Mark Honeychurch
WORK
I am an IT professional with 20 years in the field, focusing on both support and development. I have a passion for technology.
CODE
I write software for work and for fun, using modern tools. I like helping people to adopt new technologies, and I teach kids how to code.
PLAY
I am an active Skeptic and Humanist, with a common sense view of the world. I work to inform the public and protect them from nonsense.
My Recent Ramblings
8 January 2022
Exploring New Zealand's COVID tools
Categories: COVID, Software , Tags: QR
I've been interested in the technology the government in New Zealand has chosen to use to help combat the spread of COVID-19. It's obvious that they are walking a tight rope between making effective tools and not unduly compromising the privacy of our citizens.
1 min read, 55 words. Continue Reading...
3 January 2022
Lotus-Heart fined for "taking a stand"
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Vaccines, Mandates
The Lotus-Heart restaurant in Christchurch has chosen to take a stand against vaccine mandates, by refusing to let customers know if they require a vaccine pass, not promoting use of their COVID Tracer QR Code, and not having any system in place to check vaccine passes. As a result they have been fined $20,000 dollars by WorkSafe.
2 min read, 307 words. Continue Reading...
An unusual vaccine endorsement
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Vaccines
A surprising endorsement of COVID vaccines came out recently - from none other than Donald Trump. Trump has a spotty history when it comes to supporting good science, and he’s well known to skeptics for touting several unproven cures (including that particularly confusing press conference where he talked about bleach and an internal UV light).
2 min read, 287 words. Continue Reading...
Nuclear Gandhi
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Rumour
As a programmer, I love a good story about buggy software. Maybe it makes me feel better about my own mistakes! So when I recently heard about a fun bug in the strategy game Civilisation, from way back in 1991, I was intrigued. Apparently the fallout from this particular code error (no pun intended) was that the peaceful world leader Mahatma Gandhi would suddenly become very fond of amassing and using nuclear weapons - a quirk that has been named Nuclear Gandhi
. 5 min read, 879 words. Continue Reading...
15 December 2021
Brian Tamaki is God
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Religion
Just over a week ago I attended an online sermon from Destiny Church with a few friends. The sermon started off fairly tame, with Brian joking about viewers eating popcorn, so I went and grabbed a bag of popcorn for us to eat while we watched - I figured it was the least a group of heathens could do.
3 min read, 440 words. Continue Reading...
The Great Australian Psychic Prediction Project
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Psychics
The Australian Skeptics have spent the last few years working hard on an amazing project
, led by Richard Saunders, to find and analyse as many psychic predictions as they could find. 4 min read, 760 words. Continue Reading...
8 December 2021
Black Oxygen Organics - the new panacea
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Pseudoscience, Alternative Medicine
Black Oxygen Organics
is a recent craze in alternative medicine. Many people swear by it, saying that it can treat all sorts of conditions - from heart issues and ADHD to COVID and cancer. 5 min read, 841 words. Continue Reading...
Tiger King’s Psychic
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Psychic
I’m sure most people know the story of the Tiger King, a documentary series which became required viewing last year around the world when many countries went into lockdown. The series followed Joe Exotic, a flamboyant character who ran a big cat attraction and ended up behind bars for some of his questionable life decisions.
3 min read, 454 words. Continue Reading...
Sneaky Scientology Duping the Media
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Scientology
Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital made the news today, with an 89 year old man being charged for his part in the abuse of children who were under the hospital’s care in the 1970s. Dr Selwyn Leeks, who was the lead psychiatrist at the centre, has been charged with "wilful ill treatment of a child", but due to his ill health will not be prosecuted.
3 min read, 470 words. Continue Reading...
1 December 2021
Is Celine Dion suffering from vaccine injury?
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Vaccines
I was talking to a friend on the weekend who works as a tradesman. He asked me, as a skeptic, what I thought of the coronavirus vaccine - did I think it was dangerous? And was COVID real? He’s pretty sure the scientists aren’t lying to him, but he’s talked with a lot of colleagues who aren’t so sure. Most of my friends are fairly skeptical, and a lot of the time I breathe the rarefied air of skepticism, so it was interesting to hear a perspective that I don’t really come in contact with in my daily life - a friend who’s intelligent but has heard enough misinformation from the anti-vaccine crowd that he’s becoming a little unsure.
4 min read, 718 words. Continue Reading...
Tin Foil Treatments
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Pseudoscience, Alternative Medicine
I was sent a funny article
the other day about the benefits of aluminium foil on a website called Tips and Tricks. The website appears to be a prolific source of clickbait - articles with catchy titles that are designed to suck you in and get you to click the link to read more, so that the company can take you away from social media sites and onto their website to show you adverts and make money. 5 min read, 839 words. Continue Reading...
The sad death of Rex Warwood
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Conspiracy
Rex Warwood sadly died late last week. He was a long time reporter and later editor for the Franklin County News, and was apparently well liked. However in recent years he appears to have succumbed to conspiratorial thinking, and became a vocal critic
of vaccination against COVID, saying things online such as: 4 min read, 648 words. Continue Reading...
24 November 2021
Look who got themselves arrested
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Conspiracy, Sovereign Citizen
So I want to talk about an interesting arrest that happened yesterday, but not the arrest of Brian and Hannah Tamaki.
2 min read, 379 words. Continue Reading...
Amy Benjamin "Resigns" from AUT
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Conspiracy
International Law lecturer Amy Benjamin resigned
from Auckland University of Technology last week. We spoke about Amy back in August; she made the news at the beginning of our second national lockdown, when she started up her YouTube channel called "American Spirit" where she posted videos about COVID and lockdowns. Her opinions seemed somewhat fringe, and she talked about how the threat to people’s mental health in lockdown was worse than that of COVID, that Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine could treat COVID, and that the government had criminalised peaceful protest. None of this is true. 3 min read, 417 words. Continue Reading...
The Skeptics’ annual conference
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Skeptics
We had a great conference on the weekend, which was a live streamed conference shared with the Australian Skeptics. It’s the first online conference I’ve run, or been to even, and although there were a few technical hiccups, the weekend went well with over two hundred attendees from not just here and Australia, but also from several other countries around the world.
3 min read, 482 words. Continue Reading...
Wanaka Health Bridge
Categories: Skepticism , Tags: Pseudoscience
Last night at about 1am a friend of mine sent me a link to a brand new COVID website called Wanaka Health Bridge
. I clicked on the link, and saw that the site talks about the risks resulting from Wanaka being three and half hours from a major hospital, and what that means for COVID-19 treatment. The website says: 3 min read, 579 words. Continue Reading...