Archive for the ‘Humanism’ Category

When I saw Galileo Day fell on a Saturday I immediately thought that would be an ideal day to have a Skeptics event. Being only three days after Darwin Day, I asked GabrielÄ— to present a talk on how viruses affect evolution. She very kindly obliged.

For the January event of Sunday Assembly Leeds, Ian hosted the event. He did a splendid job, especially with our speaker having to cancel at the last minute.

Last month, I was invited to give a talk to Leeds Atheist Society about my experiences of evangelism on campus during my time university. There was a good turnout for what you would usually expect at the society these days and I found it a most enjoyable experience speaking at the group I had founded all those years ago.

For the February meeting of the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire we had a talk on highwaymen. The first half looked at the practice in general and the second half focused on Dick Turpin and how he ended up in Yorkshire. With some myth-debunking along the way too!

What was a little confusing though is that the speaker the last recorded case was in the nineteenth century. Has nobody been robbed then? Because my understanding was that it still happened…

For the January meeting of Leeds Skeptics, Anna Semlyen spoke on why Leeds should have a blanket twenty mile an hour speed limit.

I thought it was a fascinating topic as it is one that really challenges us to think about our views (as opposed to Big Foot, that is just us basically laughing at stupid people). She made some great points about safety, though the other points about public health benefit (people walk more when the speed limit is lower) remain unproven. It invoked some engaging debate and I really enjoyed the event.

You can find out more about the campaign on their website.

For the December event of Sunday Assembly Leeds we did a theme of “festivities” including “Santa is doing his best”.

Thank you to all you wonderful people that contributed to the Humanist Action Group‘s 2013 Holiday Food Drive for local homeless shelters! As we round things to a close we are pleased to announced so far we have raised in-kind donations worth…

The donations went to three local homeless shelters and will benefit all of their residents. Thanks to your kind contributions a hundred people that would have woken up with nothing over the holidays will now receive much needed food, clothing and toiletries.

You can see all the photos from the event on our Flickr page.

For our November meeting of the Sunday Assembly Leeds, we actually held it on a Sunday. We were at a new venue, the Belgrave Music Hall, which is a wonderful gig venue and worked well for the event.

You can see all the photos on Flickr.

Earlier this month we were lucky to have Kate Smurthwaite visit us to present her show The News at Kate: My Professional Opinion. She is a comedian but also does a lot of work with women’s rights and generally telling stupid people that they are stupid.

Here is a good clip of her doing that on The Big Questions:

Her event was really entertaining and I highly recommend going to see Kate’s show if you get the chance.

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In October, we launched Sunday Assembly Leeds with the help of London-founder Sandison Jones. 120 people turned out for the event as well as BBC Look North, BBC Radio 4 and plenty of other media too. We held it in the beautiful St John the Evangelist’s Church next to the St John’s Centre (surprisingly).