Articles tagged with "website"

Our 2026 conference at Tῡranga Library in Christchurch is just over 2 months away, and we have some exciting updates.

The NZ Skeptics mailboxes have recently been receiving some interesting emails, asking to have content published on our website. Whereas historically these requests would be for hosting obvious spam on our site, featuring online casino adverts, alternative medicines, MLMs and other dodgy products and services, this trio of recent emails were a little more subtle.

When I wrote my article about the MENZ website a couple of weeks ago, I briefly mentioned John Potter, the site's admin, and his connection to the Centrepoint commune/cult as the son of guru Bert Potter. I provided a couple of links to further information, and mentioned that readers should look into Centrepoint if they weren't already familiar with the details of just how bad things became. Journalist and DeCult conference founder Anke Richter messaged me and suggested that readers might want to read her interview of John Potter, the “absent father” of the MENZ website, that came out in North & South magazine in 2021. It's a fascinating read, and gives some useful background that may help to explain why John runs a men's advocacy website full of misinformation and woman-hating rhetoric.

Some of you may be aware of the MENZ (Masculinist Evolution New Zealand) website that Katrina mentioned in her article. menz.org.nz is a men's rights website that claims to advocate for men, especially in cases of custody rights, sexual abuse allegations, etc. The strapline on the site describes their remit as:

After 12 years of running a fortnightly Skeptical Activism group in Wellington, it's finally come to an end. We will look into the feasibility of running an online activism meeting at some point, but for now the in-person event, with a free beer for your first complaint, is no more. To give everyone a flavour of the kind of work we did at our activism meetings, we thought we could let you know what we got up to on our final night.

Search Engine Optimisation (known as SEO) is an IT discipline in which a website owner attempts to optimise their site in a way that makes it appear high up in google's search results, ideally on the first page. The factors that Google considers when ranking pages, through an algorithm called PageRank (and more recently other technologies), are something of an open secret these days.

I bring a shorter contribution this week, inspired by a couple of requests I have received courtesy of the Culty Conversations Facebook page. One was a DM which notified me that archived versions of Ohad Pele's website, kabalove.org, were removed from the Wayback Machine, and asked if I could advocate for the website to be reinstated. Flattered though I am that others think I have that much sway with an American non-profit, I wasn't surprised that this happened. It's an easy enough process, and there are several websites and blog posts about how to have your website removed. I mean, even the Internet Archive itself provides instructions on how to submit such a request, albeit with the caveat that there are no guarantees.

I have a feeling we've written about Ārepa before, but as a refresher, it's a kiwi brand that produces “health drink” products that claims to make brains work better.

This week I'm taking a look at the recent controversy surrounding Ārepa - the brain drink product that's been pulled up by the Ministry of Primary Industries for making unsubstantiated claims about the health benefits of its product.

There's a few things I'd like to promote this week.

The last time I wrote the newsletter, I announced our NZ Skeptics conference happening in Dunedin on the weekend of 24th - 26th November, at Taito Otago Settlers Museum.

A New Zealand focused anti-vaccine “documentary” has recently been released, called Silenced. It focuses on broadcaster Peter Williams, as well as ex-GP Anne O'Reilly and sociologist Jodie Bruning, with much of the talk centering around COVID vaccination, the mainstream media and alternative treatments such as ivermectin. It also talks quite a bit about Dr Simon Thornley, past winner of our Bent Spoon award, although the footage the documentary makers shot of Thornley is not used in the documentary beyond a couple of silent clips, as apparently his lawyers recommended after filming that he shouldn't be a part of it.

This week's been a busy one for me, with Skeptics in the Pub in Auckland on Tuesday night, recording and editing our podcast on Wednesday night, and various other activities.

We're now under two weeks away from our annual conference, being held in Wellington (25th - 27th November) - our first in-person meeting since the pandemic. We've got an exciting lineup of speakers, but the best part will be meeting up with fellow skeptics again and being able to share thoughts in person. I'm looking forward to it - you can find out more on the conference website. I hope to see you there.

Our annual NZ Skeptics Conference, being held in Wellington on 25th - 27th November is just weeks away now.

The NZ Skeptics Conference 2022 is being held in Wellington on the weekend of 26th and 27th of November. We'd love to see you there, in person. We've got some great speakers lined up, and it will be great to see everybody again.

This week I delve into fringe groups becoming politically involved (as I expected they would do so). I look into website hacking for good, and also feature some pieces from guest authors on the Russian/Ukraine war and Putin's motivations.

As a professional software developer, I'm aware of various ways in which websites can be hacked - and it's a constant battle keeping up with the latest knowledge and techniques to ensure safety.

Although Bronwyn's put together this week's newsletter, I couldn't help myself and wrote a small piece about the protesters' obsession with Nuremberg.

I was sent a funny article the other day about the benefits of aluminium foil on a website called Tips and Tricks. The website appears to be a prolific source of clickbait - articles with catchy titles that are designed to suck you in and get you to click the link to read more. This is because the company wants to take you away from social media sites and onto their website, to show you adverts and make money from them.

