Archive for March, 2011

We finished off Reason Week in the traditional manner – with an all night debate outside the union, talking to people about the society and what we do. It might have been a cold night but never the less myself, James, Rich, Michael, Elina and Elletra braved the night air until 3am.

For the Friday of Reason Week, Mark Edon presented his talk on Creationism. Mark is a committee member with the British Centre for Science Education which is a group that campaigns against creationism in the UK – and you can tell they do excellent work because the creationists have put up an “exposed” site about them.

Mark spoke recently on the same topic at Leeds Skeptics and his colleague Professor Paul Braterman is also speaking at the Enquiry 2011 Conference.

The Thursday event of Reason Week was hosted by the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire and featured a debate on Humanist Chaplains between HSoWY chair Dr Paul Dean (or Moz as he is generally known) and Gijsbert.

The event went well and while there were was no overall winner it did at least help people make up their minds – the undecided where exactly split down the middle when we took the second vote at the end.

Following on from Andrew Copson’s talk on the Wednesday of Reason Week, we headed to Sam’s Chop House for dinner.

I was initially a little sceptical, especially given they didn’t book my salmon (on purpose, I presume), but once we tucked into the steaks, it turned out to be an excellent choice. Not quite up to the standard of the steak powerhouses in Leeds, but I would say it easily topped Brooklyn and The Restaurant. The sides were excellent as well as was the desert which featured no less than three different types of chocolate-based baked product.

It was reasonably pricey, but no more so than The Restaurant, and I would definitely return there given the quality of good – and hopefully next time I go they won’t have run out of chops. Rather a big omission given the name of the restaurant!

For the Paganism session of Perspective Citywide, we welcomed Rhiannon Grant to the group. I had already seen the talk at the Atheist Society the previous Friday but it was never the less entertaining and the discussions were great.

Following the talk by Antony Lempert on Tuesday, we headed down to D-Fusion for a bit of Reason Week karaoke. D-Fusion was friendly as always though disappointingly they have moved over to a new karaoke system which is really difficult to use and has no where near the selection.

On Tuesday, Dr Antony Lempert, coordinator of the Secular Medical Forum, delivered us a talk on Cutting Religion out of Medicine.

I’ve heard Antony talk twice before, he spoke at the 4th Leeds Skeptics in the Pub event and again at last year’s Enquiry Conference and he always delivers an excellent performance, so it was great to see that he had been asked to speak at Reason Week.

As an extra bonus, he also brought his trophy having been named Academic of the Year at the Erotic Awards 2010.

Monday of Reason Week saw us host a panel discussion on Religion as a Human Creation. The panel included two speakers from the Sea of Faith, the non-theist Quaker chaplain from the university chaplaincy and our very own Gijsbert talking on behalf of Humanism.

I’m not quite sure we briefed all of the speakers on the topic quite well enough – Gijsbert was perhaps a little too assertive – making valid points that I am sure we would all agree with – but maybe not really required at an event where we all already agree that religious is a human creation.

I really enjoyed the discussions that you might be forgiven if you came away from the event still wondering what Sea of Faith actually is. Much like the Quakers, they don’t have a set doctrine, so they don’t actually have a list of things they believe. However, Sea of Faith and Quakers seem to share a common theme of taking the good out of something that most of them don’t actually believe is there.

Thanks to everyone who helped out to make Leeds Reason Week 2011 a fantastic success. A big thanks to whose who put the time in during the day the man the stall and allow us to talk to so many people and it is great to see James successfully made it through the week without exploding from organising everything – good result all round!

On Thursday, it was Elina’s birthday, so to celebrate I took her out to dinner to the somewhat either arrogantly or naively titled The Restaurant on City Square.

It isn’t a restaurant that I had been to before, which in some way is part of its appeal as it is quite embarrassing having lived directly in the city centre for 18 months now when a restaurant comes up in conversation and I have to admit that I haven’t actually eaten there yet.

I turned out to be an excellent choice – it was somewhat more upmarket that I had anticipated and the staff were very friendly though it was a little noisy in comparison to the nice quiet meal I was originally aiming for.

The food was excellent too, I had the steak which I would say successfully bested the one I had had at Brooklyn Bar on my man-date with George last week, but not up to the standard of the the real Leeds powerhouses of the steak world – Blackhouse and River Plate.

The wine was great too, though I’m somewhat annoyed I’m developing a richer taste for wine because quite frankly it’s just irritating having to spend more money on good wine because you can really tell the difference (oh to be 19 again).

Recommended if you’re looking for somewhere slightly more upmarket than your standard city centre restaurant while still somewhere near the reasonably priced bracket.