Archive for the ‘Humanism’ Category

Tuesday night saw the second A-Soc summer social since the move to Cuthbert Brodrick. It was a fine move indeed with it being steak night! So having enjoyed a variety of steaks (including a mixed grill for myself) we settled in with some drinks and chatted the night away like old times. Apparently some people were intoxicated but I can’t say I noticed.

One of the perks of city living is the ability to walk to the pub and home again, finally removing my need to drive to Tuesday night socials.

It’s a bit of a walk up from my apartment though with the way back being down hill it feels a lot shorter at the end of the night which is always a positive. In any case it felt really good not having to worry about how much I was drinking for once, a great improvement on the situation.

On Saturday night I attended the annual BBQ of the North Yorkshire Humanist Society (so don’t get confused – it wasn’t a BBQ where we cooked North Yorkshire Humanists 😉 ).

The BBQ itself was good although I feel I was mis-sold when told it was in York as it was in a village just outside named Haxby – not a problem when you’re coming from York but on the far side when driving up from Leeds.

It was interesting to see the demographics in North Yorkshire, the age range is much better than West Yorkshire although this could have been disorted by the fact it was a bit more of a social event than a regular meeting.

They seem an active enough society though, they hold 11 meetings a year (just missing out August) which is more frequent than a lot of societies which take extensive summer breaks and they seem to have quite a bit of committee rotation going on.

Yesterday saw the July meeting of Skeptics in the Pub with a talk by myself entitled “Swine flu – will anyone survive?”

The basic conclusion of the talk was no, unfortunately not. We are all almost certainly going to die. The good news though is that most of us probably won’t die from swine flu, which is a bit more of a positive outlook.

After a bit of a shakey start were Carpe had forgotten to reserve us the room we got going with quite a few new faces which was good to see.

I attended the York Brights meetup on Wednesday. You’ll never guess what we talked about.

Oh my god, why, why can’t the debate just stop. It’s endless. It doesn’t matter what we call ourselves. Of course it actually does matter but it’s not the most important thing in the world, we have far bigger problems as a movement.

The seperation does fall into the category of a major problem but it would cease to be one if we could just all work out it doesn’t really matter that much what we call ourselves as long as we’re pushing the same agenda.

Can we please, please, stop talking about the name.

Tonight saw the usual Tuesday night Atheist Society social which again delivered a fairly recent turnout given that it is the summer holidays and nobody is around. More importantly they managed to put some dressing on my burger this week which was most welcome 😉 .

I was driving to work yesterday when I saw a land rover with the A-Soc slogan on the back. I can only presume they are a big fan of the society 😉 .

Thursday saw Moz and Sarann come on their first HAG outing. While it wasn’t the best of nights with it having poured down a few hours before there were at least some people out and about so it wasn’t a wasted night. Better than Sophie & Jon’s first time!

Today saw HAG expand in a new direction as we headed out to remove some of the graffiti in Hyde Park. It turned out to be really succesful, snowballing when a bunch of random kids from the block turned up and decided to help out – crazy times!

Despite flagging turn outs to recent Tuesday night summer socials, we ended up getting around a dozen people down to The Library tonight, possibly given more life by the recent camping trip but hopefully something that will continue throughout summer.