Articles tagged with "event"

Decult is back – with a special offer for our sceptical friends!

Talk with skeptics & rationalists around the World! We call it Global Skeptics in the Pub.

October's shaping up to be a great month for skepticism - not only do we have Halloween at the end of the month, with both spooky nonsense events and rival Christian nonsense events, but also on Tuesday the 13th it's International Skeptics Day, which is being celebrated this year by running the annual online Global Skeptics in the Pub event. And, if that's not enough, the Decult conference is happening on the weekend of the 24th and 25th of October. There are more details on both of these events below, including an awesome 2 for 1 deal for Decult tickets.

Last night I went to see Sue Nicholson at the Petone Spiritualist Church along with Bronwyn, frequent skeptical partner in crime Tim, and two of my children - as well as one of their friends. Sue was appearing at the Spiritualist Church as a fundraising event, with the church charging a $5 entry fee. We figured that this amount was a lot more palatable for a skeptic to pay than the $50 to $70 she usually charges for her public events.

A few days ago Craig Shearer messaged the rest of the NZ Skeptics committee with the below photo, and asked us all “What's a skeptic to do?”:

On Saturday night I went to see wrestling. Specifically, I went to the All Star Wrestling Porirua 2 event, where eight different wrestling matches were held in one evening. Here's the signed poster I paid $7 for, to commemorate the event:

I've contemplated writing a series about charities and common fundraising practices since Christmas, when retrospectives and takedowns of Band Aid's 1984 hit Do they know it's Christmas? made their annual rounds. To be up front, I worked as a door-to-door fundraiser in Canada for several months while I waited for my visa application to return to New Zealand to be approved. It was a great job, and allowed me to work on behalf of global charities like World Wildlife Fund and Doctors without Borders. It also gave me insight into the pitfalls and controversies that exist in this field, and how charities and their audiences mutually struggle to adapt to each other's evolving needs and interests. Practices for public engagement that seemed well-meaning in the 1970s continue, despite decades of criticism about child safety and questions about how much money actually reaches people and communities most in need.

A few weeks ago, fellow Skeptics in the Pub member Tim and I went on a visit to an event run by a group in NZ called Thinking Matters. The event was an opportunity to meet and argue with an “atheist” - although in reality the atheist in question was Jonathan Noyes, a Christian from the US who used to be an atheist until his mid-20s. It was a really interesting evening, where the gimmick was that as soon as Jonathan put on his baseball cap he took on the persona of a slightly obnoxious but knowledgeable atheist. Apart from the occasional insult, using phrases like “ignorant goat herders” and “sky daddy”, he did a fairly good job of laying out some of the main reasons atheists have for not believing in God.

I must admit I had believed climate change due to anthropogenic (man-made) effects meant that parts of the planet became hotter and wetter, and parts became colder. In other words, summers were hotter and winters could become colder.

Just over a week ago we hosted two segments of the second annual Global Skeptics in the Pub Online - an event organised by Californian skeptics to coincide with their annual conference. It was a fun event again, with some really interesting perspectives, and it's always nice to hear what other skeptical groups are up to.

Bridget Williams Books warmly invites you to a special BWB Talk in Christchurch for Shaun Hendy's latest book: The Covid Response: A Scientist's Account of New Zealand's Pandemic and What Comes Next.

On Friday evening Bronwyn and I, rather than running our usual Skeptics in Cyberspace meeting, visited the Johnsonville Community Centre to experience the signs and wonders of a Christian Revival event, where we were promised healing, hope and miracles.

As I'm sure you're all aware, although I'd question whether it really should be international news, the Catholic Pope has died. So we're all now going to be eagerly awaiting the white smoke that tells us the Catholic cardinals have chosen their new leader. I wish this wasn't news - a small group of senior (both old and high-ranking) people choosing which of them gets to be in charge of a pre-scientific organisation with supernatural beliefs doesn't seem to be something we should have to care about. But…

Share International is an organisation that I've been interested in for quite a few years now. Whenever I see their stands at wellness events and local fairs, I make a beeline for them and have a chat about aliens, UFOs, crop circles and more. It's always seemed a little weird that their membership is predominantly retirees - I tend to associate UFO belief with younger people who have a passion for science and technology, but without the critical mindset or understanding of the complexities involved with interstellar travel to understand that their beliefs are implausible.

