NZ Post Scams: A little bit of Activism

Last week I received a text supposedly from NZ Post (sent from linsystefanoq@resquar.help as an iMessage, rather than an SMS message):

Last week I received a text supposedly from NZ Post (sent from linsystefanoq@resquar.help as an iMessage, rather than an SMS message):

The NZ skeptics mailbox recently received a request from a company selling breathalysers in NZ. They wanted us to help them game the system when it comes to Search Engine Optimisation, so that they could increase their sales. Given that I wrote about SEO just a few weeks ago, I figured the email exchange might be of interest to our readers. I think the emails tell the story quite well by themselves, so here they are in chronological order:

Jonny Grady, a long-time committee member, sent an image he'd taken of a “UFO” to the committee last week:
Part of the fun of being on the NZ Skeptics committee is that we get sent emails from folk with some “interesting” views. In many instances the emails we get are provocative trolling messages, or sent from overseas accounts and blasted out to multiple skeptical organisations around the world.

Last week Craig mentioned a website I've built recently - weak.link. I figured I should probably talk a little about what the site is, why we think it's needed, and how to use it. I'll also geek out a little about how it's built, for those who may be interested.
For those of you who like the work we do enough that you want to support us financially, it's that time of the year when membership subscriptions are due. Membership is only $40, or $20 if you're unwaged, and the money we receive will be spent on worthy causes, allowing us to help make New Zealand a more skeptical place.
Stuff have reprinted another article from Juice Daily, which claims that garlic, pineapple, a salt water gargle and chicken soup can help with allergies. Of course, this is all unproven tosh and certainly not good medical advice. Thomas Lumley at Stats Chat does a good job of deconstructing the article, going through all the links in the article and checking out the evidence for the claims. Unsurprisingly, the given evidence is very thin:
Richard Milton has written this book as a "hang on a minute" reservation about Darwinism and its apparent unquestioned acceptance by mainstream science from geology through to biology (and in one chapter political science) in the manner of the small boy who questioned the reality of the Emperor's new clothes -- "Look Mummy, all those university professors, all those Nobel Prize winners, have got no actual proof to cover their hypotheses with".