looking at is to move its creation to Wordpress, our current website CMS (Content Management System). The only obvious difference this would make to you would be that our newsletter emails would no longer contain the full text of our articles - instead there would be an excerpt, along with a link to the full article online. I'd love to hear from anyone for whom that would be an issue, where it might make it harder for you to access our newsletter (just email me at newsletter@skeptics.nz). Ideally I may be able to figure out a way to include the full text of our articles still, but so far a workable solution has eluded me.
I'm going to keep my intro short this week, because our articles are pretty long and I don't want to bore you all before you even get to the first one - which is an article from someone we've not heard from before, Darren Bird. Darren's written about ACT's new proposed bill attempting to legislate the use of bathrooms - and if you think it sounds suspicious, you'd be right. After Darren we have a piece from Craig, who has looked at someone who's fascinated me for a little while now, Don Murray; I've spent some time clicking through his website over the last few months, and still can't get to grips with him and what he thinks his special powers are. Thankfully Craig's done a nice job of summarising some of his nonsense.
Although we've reduced our newsletter output to biweekly, that doesn't stop us from releasing an issue on Christmas day! Wherever you are, and whatever, if anything, you're celebrating, I hope you have an awesome day.
It's weird not having had a newsletter out last week. Hopefully you didn't miss us too much! As our sole editor I'll be keeping to a biweekly schedule for now - although if we get more content coming our way from readers and committee members, who knows, I may be able to return to producing the newsletter on a weekly basis. For now, you can expect to read something from myself, Bronwyn and Craig every fortnight, and then we'll be recording our podcast in the days following the newsletter's release, and chatting about either our articles or something else that tickles our fancy. If you feel moved to write an article for us, just send your article to news@skeptics.nz and we'll let you know if we plan to publish it, which is very likely to be the case as we love reading all your thoughts on skeptical topics, and I'm sure our audience does too. And, once your article's been published, we'll probably want you to join us on the podcast to talk about it as well - but only if you're comfortable with doing that.
I was going to publish an article this week about another of my scam adventures - this time, a “job” I accepted where I was supposedly testing mobile apps and getting paid lots of money to do it. But, with contributions from occasional contributor Tim Atkin, new contributor Tim Price (who is a work colleague of mine, and a new member of our Society), and Bronwyn, I don't dare make this week's issue any longer than it already is! Rest assured, though, that you'll be able to read about my scam soon (as well as another scam I took part in last week, where I was promised a payment of $100,000, and all I needed to do was pay them $1,000 first), and you can probably hear about it on our podcast as well.
I've got a broad collection of items this week. I start off looking at the recent spat between a couple of prominent alleged psychic mediums and their tours around New Zealand.
This week I'm concentrating on climate change misinformation through a bunch of slightly connected items.
This week I've looked at what might be behind a funny story about combat-ready mermaids, and found out that it's not the answer I thought I was going to find. I also did a silly thing, and joined a Multi Level Marketing scheme - but don't worry, it's all above board. Just email me if you'd like to join my downline or buy some of my scrapbooking products, and I can give you my affiliate link.
This week I've an update on the NZ Skeptics $100K challenge, and take a look at a scam product I've seen advertised via an app I use.
In this week's newsletter I've taken a deep dive into a spam email trying to flog me snake oil, and found a funny coincidence at the end of the rainbow. I've also written about some of the more sneaky tactics I've seen the church of the Eastern Lightning use to try to attract new members, and keep them in the church. And finally Bronwyn has returned to Multi Level Marketing schemes (MLMs), detailing Prüvit and their health food products - I'm very tempted to make a joke about the food pyramid!
This week I take a look at Halloween - today!, talk about Elon Musk's Twitter purchase, the Just Stop Oil campaign, and Bronwyn gives us an update about Highden Estate and ISTA.
This Friday, Bronwyn and I will be setting off on a road trip to Hamilton to visit the Mormon temple there, as it's recently been renovated and is currently open to visitors for the first time in 64 years. I'm really looking forward to getting to see the lavish interior before it's “dedicated” and becomes inaccessible to us heathens again. Given that we'll be near Auckland, Craig has organised a Skeptics in the Pub event for this Friday night. Details are below, and we'd love to see you there!