The Go Green Expo is an annual weekend-long event that has been running for just over a decade. Starting in Wellington, the organisers have since spread to other cities in New Zealand, currently running events in Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch and the Hawke's Bay. Although the event is slated to be a “sustainable lifestyle” expo, there's very little that's sustainable or eco-friendly being promoted at the event.

It's going to be a busy end to this year, with two conferences coming up and a few other goings on that we're looking forward to here in Wellington. As well as the Decult and NZ Skeptics/NZARH Conferences, Bronwyn and I have a couple of smaller events on the horizon. Firstly, we're booked to go on a ghost hunt at the end of this month, and then we're also hoping to finally get to hear a talk on UFOs from Share International. We've tried twice so far, and had events cancelled on us, so hopefully the third time's a charm. Expect to hear more from us on these events in this newsletter, and maybe also an alien special issue coming soon.

Anke Richter, who we've talked to on our podcast in the past, has promised to write an article for our newsletter soon. In the meantime she'd like us to let you all know that, if you're in Christchurch, there are a couple of interesting events coming up.

Recently, I've been researching an area in County Limerick, Ireland, for a genealogy project, and I came across a bog burst, one of the deadliest bog disasters in Ireland. If you try to look up the Castlegarde bog disaster in Ireland that killed 21 people, you will find conflicting information. This was one of the initial articles I found:

From 7pm on Friday night we opened the first ever 24 hour Global Skeptics in the Pub, an online event in the run-up to the SkeptiCal conference, hosted online by skeptics in Northern California. The event coincided with our usual four-weekly Skeptics in Cyberspace meeting, so it lined up nicely.

Craig wrote a couple of weeks ago about a couple of strange ideas he was introduced to at a Matariki event he attended - the idea that Matariki's brightness can predict the future, and also an idea that the earth has apparently recently shifted on its axis by 20 degrees.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the Save Marsden Point Refinery efforts, spearheaded by conspiracy theorists who are trying to convince Channel Infrastructure, by hook or by crook, to stop the decommissioning of the refinery and restore it, while also converting it to be able to process our own crude oil. The main driver behind this effort, Karl Barkley, suffered a mishap recently when his van (which is covered in billboards for The Cause) was towed away from a loading zone by Hamilton Towing Services.

Over this past weekend, we've been treated to beautiful displays in the sky at night, courtesy of space weather, and the sun ejecting some mass towards us - known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME.

I was planning to attend a Safe ICT event in Wellington last weekend, where I was going to be warned about the dangers of WiFi mutating my mitochondria. I've written about Safe ICT before, after I spent a while talking to them at the Go Green expo in Wellington. They're an advocacy group who appear to have irrational fears about technology, and prefer to side with individual fringe scientists who write flawed scientific papers, rather than choosing the side that has the weight of scientific evidence behind it. A large part of what they seem to push for is turning off any wireless protocols where possible, and buying expensive ethernet to USB adapters that allow you to run a wired connection from your home router to your mobile phone. Wait until they find out about everything else around them that happens to generate electromagnetic fields! Anyway, a prior event ran for longer than expected, and I missed the event, but next time they run something local I'll be sure to attend.

Although most of my friends on Facebook are either skeptically-minded or at the very least have a respect for science and evidence, I do have some outliers. In the past I've sent or accepted friend requests from visiting Mormons, conspiracy theorists and others who are comfortable engaging with me. Additionally, a significant proportion of the time I spend on Facebook is spent browsing the facebook feeds of people who have a very different world view to mine.

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.

As a major fan of Fall and Hallowe'en, the sudden absence of the holiday from my calendar was one of the few points of culture shock I had when I migrated to New Zealand. I soon found out that nothing could unite the members of this fine nation more than a chorus of tut-tutting about how corporate and how American Hallowe'en was, how tacky it was to send your kids out begging for treats, how much the holiday glorified chocolate, and so on and so forth. It can get a little grinchy sometimes, especially in the comments section of the NZ Herald website.

At the prompting of Mark and Bronwyn during last week's podcast episode, I attended a church meeting last evening. This was an event called “Lean In: Christianity and Politics - Meet the Candidates”. This was held at the Windsor Park Baptist Church - only a few kilometres away from my home. The venue itself was pretty un-chuchlike, in that it was previously the Windsor Park Tavern.

