We’re pleased to announce the launch of the Humanist Action Group 2014 Holiday Food Drive for local homeless shelters in Leeds. Last year we managed to collect over £3,000 worth of donations and this year will mark our fifth anniversary.
We’re looking for donations of food, toiletries and clothing, as well as time and money to run the operation and buy more stuff. Learn more on the Humanist Action Group website or join us on Facebook.
October 28th, 2014 |
Books
Pin a fucking medal on me, I have finished War and Peace. As Mark from Peep Show would say, I am not directly comparing my struggle reading it to the French invasion of Russia and subsequent retreat, but it was very difficult. Well, not so much difficult, but long.
I really got into it at the end. To say the first 800 pages were slow going but then it picked up sounds like a joke, but it did feel a little like that. As you get to know the characters more and more you become more involved with them, and in a novel this long, that is quite a lot.
The epilogues were huge. Normally an epilogue a chapter at the end of a book. Tolstoy had two epilogues, each with a dozen chapters in.
The fact such a book managed to maintain my interest all the way through is praise worth in itself. But this is to assume that the man, in this case “I”, had a choice in continuing to the end. However, history has shown us that once something is set in motion, it is not the will of a single man that moves it. Or something…
These are not chocolate apples. They are “chocolate flavour coated” apples.
We are making some exciting changes at Anxiety Leeds. Most notably our meetings are going to be moving to fortnightly. From November, we will be meeting on the 2nd and 4th Monday of each month. We are also moving venue. Leeds General Infirmary have kindly agreed to host us, so we will be moving to B36 in the Clarendon Wing.
The group has been doing really well recently with around a dozen people attending each session. With our new schedule we hope this will allow people to be even more engaged with the group.
Congratulations to James who recently completed his PhD viva. To help clarify the situation I have included a group photo above where I have crossed out all the faces of people who do not have a doctorate…
October 24th, 2014 |
Life
By the time you read this, I will hopefully be dead. Having enjoyed a whirlwind rock music career including a hugely popular album and world war, I will have overdosed on some kind of drug, probably heroin, and thereby before committed myself to the hall of fame of rock music history.
On the off chance that this has not happened, please bring presents.
I put “how” into my search and these were the suggestions…
October 11th, 2014 |
Books
After careful consideration, I have decided that heroin is not for me.
I had pretty much decided this already, but Irvine Welsh’s graphic depiction of life on skag in Edinburgh confirmed this view. Maybe it is amazing. Maybe you can kick the habit. But having carefully considered it, I have decided that it probably is not worth the risk of ending up lying on a floor, covered in my own sick, injecting junk into your cock because it is the only vein I can find on my body.
The content is horrible. I have read quite a few of the famous war novels, and none of them match up to this. Perhaps it is because life in the trenches is more of an abstract concept whereas having a drug habit, while not being something I have ever done, is far closer to reality.
Plus, it makes for a really good novel.
It was hard going at first as it is written in Scottish English. However it gets easier as you go along.
October 10th, 2014 |
Video
…until you have seen Darth Vader, on a unicyle, playing the bagpipes.
October 9th, 2014 |
Books
Why is there something rather than nothing? Why does the universe exist? That is the question that Lawrence Krauss aims to tackle in his book “A Universe From Nothing”. I first heard him speak at QED and very much enjoyed his book The Physics of Star Trek. This one promised to be almost as good.
I found it sufficiently accessible. Some of it was a bit too clever for me. Sentences such as “when you think about it, x doesn’t make any sense…” I could have thought about some of those problems for a long time and not seen the flaw. However, for the most part it is entirely readable and Krauss is a solid communicator of his ideas.
Given how fast physics is moving, some of the content in this book could soon be out of date. However, for now it is a clear and concise overview of where we are with our understanding of the origin of the universe. There are some fascinating insights. For example, we live at a time when the Big Bang is detectable and we can see we are part of a huge universe. In two trillion years, that will not be the case. All signs of it will have disappeared. Ours is the golden age of cosmology, because the universe is only 13.8 billion years old.
I did not feel it needed some much commentary on religion. There was no religion-bashing, but there was a lot of “which is why the universe must clearly be billions of years old and so scripture must be wrong”. Perhaps this is required this is more relevant for other audiences, but from my perspective, it felt like everyone who was going to read the book would know that already.
Overall I found the book accessible and enjoyable, as well as re-igniting that feeling of excitement about physics.
