Archive for July, 2013

For the June meeting of Leeds Skeptics, we had magic boffin Oliver Meech present his show “When Magic and Science Collide”. It was a hugely entertaining show that received a ton of positive feedback.

One the tricks, named The Evolving Trick, changes every time he does it. You can see a clip of it below.

Last month, we kicked off the first of what will hopefully be many Humanist brunches. The idea is to add some more order to the regular Sunday meetings that have been running in Leeds over the past few years. The first event was well attended and we look forward to growing it from here!

To keep up to date with all the events, join the Leeds Humanists Facebook group.

Today, CWF is proud to announce the launch of a brand new project launching this September, Anxiety Leeds.

This new self help group will be open to everyone who suffers from panic attacks, anxiety or any other related mental health difficulties and will provide peer led discussions and support for anyone who chooses to attend.

The group’s first meeting will take place in September 2013 and will be monthly, with a view to increase this is the service is popular. More details and a mailing list for updates can be found on their website. Anyone with experience of working with anxiety related issues or training in the area is also welcome to volunteer as a meeting coordinator. Please contact us for further details about this.

We would like to thank Leeds Mind and Leeds City Council for their support of the project.

Panorama from the balcony of Ambiente. Click for full size image.

The 11th novel in the Discworld series, Reaper Man tells the story of what happened when Death was retires and goes to work on a farm. This is bad news for senior wizard Windle Poons who finds himself stuck between the world of the living and the dead.

Of course, any novel with Death in is going to be a good one. But I’m not sure how much I enjoyed the other half of the book – the parallel story of Windle Poons. At times it felt like the Fresh Start Club had been invented just to fill a bit of space in the story before getting back to Death.

DJ Lomax performs an electro swing set at Meg’s house party.

This morning, we released the first of at least three new podcasts that will be going out over the coming weeks. The first one looks at PRISM, the US surveillance programme of which details were leaked by former analyst Edward Snowden.

Head over to the podcast page to listen.

I say rivers, it’s just one river. In Goathland.

It’s the 4th of July, which can only mean one thing… Happy Higgs Day! It’s one year since we officially re-classified the Higgs boson has “discovered”.

Heading back from my weekend away, looking forward to watching the Grand Prix on BBC iPlayer, I walked into a pub and saw Hamilton, Vettel and Alonso standing on the podium. Race ruined. Why would you put that on the TV behind the bar? It’s just inconsiderate!

Still, upon arriving home Norm said it was worth watching anyway. I joked that technically I only saw a Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari on the podium, so I’m holding out hope it is Rosberg, Webber and Massa.

Little did I know, such a result turned out to be entirely possible (almost). As the race went on, Hamilton had a tyre blowout and Vettel’s car died – even having had the result spoilt for me it turned out to be an amazing race!

No Patrick Stewart on the grid, but you can’t win them all.