For the June meeting of Leeds Skeptics, Georgina Binnie presented a talk “A Look at James Joyce and Photography”.
People often refer to Britain as a Christian country. You can make this argument, but as the BHA points out, not if you look at the stats. They are quite clear. Most people in Britain have no religion.
The May edition of Sunday Assembly Leeds was hosted by Dr Chris Hassall on the theme of “nature”. It was also Towel Day so Chris ensured we got plenty of Douglas Adams in there – always a good addition!
Earlier this month Professor Liane Benning presented a talk on life in extreme environments at Leeds Skeptics.
This collided with two unfortunate events. Firstly, due to the rare day of hot sunny weather, turn out was down. Second, due to time commitments I had not brought the video camera to record the talk as it takes a long time to process, edit and publish it. These were both big mistakes as Professor Benning presented one of the most interesting talks we have had.
It turns out that she has spent much of the last decade going to Svalbard and testing Mars rovers for NASA and ESA. Officially she is a biogeochemist and moved effortlessly between different scientific disciplines. By the end of the talk I was sitting there feeling like I had wasted my life while GabrielÄ— was trying to sign up to go on the next expedition.
I know Headingley Cafe Scientifique were trying to poach her to speak at their group too. if they do book her and you have not seen the talk, I highly recommend attending!
For the April meeting of Leeds Skeptics, Dr Paul Marchant presented a talk entitled “Casting Light on Evidence … & Evidence on Light”. The talk looked at how data is used on public policy making, to varying degrees of success.
I hosted the March event of Sunday Assembly Leeds. The theme was Spring. We had readings from Dermot and Andrew, a talk on laughter from Hugh, Hal is trying his best and Michelle announced the first community action day.
Paul Hopwood had previously spoken at Leeds Skeptics on the topic of “You Know Less Than You Think”. If you missed it, you can watch it online. He has since developed a follow-on talk, “Widening the View – Looking at the limits of Human Perception”, which he delivered for us earlier this week.
As ever, Paul delivered an interesting talk, though it is hard to listen to it all the way through without having an existential crisis. Not to mention the many additions to my reading list!
Dr John Baruch spoke at Leeds Skeptics a few years ago and I found the talk both enjoyable and fascinating. Therefore I asked him to give a similar talk at West Yorkshire Humanists and earlier this month he obliged. The evening saw double the turnout we had in February.
Dr Jacob Dunningham recently spoke at Atheist Society on the topic of “Making use of uncertainty: how quantum physics is revolutionising our lives”. It was an interesting talk and it was great to see A-Soc doing such good numbers.
The February event of Sunday Assembly Leeds was hosted by Dermot. He picked a theme of wonder and arranged an excellent combination of talks and readings on the subject, as well as having Michelle get out all her meditation gear. A great time was had by all!
