Why are you a skeptic - Felicity Goodyear-Smith
This week, long time skeptic Felicity Goodyear-Smith tells us her story...
This week, long time skeptic Felicity Goodyear-Smith tells us her story...
The flourishing pet psychic industry has received free publicity from an Australian article reprinted in the NZ Herald (23 January). I guess it was the silly season, that time of year when papers are scratching to fill their pages.
Canterbury University will next year be offering a Stage I course on critical thinking, to be called Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus. Named after a classic book by Martin Gardner, the course, Philosophy 110, will be headed by founding member of the NZ Skeptics, Denis Dutton. Prof Dutton says it will fulfill a demand for a sharp, smart course in critical thinking from a standpoint quite different from that offered by traditional logic and philosophy.
by Gavin East, from Top of the Morning Book of Epitaphs, ed Brian Edwards, Tandem Press, Auckland, 1998.
For those who were not at the AGM in Auckland, I should tell you that I was elected as Chairman and Phil Bradley as Secretary at that meeting. Other Committee members are listed elsewhere in this edition. I cannot hope to emulate Denis Dutton or David Marks before him but I'll certainly do my best to keep the momentum of the Skeptics going.
A front page report of a self-proclaimed psychic's prediction that Louisa Damodran's body would be found "on a beach" has earned the "New Zealand Truth" an award for gullibility from the country's Skeptics.

The Dominion Sunday Times, 4 October 1987
The New Zealand Skeptics are offering $10,000 for a paranormal person.