It has been a bad week for anyone who takes a birth control pill as a contraceptive or an abortifacient. Well, specifically a bad week for people in America or whose health care is impacted by the decisions of the President of the United States.
I continue to monitor the emails sent out by the Voices for Freedom crowd. My reaction is usually a combination of disbelief and despair. My impression is that they're struggling to remain relevant. Now that the vaccine mandates have disappeared, they seem to be concentrating on all manner of whacky stances.
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.
Last week I had a couple of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) Missionaries visit me. They called me a few days in advance to ask if it was okay to come round, and then I totally forgot about our meeting until I received a call saying they were having problems finding my house on the street.
Back to COVID seriousness now. It's been a frustrating week where we've seen the Delta variant now escape Auckland and head out to other parts of the country.
Using an older algorithm, GPT-2, with a fairly small data set that it had been pre-trained on, I fine tuned this particular piece of software on the entire back catalogue of QAnon posts. Below are 6 QAnon posts - three are the genuine article, and three are fakes created by GPT-2. Can you figure out which is which?
The Exclusive Brethren is a "high control" church run from Sydney by Bruce Hales, the "Elect Vessel". "High control" is a term used to describe groups where the leadership exert a high degree of control over members' private lives, including their finances, friendships and sex lives.
I had a phone call this week from "Spark". I spoke to a couple of Indian gentlemen who explained that my private IP address had been made public, and that this meant that my internet connection was compromised.
Sodium monofluoroacetate (1080) is a proven tool in the New Zealand pest control arsenal, but significant opposition to its use continues, much of it irrational. This article is based on a presentation to the 2011 NZ Skeptics Conference.
The world-wide panic over the MMR vaccine was sparked by the actions of one doctor who breached several standards of scientific practice. This article is based on a presentation to the 2010 NZ Skeptics conference.
The Painted Apple Moth spraying programme in the western suburbs of Auckland has generated considerable controversy. An alternative programme was evaluated at last year's Skeptics
Skepticism is very much concerned with assessing the quality of evidence in support of a particular claim. But evidence means different things to different people. In the first of a two-part series, Jim Ring examines the legal profession's view of the matter.
Even in a secular age, it's hard to surrender the religious habits of old
| Income | | | - | - | | Members' Subscriptions | 8,558.38 | | Interest Received | 1,837.64 | | Surplus from Conference | 2,144.77 | | Net Sundry Sales | 187.00 | | Miscellaneous | 231.73 | | Total Income | 12,959.52 |
Scientology recently offered $12 million to FACTNet, an Internet library providing information on the dangers of mind control and cults, including information critical of Scientology. FACTNet's directors turned down Scientology's proposal, because it contained terms they considered unacceptable.
Surprising results from a US study of the effectiveness of counselling on reducing juvenile crime.
People are very bad at estimating probability or understanding chance and randomness. Such innumeracy could well explain much of the phenomena currently treated as paranormal. This article, adapted from ones appearing in New Scientist and the Auckland Star deals with the illusions of probability that lead to claims of psychic powers.