Last Monday night I attended a local talk given by National Party leader Chris Luxon, along with Tim and Alexander, who have written articles for this week's newsletter. This meeting wasn't the main attraction, it was just a prelude to the big event of the week on Tuesday.

It's hard to believe it's the end of February already, and the official end to summer, at least on a calendar month basis. With all the rain and weather events we've had, it's hard to think that this summer has been a classic one. Still, it may well have finally made some of the more sluggish members of the population wake up to the reality of climate change. And what a reality it is, with the massive destruction that took place in Hawke's Bay and other areas. The cost of replacing infrastructure seems that it place a big burden on our economy for some time.

Our annual conference starts on Friday, and for those of you who plan to come but haven't bought a ticket yet, you'd better be quick. I spent yesterday afternoon with Bronwyn and Daniel, running through a sound check at the venue, testing that the technology works as expected, finalising our catering and trying out our Friday night "entertainment” (we also had enough time to grab a quick beer at the Welsh Dragon bar, our venue for Friday evening's event).

Hey, I know that there are some skeptics in Auckland. We're holding our first regular (monthly) Skeptics in the Pub this Tuesday night (4th October, 7pm) at Dice & Fork at Victoria Park Market. We'd love to see you there.

How much would you pay to be led in a chant before drinking a bitter cup of cacao?

It's been a while since the Auckland skeptics met for an evening of socialising, but at long last there's an event happening this Friday. As Bronwyn and myself are hoping to be in Auckland on Friday after our visit, with Craig, to the Mormon temple in Hamilton, we figured it'd be good to meet in a pub afterwards and decompress over a beer or two.

It's been an action-packed week this week, with lots of interesting things happening in conspiracy circles, both here and overseas. And a lot of it seems to be in the right direction, with prominent anti-vaxxers and conspiracy mongers like Robert Kennedy Jr and Chantelle Baker having their social media accounts removed, the parliament protest something of a fizzle, the operators of Counterspin being arrested, and Billy TK and Vinny Eastwood having their day in court.

Hello, it's Craig here - so, I'm back writing newsletters, after taking a three week break.

Just over a week ago Bronwyn and I, along with another couple of skeptics, visited parliament for the quarterly Prayers at Parliament event - the fourth now that I've attended. I swear that these events are becoming more partisan over time. Despite the organisers' claims that the meetings are cross-party, it seems that not only are the MPs who attend mostly National MPs (at this event it was just Simeon Brown), but the topics we're being asked to pray about are more overtly political, and there's a strong sense of what you should be praying for for each topic - unsurprisingly it aligns pretty well with the National party platform.

On Friday, June 2nd 2022, homophobic and antisemetic slurs were grafittied on both sides of Glora of Greymouth, with a burned rainbow flagged staked to the ground out front while the owner/operator slept inside. The deconsecrated church is a performing arts venue/arts project which hosts events for the rainbow community.

Way back when we first started writing the weekly newsletter, one of our earliest topics was the QAnon movement, and the shocking events of the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol in the US. This week, the committee investigating those events held its first public hearings on prime-time TV. I spent a little of my Friday afternoon with the live stream of it playing while I worked. There were some shocking revelations, though I'm guessing that many people already suspected a lot of what was revealed.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my visit to Counterspin's travelling roadshow (maybe circus is a better term?), but I figured that everyone might want some background - and an update on how their tour's going.

Yesterday evening I attended an interesting Counterspin Media event in Wellington. Counterspin, for those not in the know, is an “alternative” media organisation in NZ run by Kelvyn Alp and Hannah Spierer. They have a small studio from which they create long videos about conspiracy ideas, and post these videos to places like Rumble, Telegram and GTV (because they keep getting banned from more moderate platforms such as YouTube and Facebook).

Just over a year ago I wrote a newsletter issue titled “_Beware of Scientologists Bearing Gifts_”, where I talked about an interesting ruse in Auckland. Someone from the Auckland Scientology office had been creating lots of fake MeetUp groups as a way to trick people into visiting their building - with event names such as “Success through Communication”, “How to get RID of STRESS!”, “English Study Group”, “Rubik's Cube Master Class” and “FREE movie night Auckland”.

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.

