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
Accounts for Year Ended 31 December 1997
Income and Expenditure
| Income | |
| Members’ Subscriptions | 8,558.38 |
| Interest Received | 1,837.64 |
| Surplus from Conference | 2,144.77 |
| Net Sundry Sales | 187.00 |
| Miscellaneous | 231.73 |
| Total Income | 12,959.52 |
| Expenditure | |
| NZ Skeptic production & distribution | 6,968.55 |
| Computing, membership list | 618.75 |
| Miscellaneous printing | 213.08 |
| Clerical, secretarial | 304.67 |
| Donation, Ian Plimer Defence Fund | 1,000.00 |
| Fees | 50.00 |
| Total Expenditure | 9,155.05 |
| Excess Income over Expenditure | 3,804.47 |
Balance Sheet as at 31 December 1997
| Members Funds 1/1/97 | 23,642.53 | Bank Account | 1,447.00 |
| Income over expenditure | 3,804.47 | Term Deposits | 26,000.00 |
| 27,447.00 | 27,447.00 |
Auditor’s Report
I have audited the financial statements of the Committee for the year ended 31 December 1997 in accordance with accepted auditing standards, and have carried out such procedures as I have considered necessary.
In common with other organisations of a similar nature, control over income prior to it being recorded is limited, and there are no practical audit procedures to determine the effect of this limited control.
Subject to the above, in my opinion the financial statements give a true and fair view of the Committee’s financial position as at December 31 1997 and the results of its activities for the year ended at that date.
F.G. Shaw, ACA (Retd)
27 February 1998
Christchurch
Sprite
A Flood of Improbabilities
John Riddell finds some creationist claims really are testable, unfortunately for them.
Continue readingAnti-Science Backlash
Some of you may recall Mike plugging the following two books at the conference. Both are concerned with the anti-science backlash, promulgated mostly by the academic left in the USA: post-modernism, relativism, radical feminist critiques of science, ethnocentric science, and so on. It’s a movement that’s beginning to assert itself here, and we should be informed.
Continue readingThe Omen
EVERYTHING was roses and buttercups until that fateful day. An omen, it was, for sure. In July, on Friday, only 17 days before the 13th, we had born on our humble dairy farm a calfie. She had four legs, nice black and white patches, a cute butt and two heads, four eyes, four ears and two tongues.
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