Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

This month’s Humanist Community of Leeds was looking very promising with the glorious sunshine that the weekend had experienced. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite last until Sunday evening, but it was an enjoyable evening none the less. With food now served until 10pm we were a little less under pressure to get started and enjoyed a long evening of discussions that was arguable even more political than normal.

Having had a long debate about what time Panic would come on, I decided to head down there for 9:45. Kick out is at 11, so they will probably finish fifteen minutes before that and based on an hour set, that means they will come on at 9:45. Seemed sensible.

As it happens they actually came on at 9:30 and I didn’t get there until 10 🙁 . Still, this did have the advantage that I got to piss most of their new stuff and arrive safely in time to hear I Write Sins Not Tragedies and their cover of The Darkness’s I Believe in a Thing Called Love, so I’m going to chalk that one down as a win 😀 .

This month at the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire, Simon Duncan presented a talk on social media – what it is and whether it is a good thing or not. Of course, the answer is yes.

Social media brings us huge benefits, at relatively little cost – and indeed almost no monetary cost, as sites like Facebook are all free. Unfortunately, it tends to take a bad wrap because of people not really thinking their arguments through. You can blame the media a little for this, but I don’t think they shoulder that much responsibility.

Take cyber bullying for example. It’s ace. Kids are going to bully other kids anyway, that is just part of society, at least at the moment. But with cyber bullying – you have a full paper trail of everything that has gone on! If social media has made the bullying situation worse for anyone, it’s the bullies! You can now just take your text messages straight to the school, or even the police. None of this complicated business of having to prove what they said with witnesses.

According to Simon, studies have also shown that using social media actually increases real world interaction. That’s certainly true of me – the main reason I use Facebook is to organise real world events with my friends. As well as plenty of other uses of course, such as keeping in touch with friends I otherwise couldn’t keep in touch with affectively because they’re in a different timezone in a different part of the world.

Other fears include issues like privacy and targetted advertising. Perhaps this has been a problem in the past, but with increased awareness of the situation, companies are now putting in place the tools to effectively manage your privacy and you can quickly and instantly lock down your profile, most of which is restricted to approved friends only anyway. This is arguably far more secure than the records the government has for example, which will probably end up on a USB stick left on a public train.

Targeting advertising is actually a massive benefit to us – because more effective advertising means less advertising. If companies can reach their target audience more effectively, they need to reach less people, so they spend less on blanket advertising. This is evident from the reduction of advertising – remember all the big flashing banners and pop-ups that plagued the internet – most of those have now given way to these small text links on Google and Facebook, and the web is much the better for it.

New Year’s Eve has a lot to live up to. That is why when choosing your NYE party destination, you need to pick somewhere with a proven track record of throwing a good time. Having had amazing parties in 2010, 2009 2008, it was no wonder that 25 people all chose to welcome in the new year at our apartment. We’re proud to say that we did not disappoint!

With it being that time again, we set about having the work Christmas party. It was the worst one ever. Not that it was a bad event, but last year, the Buzz Social Committee (myself and Jason) were consulted and we suggested murder mystery dinner. The year before, we saw a great night of karaoke. This year, we weren’t consulted, and so the end result was a standard meal, without any theme. Good, but not as good as if Row One had been consulted as they should have.

The dinner started at 12 noon, and we were sat next to a table from RBS, though they wouldn’t officially admit they were from RBP for fear that they could get a load of abuse given they were enjoying a rather expensive Christmas lunch at our expense (our referring to use, the tax payer).

After that, it was Row One to the rescue (along with Average Matt), trailblazing the path to the German Market where we enjoyed good times, stein’s of beer and the live band. Finally, we finished the night at Shooters, were Wendy took a bit of a sleep. I ended up going home just before 10pm which I’m pretty proud of given we started at 12 and I’m still off all alcohol and caffeine!

Having been quite impressed by the Leeds Salon event I attended, and I decided to head down to their next one – Panic on a Plate: How Society Developed an Eating Disorder at which Rob Lyons made the case that we all need to chill out about what we’re eating before being cross-examined by a panel of experts.

The key points in Rob’s talk were that people now eat a more varied, nutritious diet than ever before. One hundred years ago people didn’t have freezers, microwaves or even cookers, so the idea that until recently everyone had eaten warm home cooked meals is nonsense.

Supermarkets have only come round in the past 50 years, and before then you simply couldn’t get the variety you can access now. Let alone a thousand years ago, or ten thousand years ago as the species was evolving (not that it’s stopped). Only as far back as 1914, people simply couldn’t afford the fuel to run their cookers, so would often only cook hot food once a week for Sunday lunch. People would be eating junk food all the time – they would often by down the fish and chip shop three or four times a week.

In 1930, food made up 30% of your household budget, it now accounts for 10%. It was only in the 1970’s that freezers became affordable to everyone. In short, food today is cheaper, easier to store and easier to cook than ever before. The result is that people benefit from a more varied, more nutritious diet than ever before. Even if you’re eating takeaway every night, compared to what people were eating a hundred years ago, you’re doing pretty well.

While the panel didn’t buy into the talk wholesale, there was a lot more agreement than I expected. Generally, the consensus was that Rob was speaking a lot of sense – but there still was a healthier way to live, if only by ensuring you have different coloured foods on your plate each night.

Despite the cold and the train, December’s Humanist Community meeting was well attended and enjoyed by all. After all, the colder it is outside, the more a good Sunday Roast is appreciated! Conversation continued long into the night with this month’s topics including foreign policy, education and what everyone’s holiday plans were.

Recently, I headed down to Leeds Salon for their debate on “The Big Society: A Clean-up for the Charity Sector?” The event was well attended and had a diverse range of people there. Though as the event was part of Leeds Summat, I’m not sure whether that was partly responsible.

The speeches were good, though as someone who only dips in and out of politics a lot of the time, some of the content went over my head. The discussions afterward were very interesting as well. I’m looking forward to attending their next event.

I’ve never really done much for Armistice Day since entering the world of work. However, given the opportunity to get out of work for five minutes, we headed down to the war memorial in Headingley for the short ceremony. The saddest part of the whole tragedy is that getting us out of work for five minutes was no more an unjustified reason for so many people to die, than war itself.

It was striking how religious the ceremony was. But then of course, non-religious people never really did anything for their country, so it only seems fair to forget them.

Mark Edon recently gave a talk to West Yorkshire Humanists about “talking to creationists.” I’ve already seen Mark talk three times before but never the less it was interesting as ever, with plenty of fresh material.