AS A CONFIRMED, but lightweight, sceptic, I have had to endure many jibes from friends and colleagues as I questioned information reported in the newspapers and on the news. Equally, I have had to explain what being a sceptic is really all about — not straight dismissal of, but the opportunity to question information that is presented as fact.
Continue readingDealing with BS
The story so far…
Continue readingGenesis Revisited: A Scientific Creation Story
IN THE beginning (specifically on October 23, 4004 B.C., at noon) out of quantum foam fluctuation God created the Big Bang out of inflationary cosmology. He saw that the Big Bang was very big, too big for creatures that could worship him, so He created the earth. And darkness was upon the face of the deep, so He commanded hydrogen atoms (which He created out of Quarks and other subatomic goodies) to fuse and become helium atoms and in the process release energy in the form of light. And the light-maker he called the sun, and the process He called fusion. And He saw the light was good because now He could see what he was doing. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Continue readingSkeptical Demographics
The paid-up membership of the Skeptics has hit the 500+ mark, with two-thirds of the membership divided reasonably equally between Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, and Dunedin and parts south holding another 50 members.
Continue readingSkeptical Intelligencer
The Skeptical Intelligencer is a quarterly magazine published by the Association for Skeptical Enquiry (ASKE), the UK’s skeptical organisation. Each 70+ page edition contains articles for the intelligent lay reader on paranormal, pseudo-scientific and anti-scientific claims.
Continue readingSkeptical Web
If you’re a fan of oddities such as those showcased in Ripley’s Believe It or Not, you’ll love the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices. This home of quackery features some amazing fraudulent gadgets. Learn, for example, about prostate cures like the light-bulbed prostate gland warmer or the frighteningly named recto rotor. These delights and more await you at http://www.mtn.org/quack/
Continue readingForum
I was interested to read the letters by Jim Ring and Felicity Goodyear-Smith to my article with the above title [NZ Skeptic 47].
Continue readingLegal Eagle Required
As a follow-up to inspiring comments made by David Russell at the recent conference, we are looking for someone with possibly a little legal training (or a lot of enthusiasm) to undertake some research on behalf of the Skeptics.
Continue readingSkepsis
Hypnotist Lawrence Follas claims he can increase the size of a client’s bust by telling her to imagine her breasts are growing (Sunday News 24 May). He says his client’s breasts have grown 2cm in three months, and some women in the States have added an extra 6cm by the method. The programme involves seven one-hour sessions at $75 each. A tape of Follas’s hypnosis session is given to the woman who must listen to it every day.
Continue readingChair-entity’s Report 1998
IT’S BEEN a busy year on many fronts for the Skeptics, with a number of major firsts:
Continue readingSkeptics Conference 1998
SKEPTICS conferences are always a bag of allsorts. Having piped up at last year’s AGM and suggested the next conference should be in Wellington, I was landed with organising it. Thankfully, I had the Wellington Cabal to help: Cynthia Shakespeare, Tony Vignaux, Richard Sadleir, Mike Clear, Bob Brockie and Wayne Hennessey.
Continue readingConference Photos
