The NZ Skeptics were messaged last week by someone (no name given) who thinks they've found a paranormal event - a message in a piece of music from 1995 that predicted the 7.5 earthquake on New Year's Day this year in Noto, Japan:
Geoff Botkin is a man with many titles, labels, and accolades you could attach to his name. With a significant portion of his career lost to the pre- and early-internet times, his various biographies have, strangely enough, become more vague and even benign with time compared to the increasingly conservative and right-wing projects he either develops or becomes involved in.
We've written about Liz Gunn before. For a refresher, she's a former lawyer, then broadcaster/presenter on Television New Zealand (Breakfast and Good Morning shows) and Radio New Zealand. She disappeared from view for a long time, but recently popped up as an anti-vax conspiracy theorist.
We've been promoting making submissions to the Therapeutic Products Bill. The NZ Skeptics committee has met and put together its official submission, and I've put in a personal submission.
HRV has had to pay out $400k for bad claims it made about its water filters. The interesting thing about this case, in my opinion, is that the fine was given because it was shown that HRV didn't have the evidence for its claims when it made them.
Information provided by Nelson clairvoyants about the disappearance of a 21-year-old man seven months ago in the Abel Tasman National Park has proved fruitless.
Is it the influence of New Age vegetarian extremists?: the latest paranormal enthusiasms are cress seed-sprouting (it's a more growing experience than metal spoon-bending) and crop circles. We have Time Magazine's authority for crop circles having occurred here, and not only the British Skeptics but the New Zealand Skeptics would welcome any information about the crop circle phenomenon in this country.