Mark Hanna • Sep 30, 2016 •
I’ve looked into this year’s district health board candidates to help you keep quacks off your DHB this election. Unless you live in Southland, this year you probably get to vote for several spots on your local district health board. With the move to DHBs making decisions about water fluoridation, there’s a danger that some of … Read More
Ken Perrott • Mar 31, 2015 •
My old man used to label us kids as “fair-weather sailors” when we bitched about working outside during bad weather. That phrase comes to my mind sometimes when I come across people who claim to be “sceptics ” (“Skeptics”) behaving very unsceptically when confronted with a claim outside their area of interest. For example, someone who … … Continue reading … Read More
Darcy Cowan • Dec 07, 2011 •
Reading the paper today I learned that 1/3 of New Zealanders believe that we have been visited by extra terrestrials. I thought this was an interesting juxtaposition of stories given that a page or two later there was a report about a possibly habitable planet. Maybe aliens are visiting us from Kepler-22b. Keplerites aside, I … Read More
Darcy Cowan • Apr 24, 2011 •
I wish people wouldn’t say this, it’s usually followed by some lame reason why we should trust their anecdotal experience over empirical data. Sure the word skeptic (or sceptic if you prefer) has a certain colloquial definition and to a large extent words are defined by the way they are used, I mean no-one uses [...] … Read More
Darcy Cowan • Oct 18, 2010 •
After Friday’s unabashed rant on things magical and absurd I felt it would be good to post a more level headed and rational piece. This post from a couple of years ago caught my eye at the right time and given the popularity of reposting I decided it was worth another outing: A less formal [...] … Read More