Articles tagged with "siouxsie"

We had our AGM last night, which was well-attended and ran smoothly. We now have two new committee members, Dave la Rooy and Tony Lord (and as a skeptic I have to assume it's just coincidence that our two new committee members are a Lord and a King). It's great to have them on board, and as a committee we look forward to working with them both over the coming years. Bronwyn will continue on as our capable Chair, and it was pointed out that our new constitution has a five year limit for the Chair role - as a way to ensure we have fresh blood at the helm. This means that we only have three years left to squeeze all we can out of Bronwyn's amazing abilities, although I'm presuming from her passion for skepticism that she'll stay on the committee long after her term as Chair is over. Tim Wright has been reconfirmed as our Treasurer for the next year, and I'm staying on as Secretary - mostly because nobody else seems to want to take on either of these roles! If you're interested in what happened at the AGM, you can read Bronwyn's report on our last 12 months below. I'll also try to remember to add the minutes of our AGM to a future newsletter, once I've written them up properly.

Siouxsie Wiles is well known to the NZ Skeptics. She has long been an active member of our organisation, helping us out by running Skeptics in the Pub events, MCing and giving talks at our conferences, writing articles for our journal, promoting us in public and much, much more. To illustrate this, these are photos from Wikipedia of Siouxsie sitting on discussion panels at our 2013 and 2015 conferences:

For those who didn't manage to catch the Ms. Information movie about skeptic and scientist Siouxsie Wiles back when it was doing the Film Festival circuit a couple of months ago, the good news is that it's due for general release in cinemas from the 26th of October. Siouxsie has let me know that there's also a pre-release screening happening next week (on the 17th) at the Rialto cinema in Newmarket - you can book tickets for that showing at the cinema's website.

Speaking of misinformation, myself and some other skeptics in Wellington went to watch Ms. Information last night, as part of the NZ International Film Festival. As Craig said last week, Ms. Information is a documentary about Siouxsie Wiles, created by Gwen Isaac and her crew who followed Siouxsie on and off for around two years, starting at the beginning of the pandemic. The documentary focused less on the content of the misinformation that Siouxsie and others tackled during the early days of the pandemic, and more on the abuse that was hurled at her - up to and including quite a few death threats. Not only has Siouxsie been a long-time skeptic, speaking at several of our conferences and helping to run the Auckland Skeptics in the Pub group for many years, but her husband Steven, also featured in the documentary, was a committee member of the Skeptics for several years.

Last Sunday evening, my wife and I had the pleasure of attending the world premiere of Ms. Information at the Auckland International Film Festival. OK, that sounds a little more grandiose than it was - we purchased tickets like most other people in the audience.

This week I take a look at a media attack on our friend Dr Siouxsie Wiles, and talk about the European heat wave and climate change.

Last week some of our media engaged in an attack on Dr Siouxsie Wiles. Siouxsie, with her iconic pink hair, has been a leading voice globally, but certainly here in NZ/Aotearoa for a sensible, science and evidence-based approach to handling the Covid pandemic. (And, of course, Siouxsie will be familiar to many NZ Skeptics, having MC'd and spoken at our conferences in the past.)

In the good news department this week, it was announced that there's been a shakeup at the Magic Talk network - a radio station that specialised in talkback.

Welcome to the NZ Skeptics newsletter.

As everybody no doubt knows we're back in lockdown again - level 3 for Auckland and level 2 for the rest of the country.

This week saw Dr Siouxsie Wiles take the supreme winner award at the Stuff-Westpac NZ 2020 Women of Influence Awards.

We are proud to mention the honour our regular contributor Siouxsie Wiles received this year.

Siouxsie is frequently to be found blogging or on the TV or radio, explaining in a down-to-earth manner current developments in science, or why she is skeptical of certain claims whenever they appear in the media. In 2016 alone she took on MPs, anti-vaxxers and Mike Hosking, as well as tackling topics such as e-cigarettes and the Zika virus. She regularly appears in the “Skeptical Thoughts” radio slot with Graeme Hill on Radio Live, and she also has a fortnightly slot on Radio New Zealand's "Nine to Noon" show, talking about science. She was nominated for the Denis Dutton award in recognition of her outstanding communication skills and sustained efforts to demonstrate critical thinking, skepticism and the scientific method.

Michael Edmonds reflects on the 2012 NZ Skeptics Conference.