Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

For the final session of Perspective Citywide, Nicola Jackson presented a talk on Judaism.

For the March meeting of Leeds Skeptics in the Pub we welcomed Pauline Neale, who is a speaker for Oxfam, to talk about climate change. The talk was enjoyable though I think I should be made it clearer to Pauline before the event that we all accept climate change as I think she was initially expecting a far less friendly reception!

Thanks to Rob for the photos.

For the seventh session of Perspective Citywide, we were joined by Malcolm Deboo who traveled up from London to talk to us about Zoroastrianism. London boasts Europe’s only Zoroastrianism centre and Malcolm presented a fascinating look at a religion which very few people are familiar with.

For the Paganism session of Perspective Citywide, we welcomed Rhiannon Grant to the group. I had already seen the talk at the Atheist Society the previous Friday but it was never the less entertaining and the discussions were great.

On Wednesday, we welcomed Hull & East Riding Humanists secretary Tim Stephenson over to Leeds to present the Perspective Citywide session on Humanism. Tim’s talk was excellent, looking at both the philosophical side behind Humanism and also why it is important to stand up and be counted as a Humanist.

Last week saw Super Bowl XLV.

Norm is a big fan of American Football so was hosting somewhat a Super Bowl party until he came down ill, so it ended up just being a few of us braving the long night despite most of us having work in the morning.

Despite knowing nothing about American Football I found the game incredibly entertaining. With it being on the BBC, we didn’t get the watch the legendary Super Bowl commercials, which is most of the game given each 15 minute quarter took 45 minutes to play out.

I’m definitely planning to book the morning off for it next year so I can stay up without worrying about having work on the morning. Well worth staying up for.

Last Sunday was the February meeting of the Humanist Community of Leeds. Discussions were lively indeed – to the point that by the time the discussions first quietened down, most of the meeting was gone and we only just managed to squeeze the news in!

On Monday, we headed down to Sheffield Skeptics to see a talk by Richard Wiseman. Despite struggling to see the screen, which is a little annoying in a talk mostly about optical illusions lol, it was a really enjoyable evening and managing to get a quick chat with Richard I can see it was well worth going down for.

On Tuesday, Atheist Society began it’s regular Tuesday night meetings (See You Next Tuesday 😉 ) with a screening of the Chris Morris film, Four Lions. It’s an awesome film and well worth a watch. Though it did take us ages to get the film working despite bringing it on four different formats! So you can’t say we didn’t have a backup plan lol.

On Wednesday, I headed up to York for a York Brights meeting. It has been a while since I last saw them and could be a while again with Perspective Citywide starting so it was good to see everyone, and interesting conversation was provided aplenty as always.

Finally, on Thursday I was at a Humanist Society of West Yorkshire committee meeting which was great because the meeting was both efficient and productive – which tends to make a change from most committee meetings I’m in lol.

Last night was the first Wendy House of 2011. The turn out was reasonable, we had about ten of us and it being reasonably quiet, we soon settled into a corner of the dance floor and danced the night away through to the end. For a chance, neither myself nor James had dressed up – Jonni was devastated 😉 .

On Thursday, the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire hosted a talk by Nicola Swan, one of the directors of Dignity in Dying.

The talk was interesting though I was quite surprised at the attitude the organisation had no chosen to adopt. They now only advocate what is called “assisted dying.” This means that they no longer support similar issues such as assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia, leading to a very strict definition of what they will actually support.

I found this very disappointing as it results in an organisation which is only working towards legislating the situation where you are terminally ill and administer the solution yourself – they wouldn’t support someone who wasn’t terminally ill but in so much main they wanted to die for example, nor would they support any case where the doctor had to administer the solution.

As a result, in all honestly I came out of the talk with less support for the organisation than I went in with. Yes, their work is important but I think there is a much wider outlook needed – we should be able to take control of our own lives and do with our bodies as we wish – not slightly speed up our exit once it has already been determined.