This week's newsletter feels nicely well-rounded, like we've managed to cover several of the core areas that skeptics are interested in. I start with a topical story about a new psychogenic illness that appears to be affecting teens around the world, including here in New Zealand. Bronwyn then delves into the background of one of my most hated MLMs, dōTERRA. (I've talked to company reps for dōTERRA at several events over the years, and each time I've been told some of the most outrageous claims about the medical benefits of their essential oils. I even left one event smelling like a breath mint, after telling someone I had a headache and being treated with a liberal amount of concentrated peppermint oil smeared onto my forehead.) I was contacted on the weekend about a new scam I'd not heard of before, that appears to be an evolution of the classic Nigerian 419 scams, so you get to hear all about that. And finally I talk about a new branch of Satanism - and this one seems to believe in pretty much any nonsense you can think of, as well as being horribly anti-Semitic.

We're currently putting together a calendar of historical skeptical events relevant to New Zealand - and we're aiming to have at least one event for every day of the year. It's been a lot of fun so far, and we've found a lot of fascinating stories about New Zealand that I'd never heard before, like:

Welcome to the NZ Skeptics newsletter.

Happy New Year to you all, and thank you for your support over the last year. We had a very successful conference late last year, and our membership has been slowly increasing, which is great! If you're a paid-up member, thank you for your financial support and you should be receiving a reminder to pay your (very reasonable) subscription soon. And if you're not currently a member, you can always rectify that situation by joining us.

If you've been reading the newsletter for any time you'll be aware of the joint conference we ran with the Australian Skeptics last weekend. I hope you had a chance to attend and to view the talks. If not, you can still purchase a ticket.

Astroworld is an annual music festival run by rapper Travis Scott in Texas. There was a tragedy at this year's festival, a few weeks ago, when a crowd surge caused a crush and resulted in the deaths of 10 people - the latest being a 9 year old boy who died a few days ago from his injuries.

21th-21st November, Online

21th-21st November, Online

We've been promoting the up-coming conference in conjunction with the Australian Skeptics for a few months now.

Thanks to everyone who joined our online Skeptics in the Pub meetings over the last two weeks. We've had such a good time chatting with skeptics who we usually only see once or twice a year that we've decided to make our national online meetings a regular event.

This one's a little light hearted, and not overly surprising - Kelvin Cruickshank, one of our most famous local psychics, appears to have failed to have been warned by the spirits about the impending lockdown. Kelvyn had booked a live event for Thursday in New Plymouth, in what turned out to be the second day of our national lockdown. David Chisholm, a member of our Facebook group, managed to take a great screenshot of the event being advertised under a large banner warning of event date changes due to our COVID lockdown.

Sadly the Druids cancelled on us last week due to the bad weather here in Wellington, so I was unable to attend their winter solstice event. However we (a small group of Skeptics in the Pub regulars) have been invited to the spring equinox event instead, so expect an update in 3 months.

Last week was a busy one. On Monday I visited parliament for a church service called The Power of One, along with another couple of skeptics. The event was organised by a group called Jesus for NZ (who formed back in 2017 when Jesus was taken out of the parliamentary prayer), hosted by Alfred Ngaro and facilitated by Simon Bridges. There was a lot of talk about Jesus re-taking the nation until everyone in this country is a believer, and restoring NZ to its “former glory”. Personally I'm much happier with NZ being a rational, secular democracy than a theocracy, but it turns out that not everyone wants a fair society and equality for all.

There's been a lot of talk recently in "alternative" circles about vaccine deaths. This has been prompted by the massive global rollout of several different types of COVID vaccines - mRNA (Pfizer, Moderna), Viral Vector (AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson), Inactivated (CoronaVac, Covaxin), and others.

If you're in or around Christchurch, you may be interested in attending the Christchurch Skeptics in the Pub. One of our NZ Skeptics committee members, Jonathan Harper, is giving a talk about skepticism. It's at the Pegasus Arms, 6pm on Thursday 8th April. You can register your RSVP on the group's meetup page.

Rebecca Booth, from Fairlie in the South Island, recently found a seven leaf clover. The Stuff article about this find mentioned that this is not the first clover-related find Rebecca has had. Apparently earlier this year, in January, she found both four and five leaf clovers.

I told you all three weeks ago that I was going to visit the Ancient Mystical Order of Rosicrucians, and I can report that I survived the meeting intact. My friend Tim and I had a great chat with three of the group's members about their beliefs, and about the history of the organisation. Much of what we heard sounded very familiar, with an organisational structure that reminded me of Scientology (making your way up the “Bridge”) and a belief in visualisation that was akin to Rhonda Byrne's “The Secret”, where if you imagine something enough it will come true for you.

