Archive for the ‘Humanism’ Category

Last week, the Atheist Society organised a dinner at Veritas. We gave them fair warning, booking out their back room so we would have the place to ourselves.

We’ve eaten there before, and it’s been reasonable.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case on Tuesday. We arrived at 7pm, and after a bit of a delay in just taking the orders – the food didn’t turn up until 9:30pm! We got some snacks and a round of drinks to say sorry, but two and a half hours is just incredible.

Worse, when the food did turn up, a lot of it was burned and badly cooked – Elina’s pie seemingly the only meal that came out of the kitchen as intended. By the time our main courses had arrived and we had eaten, it was going on until 11pm, so we skipped dessert and gave it up as a bad job.

As you may be aware, the Humanist Action Group is currently staging its 2012 Holiday Food Drive for local homeless shelters in Leeds.

Next week, Leeds Skeptics hosts a talk entitled “Do we get the legal system we deserve?”, as part of their programme of monthly events.

Unlike a usual Leeds Skeptics event, though, we won’t be taking donations to help cover the cost of running the meeting – that is going to be covered by the organisers. Instead, all money donated will be given to the Holiday Food Drive.

So, if you fancy helping those a little less lucky than ourselves, in a way which simply involves you hearing an interesting talk in a great pub, then come along to the next meeting of Leeds Skeptics! Full details can be found on their website.

This year, I attended GRAM – Group Representatives Annual Meetup, first the first time. GRAM is an event organised by the British Humanist Association, that brings together the leaders of affiliated groups to talks, discussions and ideas.

The event was held at the Quaker headquarters on Euston Road, which turned out to be a really nice building. I was expecting it to be someone bare, given Quakers are often minimalistic, but it was actually very well furnished inside.

While a lot of the talks weren’t that interesting, it was certainly inspiring to hear other group leaders talk about what they have been doing in their group – something like what we used to do at the AHS, where each group would deliver a quick update, would have worked really well.

There were also some heated discussions between some of the BHA representatives and some of the local groups, regarding the much tighter restrictions being placed on local groups by the BHA. For example, if you try to search for your local humanist group, some groups are now excluded from the map.

Overall, it was reasonably useful. It’s somewhat different to how I imagined, and how we run things like Sunrise Conference, but was useful for catching up with the latest developments on a national level.

In April last year, the Humanist Action group launched our first set of guides. These were the feed the homeless guide and the organiser’s guide, allowing you to start a Humanist Action Group in your town or city, and get started with a basic programme.

Today, we’re excited to announce that we’re launching our third guide – on running a food drive. This will take you through all the steps required to run your own food drive, similar to our Holiday Food Drive – though it can be at any time of year, and indeed for anyone who needs it.

The guide is available for free to anyone who would like a copy – if that is you, get in touch!

I’m very pleased to announce the launch of the Humanist Action Group’s 3rd annual Holiday Food Drive for local homeless shelters!

For the past few years, we have staged a food drive to bring some holiday cheer to those less fortunate. You can read all about last year’s event here and 2010’s event here. This year will be no exception, and we want to make it bigger and better than ever!

We need…

• Food (that lasts)
• Toiletries
• Warm clothing, gloves, blankets, etc

You can also donate financially, allowing us to buy in bulk, and indeed donate your time too to help us collect more donations and reach more people. If you want to get involved – get in touch!

We also have a Facebook event up and running, and you can find out more on the website, including how to donate!

For this month’s Humanist Community meeting, we met at The Reliance, for dinner.

We spent the first weekend of November over in Preston, where North West Humanists – a umbrella group composed of Humanist groups from Lancashire, Liverpool and Manchester, were holding their second annual conference.

The speakers included Professor Richard Norman, Professor Callum Brown, Julian Baggini, Pavan Dhaliwal and Martin Poulter. The talks were highly interesting, but even more importantly, it was great to meet other Humanists and really get fired up about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

The theme of the conference was “Humanism for a Better World” – getting away from the critical parts of our beliefs and looking to what positive changes we can bring to the world. Lots of food for thought and the discussions we had throughout the weekend will contribute to the rich variety of inputs that go into our policy making going forward.

Well done to everyone at North West Humanists for organising an excellent conference!

The Swarthmore Centre have clearly tried to remove Paul’s poster from the notice board. But so great is the power of Humanism, and the glue Paul used, that they failed.

This week saw the first meeting of the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire for this academic year. We run in academic years due to our venue following an academic calendar (it being an education centre and all, though with it being an adult one, that still seems a little strange).

It was rather manic with me having taken over as treasurer. Lots of people wanting to pay and I’m still not clear on everyone’s name in the society, so we ran out of time in the end and I’ll need to hand some of the membership cards out next meeting. All in all, lots of money collected though, which is the important thing.

The talk was interesting, Dr Bruce Turnbull talking about synthetic biology, but I had heard it before, as he had already given the talk at Leeds Skeptics earlier this year.

Last week, Viv had organised an evening at Nation of Shopkeepers, which, while far too hipster for my personal taste, does do some nice southern fried chicken. It was mouthwateringly good, but that isn’t what this post is about.

At one point in the evening, one of those attending began talking about how oppressed women are, describing going rape as an “occupational hazard” if they want to leave their house.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Two rhetorical questions that were asked were not met with the expected response. Firstly, who was most afraid of going out in Leeds on a Friday night (turns out the women weren’t, but I said I would be a bit nervous, because fights do happen, and normally to my gender) and secondly, what the distribution of personal attack alarms was (turns out there was both one male and one female present who had a personal attack alarm).

What was more interesting though, was how much offense the women present took to the suggestion that they were a beaten down minority that needed both liberating and protecting.

They certainly didn’t feel that way, and were extensively vocal about it.

It is interesting, because the same people who make such comments, and end up getting shouted down by women who object to them speaking in their behalf, are the same people who would object to me speaking on equality, because as a white male, I’m not considered entitled to have an opinion.