Last night at about 1am a friend of mine sent me a link to a brand new COVID website called Wanaka Health Bridge. I clicked on the link, and saw that the site talks about the risks resulting from Wanaka being three and half hours from a major hospital, and what that means for COVID-19 treatment. The website says:

Mike Adams is well known to skeptics. For many years he's run the Natural News website, which started out as a source of medical misinformation paired with a shop selling expensive, useless supplements. Some of his sillier posts included using a microscope to take zoomed-in photos of McDonald's chicken nuggets as a way to make them look unappealing.

We're currently looking for nominations for our annual awards. Specifically, we have a Bent Spoon award for whoever has “has shown the most egregious gullibility or lack of critical thinking” over the last year, Bravo awards for journalists who have done good skeptical work, and a Skeptic of the Year award for someone in New Zealand who's been active in skepticism and fighting the good fight against nonsense.

Welcome to the NZ Skeptics newsletter.

There's a website in New Zealand promoting "Vortex Water". The front page of the site starts by saying:

The website of an organisation called the Maori Ranger Security Division is currently selling ID cards that they claim can help you avoid being arrested by police, protect you from Child Services, make you exempt from fisheries quotas, and may even let you travel without a passport - and all for the low, low price of $50.

A week ago I opened the LinkedIn app on my phone, and noticed a comment on a post that was made by someone in NZ who was an “EvoRich Consultant”. His profile didn't seem to match what I'd expect from a corporate consultant, so I quickly searched Google for EvoRich to see what it was all about - with the suspicion that it might be some kind of Multi Level Marketing scheme.

I'm guessing that Jami-Lee Ross, head of the failed conspiracy themed political party Advance NZ, has run out of money. Why else would he be planning to flog useless anti-5G pills to us?

Ken Ring is back selling his unproven weather, gardening, and best fishing predictions. You can also get his books on the global warming hoax, anxiety therapy, better parenting, and more on his predict weather website.

I can't help but wonder what 2021 is going to bring us, given that we've already started the year with the US Capitol being invaded by right wing extremists and QAnon conspiracy theorists. Closer to home, Billy TK's Public Party appears to be coming apart at the seams, with staff members taking over the party's website to detail Billy's financial mis-management.

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Last week (December 10th) TVNZ's Seven Sharp programme had an item featuring a Ponsonby-based psychic medium by the name of Kimberly Stewart. The story was based on the premise that because 2020 has been such a stressful year, that people have been seeking the services of psychics more. Business is booming! As is typical of these items, they offered a psychologist's opinion for balance.

The ABC News website published a story about a keto pill scam using a famous (in Australia) NZ born TV Doctor (Dr Brad McKay) to promote their nonsense without his knowledge. Dr McKay was not happy with the fact they had stolen his identity to promote their products, but is still struggling to get the posts removed as Facebook has given him the equivalent of a sorry-about-that shrug and taken no action. He has approached multiple authorities and agencies in Australia but (at the time of writing) is still waiting to hear back from them.

For those who followed Craig's link last week to a colour therapy site, you may have thought that some of the claims on the site were pretty egregious - including such gems as “incurable means curable from within” and “synthetic fibres have a frequency that is detrimental to our health and well being”.

I was very honoured at this year's conference to be awarded the NZ Skeptic of the Year. That honour has made me reflect on what it means to me to be a skeptic and why I decided to jump into the role of tweeter as well as editor.

The other day I received an ominous email telling me that I have malware installed on my PC as a result of visiting porn sites, and that I need to cough up £850 so that my sordid life isn't made public:

Breakfast on 1 recently hosted a physiotherapist advertising the Shakti Mat - a yoga mat covered in plastic circles, with each circle consisting of 20 or more sharp spikes. The mat is supposed to work like a bed of nails, activating acupressure points. I've seen the mat sold at shows such as the Go Green Expo, and have stood on one - the points are really sharp, and without socks it was especially painful.

Daniel Ryan from the Society for Science Based Healthcare wrote a study looking at acupuncture advertising in NZ. He ran a targeted search for New Zealand websites making claims about being able to treat a list of conditions for which advertising claims are restricted by the Medicines Act.

An incident at the Hawke's Bay Better Home and Living Show has made the news because it made the courtroom. There were sellers of two different brands of health bracelet at the show, Shuzi and Zenteq.

FYI is a great website for making Official Information Act requests. You can submit a request to a government department through the site and all correspondence is made public on the site.

A Bronx priest stole more than $1M from two NYC churches, and used the cash on a wild S&M romance with his beefy boyfriend

The game is … on. I've recently rewatched the new Sherlock and my partner always reacts to that misquote.

Keith Garratt finds the NZ Homeopathic Society is capable of change.

Some time back I noticed that I was getting the first signs of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). I'm a web developer and spend way too much time in front of a keyboard and mouse. It's a common enough thing among people in my industry. From what I can tell one of the best 'treatments' for it is to just stop for a bit. So I am.

Waikato University biological sciences lecturer Alison Campbell posts a regular blog on matters biological (sci.waikato.ac.nz/bioblog/). Her aim is to encourage critical thinking among secondary students. We think these need sharing.