Archive for the ‘News’ Category

In the spirit of promoting secular holidays, there is now an official website for Galileo Day. I use the term official loosely because how do you really have an official site for a holiday? Obviously, the answer is you don’t but it’s as close to some kind of official website as you can really get.

There isn’t much on it at the moment other than a bit of information on the holiday and how to enjoy a traditional Galileo Day Feast but this should expand over time.

Finally finally got the resources from across the country, the corporate image guidelines and all the documents and other required materials, the website for the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies, better known as the AHS has now gone live.

Over the coming months there will be lots more content added to the site as we get it, but for the moment it will serve it’s purpose as giving us an official web presence and make available the important information.

Looking forward to the press launch now, it’s only a few weeks away!

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.

Saturday saw the first Leeds Skeptics in the Pub which went rather well at least for an initial meeting. We got around twenty people turning up in total with a mix of ages and backgrounds which is exactly what we were aiming for really.

I kept my actual talk fairly short as I wasn’t too sure what people were expecting for a first meeting, in future they will be a bit more well-rounded talks but for the moment I was more interested in people getting to know each other and having a good drink and a chat.

Hopefully we can build on the success of Saturday and build attenance even more in the future. We’ve booked up speakers as far as May so there is plenty going on.

I’ve finally got round to adding email notifications to further comments being posted on my blog entries. So if you comment on one of the entries you can now opt to be notified by email if someone posts a follow-up comment on that same entry.

The observant of you may have noticed that there are some new header images on rotation on my website and blog. These are in keeping with the original header images – one stock shot, one hero shot and one collage. I’m planning on expanding the amount of images in rotation over time though I only want to do it when I have interesting images to add.

The first one is just an image I picked up off iStock which I loved.

The second is a photo of me blogging, I might re-shoot this at some point in the future as it didn’t come out exactly how I wanted it but then I thought it somewhat of a lost cause to translate my imagination into photography and so got as close as I could.

Finally the collage is a few of my old school pictures from back in the day when I was at high school, or at least six form. Given appropriate aging effects, of course.

After the a month of development and planning, Leeds Skeptics in the Pub is finally officially going ahead in January. The idea is that once a month people can get together and discuss a chosen issue over a few pints, though no doubt any topic selected will simply be a starting point that will be long lost after the first few rounds!

So, straw poll time.

In the last, year let’s say, longer if you wish, I’m just wondering how many national organisations everyone else has co-founded that have Richard Dawkins coming to speak at their press launch?

Oh, just the AHS then?

😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

Well, it’s over. America has a black president. A very white black president but a black president none the less. And rightfully so too, Obama is the man for the job.

We held somewhat of an election party to watch the results come in last night. With the projector hucked up to project accross our lounge wall and the sound system hucked into it too it was more than big enough to enjoy a life size picture of Christopher Hitchens when he appeared on the BBC’s panel.

Having work I went to grab some sleep not long before 4am and everyone else had dispersed by the time I got up but never the less it was a fun night. And I’m now loaded up with several litres of energy drinks at work so I should be able to make it through the day 😀 .

Following the initial meeting last Tuesday, the Pro Life Through Pro Choice campaign finally launched today. The campaign is to promote the idea that pro choice does not mean anti life (whereas those who traditionally describe themselves as pro life generally are anti choice) and that the abortion issue is a serious one which needs to be approached with an open mind.