Archive for the ‘Humanism’ Category

Thursday saw myself, Rich and Nicola head out for our usual Thursday night jaunt and once again it would seem we’ve been so amazing we’ve done ourself out of a job. We ended up seeing like three people all night thoiugh this is certainly a good sign once you put aise personal efforts.

In any case it resulted in us being able to head to the Victoria Hotel for a pint with everyone else – except that once we had arrived everyone was leaving! So we headed up to The Old Bar for a quick drink which turned into a few pints of Rich and so in the end I didn’t end up getting to bed until well after midnight – not good for the day I had ahead of me tomorrow :S.

After the AGM on Tuesday we headed down to The Victoria for a few drinks before going over to D-Fusion for a bit of karaoke. The usual suspects opened the set and Jonni also did a few numbers plus twenty minutes after I commented to Jonni “I’m just waiting for Rich to get drunk before he opens his set with It’s a Sin” it kicked off with a rendition of a certain Pet Shop Boys number which I’m sure you can guess 😉 .

Tuesday saw the Atheist Society AGM. It was very well attended, probably due to the offer of free pizza but then that was the plan so we’re not complaining. Congratulations to everyone who got elected, especially Sophie our new president! I was elected vice president and I would also like to thank Norm for nominating me for honory life membership 🙂 .

Well that’s it kids, Rationalist Week 2009.

What a week. If nothing else it has been incredibly tiring, I arrived on site at around noon on Sunday and didn’t leave until 2am Wednesday! Not to mention it ended in a 22 hour shift on the Friday. I haven’t had time to catch up on sleep yet and given it’s now 1:30am and I have to be up for work in six hours and still have loads of work to do first it doesn’t look like that will be happening any time soon.

In terms of attendance we probably hit the same numbers as last year, the weather was great which was really nice in terms of keeping us warm and be able to setup and take down in nice sunny conditions but probably didn’t do us any favours in terms of attendance.

Unfortunately the week was tinged with an ugly side as members of Leeds Islamic Society mounted a campaign of hate, violence and attacks against us but beyond that the week passed by with no major problems.

I will probably blog more about the various events we ran throughout the week but for the moment I would just like to say a huge thank you to everyone who helped out during the week to make it just a fantastic week!

The April meeting of Leeds Skeptics saw Dr Antony Lempert from the Secular Medical Forum deliver a talk on what they do and the issues surrounding religion and medicine. It was really interesting to get into some of the details of the issues they are concerned with and indeed we all need to be concerned with including long talks about both female and male circumcision – not for the squeamish!

The Thursday before Rationalist Week myself and Rich headed out for our usual Humanist Action Group antics.

Turns out, we’ve solved the problem in like a month 😀 . There was hardly anyone out that night which we decided must be down to our excellent work even though we don’t really help to get people off the streets in any way. Go HAG!

With the final Tuesday of the Easter holidays seeing the union closed, we headed off to The Library for the final RW planning meeting. In the end we got a rather good turnout, something like a dozen people or more eventually showed their face including the long awaited introduction of Zoltan’s girlfriend. She looks quite mature for a 15 year old.

Last week myself, Norm and Nicola went down to the Yorkshire Evening Post to do an interview as they wanted to do a feature on Leeds Atheist Society. It came out in Thursday’s issue and was good coverage for us – very positive compared to the stuff we normally get (which isn’t saying much as we normally just get attacked in the media but it was geniunely good) and it was a full page piece too.

If you missed the paper edition you can read the article online on the YEP website.

Continuing the ongoing efforts to get the technical set ready for Rationalist Week I’m currently busy installing software and configuring the computers that will be used during the week. As such they now have matching wallpaper so they look nice and pretty 😀 .

Speaking of Rationalist Week preparations, our lounge is now home to a large selection of food products, as per the picture below. Interesting this is just one of several big piles of stuff which is now ready for the week though I think both I, and my housemates, will be glad to get out of the way next week.

I’ve just put the album on and am currently mulling over how well it sums up Humanism. I mean, it would seem to sum it up very nicely indeed but then if I was to make a choice I would have to choose gold. Might have to give it some more thought.

Along those lines, the Humanist Action Group headed out on Thursday to do our usual trip round. As normal there were two of us which is interesting given 17 people decided to join the HAG group on Facebook and proudly display it on their profile.

Interestingly though it was at least a different two this week. Rich was unable to make it has he has retreated back to his parents for a while due to illness so myself and Nicola headed out. Turns out there were quite a lot of people out, which is a good thing in one respect and a bad way in others. Strange feeling really.