It's been a very busy few weeks for me of Birthdays, training, events, and Christmas tree decoration. My irrational rage at people who erect festive trinket dust collectors before December 1st has abated, only to be replaced by incredulity over people who are 'decorating' their routers with faraday cages to protect themselves from 5G.

The NZ Scientology Headquarters opened to much fanfare in Auckland. Three local skeptics go along for the experience.

Tony Robbins is a very popular motivational speaker, and charges US$1,000 or more for a high energy day of talks. Events have names such as "Date with Destiny", "Life and Wealth Mastery" and "Unleash the Power Within". Tony's website has testimonials from famous celebrities, such as Hugh Jackman, Bill Clinton and Serena Williams. Video of Tony Robbins events look a lot like evangelical christian sunday services - lots of music, jumping around and highly emotional sermons.

The Mandela Effect is where people have false memories of past events, and decide that there's been a jump to an alternative universe where history is different.

A blood moon is a new name for a lunar eclipse, where the earth travels between the sun and the moon. The full moon turns red.

Keith Muir responds to Barry Brill's article, A Climate of Hope, in NZ Skeptic 108.

How should a skeptic relate to those who have other belief systems?

When Richard Dawkins made a flying visit to New Zealand in March he attracted people from all over the country - including three from this household. Tickets to all events were quickly snapped up, but fortunately friends in the Auckland Univeristy Alumni Association put some aside for us.

Debunked! by G Charpak & H Broch, translator BK Holland. Johns Hopkins University Press, Reviewed by Bernard Howard.

A spiritualist group has been given $2500 to teach people to communicate with the dead, the Herald On Sunday reports (15 May). The Foundation of Spiritualist Mediums received the Auckland ratepayer money after an application to an Auckland City Council committee. Foundation president Natalie Huggard said it was an essential service to Auckland and was in high demand.

One possible source of the outlandish reports given by children in cases such as the Christchurch Civic Creche affair was described at the 2003 Skeptics' Conference.

That was never six months just then -- it felt much longer. Banised to the depths of New Zealand, in Tuatapere (almost as far south west as you can get in the South Island), life took on a gentler pace. Momentous things did happen -- the stoat population declined by 300 around where we were, and the yellowheads had a successful breeding season.

Research is revealing how people can develop memories of things that never really happened.

Oh My God, it's the End of the World! Again!

In a landmark case on September 30, a 59-year-old man, Bill1, was acquitted by a jury in the Auckland High Court on charges of sexually abusing three of his daughters about 20 years ago. The complainants alleged sodomy and rape, and indecent acts such as the insertion of a coat hanger in the vagina causing bleeding and loss of consciousness. The women claimed they had suppressed the memories which had only resurfaced in later life. All three daughters had attended therapy and made claims for damages from the ACC before they laid the criminal charges against their father. Two of the daughters reported memories of events happening in their cots when aged one year old or less. Bill was defended by Mr Peter Williams, QC, who dismissed evidence based on "recovered memories" as dangerous and fallacious.

There is much upheaval among the stars this month. Jupitor moves into the house of Aquarius. Aquarius goes to stay in Gemini's house for the weekend. Meanwhile Saturn moves into the house of Aries for a nominal rent while the builders damp-proof his rings. (They should be out by Thursday).

It's a mindbending situation, but I guess you'd have to call me a skeptical believer. Like parapsychologist Susan Blackmore, personal experience inclined me towards the idea that supernatural events really happen.

To all those who came to the Annual Conference in Christchurch—thank you for your support, and for making the event such a great and satisfying success. To those who could not come—we missed you. To all members—we hope to meet you at the Fifth Conference next year in Palmerston North.

Reprinted from June 1987 issue of University of Edinburgh Graduates Journal

Copyright © 1986, Journal of Irreproducible Results

The New Zealand Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (inc.)

To investigate scientifically and with an open mind, claims and events of an apparently paranormal nature. 2. To report the results of these investigations and where possible, to provide rational, scientific explanations. 3. To provide reliable information about paranormal claims. 4. To encourage a more critical attitude to pseudoscience and to bogus paranormal claims, and to alert people to the dangers of uncritical acceptance. 5. To increase public awareness of the difference between legitimate science and pseudoscience. 6. To investigate the psychological, social, and ideological factors behind belief in the paranormal.

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