This week I'm taking a look at a cult-like organisation in Australia that's advertising itself on social media - The World Transformation Movement, or Human Condition. I'm left a little confused about how it's all meant to work.
This week I take a look at a media attack on our friend Dr Siouxsie Wiles, and talk about the European heat wave and climate change.
This week I've got an eclectic mix of topics. I cover Matariki weekend, the awful Roe v. Wade US supreme court decision and the implications here, and look at my carbon footprint.
I apologise for my lack of inspiration in the title, but at least we have some interesting articles for you:
Hello skeptics, this week I've a few topics to cover - from the horrendous massacre in Texas, to some thoughts on a public lecture, and some reflections on the mis- and dis-information study done by Te Pūna Matatini.
This week we're covering a few different topics. I look at some potential good news in relation to SIDS and look back at claims made about it in the past. We've got some bizarre claims of paranormal ability related to wind control (don't think I've ever come across that one before), and I look at the recent crash in cryptocurrency markets.
For those of you who listen to our fortnightly NZ Skeptics podcast, Yeah… Nah! (which is based on this newsletter), you'll be aware that I tested positive for COVID recently. It's been a week now since my first day of symptoms, and I'm feeling a lot better than I did a week ago. Craig was kind enough to cover for me on the radio talking with Graeme Hill last week, but thankfully I was feeling good enough to get back in the saddle yesterday afternoon. For those of you who listen to the radio, I highly recommend listening to Graeme's “Hill's Weekend” show on Sunday afternoons - Graeme always manages to line up a set of fascinating people to talk to, and I'm always grateful to be able to talk with him about skepticism and some of the nonsense we find out there in the world.
This week we take a look at the Broadcasting Standards Authority decision about a complaint from NZDSOS against Seven Sharp. We look at the Sovereign Citizen "Sheriffs" disruption of an ANZAC service, and Bronwyn continues her series delving into MLMs - this week looking at Arbonne.
I hope you're enjoying a few days off at Easter weekend, maybe enjoying some Hot Cross Buns dripping with butter, and some chocolate eggs.
Today's newsletter includes a fun evening myself and some other skeptics spent meditating, a rant about my junk email, and the daft convoy that's on its way to Marsden Point. I take a deep dive into Arise church, looking at their preaching of horrible prosperity gospel nonsense, and the horrific way they treat their interns. Also Bronwyn Rideout has written about a UK charity promoting the discredited CEASE therapy for “treating” autistic people, and finally I ask you all for help with finding skeptical dates in New Zealand history.
This week I delve into fringe groups becoming politically involved (as I expected they would do so). I look into website hacking for good, and also feature some pieces from guest authors on the Russian/Ukraine war and Putin's motivations.
This week's newsletter seems to have ended up being mostly about acronyms. I've written about how to determine what is and isn't a cult, using the BITE model, drawing from a recent visit I received from a pair of Sister Missionaries. I also try to get to the nugget of truth at the centre of the NESARA conspiracy. Bronwyn takes a look at one of my favourite skeptical topics, MLMs - the scam I love to hate. She's even promising to write more about some of the MLMs we see in New Zealand, which I'm really looking forward to. Finally Bronwyn wonders whether Finland exists.
This week's newsletter is all about those sweet, sweet sounds. There's a story about Spotify, starring Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Joe Rogan. And one about expensive audiophile-level computer hardware. On top of this, some of you might be interested to hear that we're going to try something new with the newsletter soon, something audio related...
In this week's newsletter I spend far too much time debunking a baseless vaccine injury claim about Celine Dion, convince my wife to use tin foil to treat what ails her, and talk about a tragic, and avoidable, death in New Zealand from COVID. And, after all of that, committee member Bronwyn has returned with another great article, this time looking with a critical eye at some claims that have been made about the damage fireworks can cause.