Articles tagged with "figure"

The brilliant successes of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica inspired scholars in other fields to methodological contemplation. Newtonian physics emphasised, among other things, mathematical laws, empirical measurements and quantification: after all, the full title of Newton's great work translates to “mathematical principles of natural philosophy.” Subsequent scholars attempted to apply similar mathematical methods to other fields. The obsession with numerical quantification had unfortunate results when European anatomists started measuring human racial diversity. They projected their personal prejudices onto essentially meaningless data. A diverse array of harmful pseudosciences resulted. One such pseudoscience was craniometry.

I've recently read calls for high profile figures in New Zealand to endorse the new COVID vaccines, as a way to reassure the portion of the public who currently feel unsure about the vaccines' safety. It's been suggested that public figures such as Jacinda Ardern, Ashley Bloomfield and others might want to allow the media to record them being immunised against COVID. Personally I think that, at least for those who are conspiracy minded, watching those who are supposedly a part of the conspiracy be injected is probably not going to be very convincing.

Do you skip words or lines while reading?

As usual, it's blurry footage from far away that is most likely a human. It appears to be a tall figure, dark, with a big stride and holding something white swinging in its hand. The white object could be a carrier bag. Of course, as the footage is taken from far away so our brains end up doing a lot of guesswork to try to make sense of what we're seeing.

NZ Skeptic 17 (May 1990) included an item taken from the NZ Herald's "100 Years of News", published in 1963, looking back at the great New Zealand airship panic of 1909. This topic, and its parallels with more recent UFO crazes, was covered in more detail in NZ Skeptic 47.

Although formal religion is continuing to decline in this country, belief in the supernatural remains high. That seems to be the main conclusion to be drawn from a recent survey of New Zealand religious affiliations and attitudes carried out by Massey University as part of the International Social Survey Programme.

An article in the Listener makes much ado about very little.

Once again the financial figures are presented in the format required by the Registrar of Incorporated Societies.

I hate to spoil a good story, especially a skeptical one, but is there something slightly adrift with William Ireland's piece on the Kaikoura UFOs?