Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

Wednesday saw us head down to London for the launch of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies, better known as the AHS. We managed to get ten of us down there from Leeds – a number unmatched by any other society with the closest competitors only achieving five (not that I’m bragging of course 😀 ).

The day itself went quite well, we eventually managed to get the technical sorted and all of the speeches were very good. We got some good pictures too which will do very nicely for publicity not to mention the endless angles we got video from.

I met Richard Dawkins, I said “what kind of microphone would you like?” and he said “a lecturn will be fine.” That is my Richard Dawkins story 😀 .

The hotel was alright, we had quite a big room for the amount we paid. I think I managed to spend as much money on taxis getting to and from the train station I did as my train tickets which I found quite amusing but the important thing is, I actually made my train (unlike certain other people who had to go via Manchester at 4am to get down there).

All in all if the AHS can continue like this, we’re going to do very well. Congratulations all on a victory well deserved.

Sunday being Galileo Day we decided to celebrate in the traditional way with a Galileo Day Feast. Sunday would have provided far too much time to prepare so we held it on Monday night on which I didn’t get home until 6:30 so eating at 8pm wasn’t bad at all.

I headed out to the Deer Park with Si this lunch time for Sunday lunch, perhaps somewhat in celebration of beating Charlotte by a good two hours on our closing race last night and because there is never a bad day to go for a pub lunch.

The real shock of the day is that having sat down and pretended to look at the menu before going for the same thing I always have, I actually choose something different this time! Sure I went for a burger rather than a steak but still, I think it’s big leap to actually alter my usual selection.

I really enjoyed today to be honest, it was nice that it was just the two of us, it’s an excellent chance to be cynical without someone dragging the mood up. Sunday lunch is about relaxed chat, a nice meal and then heading home for a nap, none of this hyper talkative nonsense. Just a relaxing lunch so I can drift off and pretend for an hour or two that I don’t have a pile of work to get through.

Friday saw the Christian Union come to Perspective to talk to us about their faith. It was an interesting event shall we say.

While so far Perspective has been fairly restrained so far there were some rather heated discussions on Friday and behaviour on the A-Soc side was quiet frankly not up to scratch. We persevered though and at least the feedback I got from Joe from the CU when chatting to him afterwards was that people were at least asking geniune questions which is what Perspective is all about.

The food was a bit of a disaster too, the catering plans feel through and so I had to be dispatached to bring in pizza which resulted in there not being much food to go around. All in all, not the most successful session but at least the discussions kept going long into the night.

Last Thursday saw A-Soc’s Darwin Day 2009 celebration in the union. Thanks to the hard work of Nicola and Sophie as well as the baking of Norm and Michelle, it was an all day party which ended up raising us some cash for Rationalist Week too.

If you aren’t aware, today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. Darwin was a brilliant scientist that who moved our knowledge of the origins of life on uncountably despite the controversial nature of his work. Happy birthday Charles!

Adding a bit of culture (and retracting a bit of sleep 🙁 ) we were up bright and early on Saturday morning to head down to the Royal Armouries to take a look round as well as watching some of the interpretations being put on and generally have some fun.

Friday saw the launch of Perspective, a course I developed and by developed I mean came up with the name and handed the work on to Nicola to do. Good times. The basic idea is that each week a different religion comes down to tell us about what they actually believe and everyone can ask questions, over a free dinner of course. Nothing original but highly successful, we got 20 people down on a Friday night for the Baha’i session.

The exam period being over, things were back to normal at A-Soc this week even if the union managed to lose our room bookings and end up putting us in Meeting Room 4 without a projector. Good times.

The social was a big success though with a rather large crowd having formed by the end with plenty of people both coming down from the meeting and joining us there. Ironically the one week Liz wasn’t there was the one week all her men turned up!

Yesterday I headed over to York to attend the local Brights meetup. Nick having pointed out that you can drive as fast as you can get the train over, I decided to brave the roads and eventually found myself in York city centre parked up by the river.

The parking machine not taking credit cards or notes I ended up registering with York’s phone parking service which of course is needlessly unuser friendly but eventually I managed to get it sorted and headed out to find Stonegate.

This was an interesting challenge and one I missed by quite a long way but luckily the very helpful Nick Nav service managed to guide me into the road and I had soon located the pub.

The turn out was good, there was about fifteen people in total which is enough to make sure the conversation kept flowing. There was quite a mix of interesting characters including one guy who essentially rejected Einstein’s relativity in exchange for his own acceleration relativity.

All in all though it was nice to be around another group of like minded individuals. York is a beautiful city and quite an active one it would seem as well with this group, North Yorkshire Humanists being based there as well and a Humanist Society at the university, even if they don’t answer anyone’s emails.