God did not create the universe,

The Penn & Teller "Bullshit!" vaccination episode is available online, at http://www.megavideo.com/?v=ED2FU88B

The episode is also here, with further commentary: Respectful Insolence: Penn & Teller deconstruct the anti-vaccine movement, not to mention an old friend of the blog, Dr. Jay Gordon.

Court action against NIWA 'stupid'

One of the speakers this morning was Linda Bryder who was speaking on the response to her book, A History of the "Unfortunate Experiment" at National Women's Hospital. I don't know much about this and have no opinion either way. However, there was a response on Twitter to it. I thought a couple of the comments should have been fairly easy to verify and thought I'd look into it.

So, the claims/challenge;

Bryder claims she got no right of reply in mainstream media coverage of her book on unfortunate experiment #nzskeptic

An interesting article on the cultural differences that keep Skeptics as a community from reaching New Agers, written by someone who went through a considerable struggle to understand what skeptics were talking about.

Simon Singh was interviewed by Kim Hill on Radio New Zealand on the Saturday Morning show. Here's the audio hot off the feed;

Concerns over animal welfare issues on farms have seen Rural Women New Zealand and Fonterra rapped with the Bent Spoon, an annual recognition of gullibility and a lack of critical thinking awarded by the New Zealand Skeptics.

Rural Women New Zealand gave the Supreme prize in its Enterprising Rural Women Award to Homeopathic Farm Support, a company which follows the homeopathic practice of diluting substances until there is no active material left and then claiming that the water somehow "remembers" what was once in it. Homeopathic Farm Support provides a line of such products, claiming that homeopathy can be used to "prevent and treat symptoms of acute and chronic animal ailments" including mastitis, post calving haemorrhage. pinkeye, scours, first aid and even emotional problems in livestock.

Dr Richard Jones, Director of the Christchurch Neurotechnology Research Programme based in the Van der Veer Institute for Parkinson's and Brain Research will be giving a fascinating talk on micro-sleeps. What they are, their causes and how they impact you.

The Press has an article on page 3 of todays print edition that may be of interest to some here. My initial impression wasn't positive but then I beat my gut reaction into submission and thought that these guys should be given the benefit of the doubt. Not all paranormal investigators are as credulous as the stuff that makes it onto television... :)