Archive for October, 2010

On Saturday we headed over to Kate’s party for a Halloween celebration (I saw Halloween celebration rather than Halloween because Halloween is of course actually on today).

We decided pretty early on it was the worst party ever. We all drank quite a bit so I’m not quite sure what the reasons were but I know we made that decision. Once you accept this though it somewhat lowers the expectations so you can only really go up from there, so in the end it made a half decent recovery.

The company was on the whole good as it was mostly the A-Soc crowd though Nicola’s had some interesting friends. Sometimes, running in the circles you do, you forget that there are a lot of stupid people in the world. Like really stupid people. Embarrassingly stupid. Myself and James had to spend a lot of time desperately trying to hold ourselves back from calling them in an angry manner on the stream of nonsense they asserted; it was like being trapped in a conversation with Storm from the so-named Tim Minchin song.

Still, we made it until the end of the party and so can walk away with a knowledge that we can still keep up with the kids and some highly amusing anecdotes that while I have no plans to share on such a public forum will be happy to elaborate on next time we’re down the pub.

On Friday night we headed down to Alea Casino for my birthday celebration.

We almost ran out of space as I had only booked the table for 15 people and 16 people ended up turning up, not that the restaurant could cope anyway – it took them 50 minutes to bring us our starters, of which they then forgotten one, they manged to forget one of the desserts and to top it all off they even got arsey when I told them I didn’t want to pay the service change because the service was rubbish. Food was nice though.

Afterward we hit the casino floor and effectively ended up with our own private table – there was blackjack table down the end that nobody else seemed to know about so we had it to ourselves, even if it was £5 minimum bet. I put down £50 and managed to walk out even but somewhat trailed James’ returns after he hit three blackjacks in a row!

Thank you to everyone who came down, it was a good night.

We’re pleased to announce the launch of the new Perspective Course website! During interfaith week we will be launching the new version of the Perspective Course Leader’s Guide which will be made freely available to groups which are interested in running their own version of the course. You can request a pack for your group from the website.

On Thursday we ran a special session of our homeless outreach work specifically designed to introduce new people. Turn out was great and we would like to say a big thank you to everyone who came down and gave up their evening to help out.

On Tuesday Leeds Atheist Society held a charity quiz night to raise money for WaterAid.

WaterAid is a charity dedicated to bringing clean water and good sanitation to everyone and as everyone at the society is a big fan of having both clean water and good sanitation it seemed an excellent charity to support.

After many weeks of waiting after Viki agreed to wench on us if we got her an appropriate costume, the night finally arrived last night.

So we spent yesterday evening sitting around and drinking, all of which were fetched for us. The problem is now of course that you very quickly become accustomed to such a lifestyle and as such it’s going to be a pain every time we have to make our own drinks now.

Luckily, while discussing what we would do with an increase of money in our pay packets, Viki suggested “if you had all that money you could hire a wench full time, rather than just having one every few weeks when I’m here” which I’m pretty sure is an agreement for regular wenching – and really the least she could do having ripped the wench outfit we got for her 😀 .

On Thursday I went up to Durham to speak to the Durham University Humanist and Secularist Society based there.

I delivered a talk on “Debating the Theists”, going through the common arguments and counter arguments that you often encounter when talking to believers. It was a talk I had given a few times to LAS in the past, though having lost all the notes and slides it was essentially a fresh talk with a similar theme running through it.

After a few technical problems at the start we finally got up and running and the talk went reasonably smoothly, though I missed out quite a few points I ended up kicking myself for during the question and answers afterward. Nether the less it was an enjoyable evening and I would like to thank DUHSS for inviting me up to speak.

On Tuesday we headed down to London for an evening with Greg Epstein, the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University.

Greg’s presentation was reasonable, though the true value was in his ideas – he has a vision for Humanism that is truly excellent – building communities, providing a humanist alternative to things like religious charities and offering pastoral care to the non-religious are the exact ideals that we have been working towards at Chris Worfolk Foundation.

While it was clear there was some unease between Greg and the British Humanist Association, who advocate that such enterprises should be secular and we should remove both religious and humanist projects, they too seemed very taken with Greg’s ideas and hopefully this will lead to a more unified vision for the future of Humanism in the United Kingdom.

On Saturday we were faced with a very difficult choice. Sit in and continue to enjoy the epic ride that was Film4’s Star Trek marathon – the first ten Star Trek films (I refuse to say the original ten because how was Star Trek 11 not an “original” film – it didn’t make any sense but I don’t see how that makes it unoriginal) or drag ourselves out for an evening of drinking and revelry at Wendy House.

Despite it meaning a clash with Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home and Star Trek 5: The Undiscovered Country we decided to brave it, especially when people just started turning up at our apartment in preparation. In the end we managed a rather impressive turn out of 23 people in our group, presumably as some kind of show of solidarity that if one of us would miss that future saving whale, we all should.

Last Saturday I presented a talk to Leeds Skeptics on the subject of “Beating the Bookies: Can you make money from gambling?”

The talk looked at various ways it might be possible to get an edge over the bookmakers or casinos though unfortunately with a conclusion that it was fairly unlikely that you would be able to achieve this.

Never the less there were some interesting discussions after the event with people who had made a somewhat profitable attempt at it and come out with quite a lot to show for it over the years. What it comes down to though is that it is possible, but you really have to grind it out – and that’s just like having a job, so isn’t really a get rich quick scheme.