Chris Worfolk's Blog

What would you do if you walked into an elevator, and everyone else was facing the other way?

Paul Hopwood had previously spoken at Leeds Skeptics on the topic of “You Know Less Than You Think”. If you missed it, you can watch it online. He has since developed a follow-on talk, “Widening the View – Looking at the limits of Human Perception”, which he delivered for us earlier this week.

As ever, Paul delivered an interesting talk, though it is hard to listen to it all the way through without having an existential crisis. Not to mention the many additions to my reading list!

Dr John Baruch spoke at Leeds Skeptics a few years ago and I found the talk both enjoyable and fascinating. Therefore I asked him to give a similar talk at West Yorkshire Humanists and earlier this month he obliged. The evening saw double the turnout we had in February.

Dr Jacob Dunningham recently spoke at Atheist Society on the topic of “Making use of uncertainty: how quantum physics is revolutionising our lives”. It was an interesting talk and it was great to see A-Soc doing such good numbers.

Earlier this month Leeds City Toastmasters held its 2014 International Speech & Evaluation Contest. We had four competitors for each contest and the standard was excellent. Congratulations to everyone who took part! The winners, myself and Anthony, now move onto the Area Contest in Sheffield.

The preliminaries of the 2014 Public Speaking World Championships are now underway. This seems an appropriate time to post a video from last year’s final. The winner, Presiyan Vasilev, won with a speech entitled “Changed by a Tyre”.

When I started learning guitar, I took some heart from research showing that natural ability was not that important. The key factor, at least according to the research, was the amount of time spent practising. This was good news because despite not having a natural aptitude for practical tasks, I could just apply a simple equation of time x structured practice = success.

Of course, the jury renames out on the results for me so far.

However, BBC News ran an article earlier this month about a guy who was rubbish at golf, so quit his job to play full time to see if he could achieve greatness. He is only half way through his experience but is already showing great results. You can follow his progress on his blog.

On the down side, his team does include a chiropractor.

As many of you know, I always insist on the highest stanards of spelling and punctuation.

It is not without good reason though. For example, this can happen:

Please, for the love of god, do not post a comment pointing out that I spelt the word “standards” incorrectly. You will look like an idiot, even on my blog.

Heini posted this on my wall.

The February event of Sunday Assembly Leeds was hosted by Dermot. He picked a theme of wonder and arranged an excellent combination of talks and readings on the subject, as well as having Michelle get out all her meditation gear. A great time was had by all!