Mark Honeychurch
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Jonathan Ayling – a wolf in sheep’s clothing
I’m sure many of you will have heard of the Free Speech Union (FSU), which formed in 2021 by registering as a Trade Union. They’re a successor to the Free Speech Coalition, which formed in 2018 in response to problems Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux had with finding a venue in Auckland in which to […]
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Jim Ring, Nelson
I’ve been in contact with a lawyer on and off over the last couple of years regarding one of our old members – old both in terms of when they joined the society, and in terms of their age. Jim Ring was a frequent contributor to our Journal, the NZ Skeptic, writing both articles on […]
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A Peek Inside the Special Branch’s Declassified File on the Rationalists
Part One: “Rationalist diatribe, with an occasional flash of sound argument” Last year I visited Archives New Zealand in Wellington with Bronwyn Rideout, the current Chair of the NZ Skeptics. We were there because she had arranged for us to have access to a document that I’d heard about a while ago; a file that […]
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EA & AI
For those who haven’t heard of Effective Altruism (often shortened to just EA), it’s a fairly simple concept. As the name suggests, people who subscribe to EA want to be altruistic, and they want to do it in an effective way. As the Centre for Effective Altruism helpfully describes it on their website: “Effective altruism […]
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Skepticism away from the Coal Face
A lot of skepticism these days involves battling against wrong-heading beliefs related to topics that are important to us, and to our world: whether an all-powerful God created us, and wants us to follow his strict, perversely specific and often nonsensical rules about how to live our lives; if climate change is real, and how […]
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Liz Gunn versus the Fabians
Since the recent launch of Liz Gunn’s new political party, NZ Loyal, I’ve been loyally watching all of her new party political videos, where she’s been laying out her ideas for how she will run the country when she comes to power. They’re extensive and disruptive, and although I’m not an expert I’d wager that […]
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Using AI algorithms for fun
A little over a year ago I played around with some deep learning software – back then the latest and greatest was OpenAI’s GPT-3, although I also used the older GPT-2 and EleutherAI’s GPT-J-6G. These are all Natural Language Processing algorithms using a Generative Pretrained Transformer – and they work by reading text to learn […]
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Lying for Jesus: Franklin Graham Edition
On Wednesday evening I attended the Wellington leg of Franklin Graham’s God Loves You tour at the TSB Arena. If the name sounds familiar, it’s probably because Franklin is the son of Billy Graham, who was quite possibly the most famous Christian evangelical preacher of the 20th century. Billy Graham was well known for his […]
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Bible in Schools case sunk by Supreme Court
An Auckland father’s case against school Bible classes has been ended by the Supreme Court. Auckland father Jeff McClintock sued an Auckland school after they persisted in placing his daughter in Bible worship classes without his consent. The classes, called “Values in Action”, are taken by Church volunteers during school time and involved Bible reading […]
