Chris Worfolk's Blog

Earlier this month, the Humanist Action Group completed our third annual Holiday Food Drive for local homeless shelters. This year was bigger than ever, raising, including in-kind giving, almost £3,000! We learned a lot from what we did this year, tried some new things, some of which worked and some of which was less successful.

To reflect this, we’ve now got a new edition of the HAG Food Drive guide – this publication provides all the information you need to run a food drive in your local area and now includes whole new sections based on our recent experiences. Get in touch if you would like a copy – it’s free!

Back in July, I wrote about how it might be time for the United States to re-think their attitude to guns in the wake of the Batman cinema massacre, that left 12 people dead.

Then, just as that incidient faces from our memories, or at least those of us who weren’t personally affected, a fresh gunman walks into yet another high school, this time in Newtown, and massacres 26 people, including 20 children.

The US gun lobby was quick to explain how the situation could be resolved – armed guards at the entrance to every school, and maybe even teachers with guns too, that way they can return fire and stop it before it turns into a massacre. Guns are always the answer!

The more civilised portions of society spoke out about the tragedy.

I have to say, however, that I don’t think tragedy is the correct term. To me, the term tragedy suggests a degree of chance or unpredictability – 100,000 people die per day, but it isn’t a tragedy (it probably should be – but that is another discussion) because most of them die of old age. A busload of children going off a cliff though – that is tragedy. It is an unfortunate and unlucky event.

The reality is that there is nothing unlucky about someone walking into a school in the United States, and shooting the place up.

Rather than calling it a tragedy, they need to face up to the truth. They have a simple choice. Choice A is to maintain the freedoms they enjoy, namely, being able to bear arms and not contribute to the cost of providing health care to others and accept that from time to time, some of their children are going to get massacred.

Choice B is to restrict the freedoms to own weapons designed to kill, and contribute to the cost of providing mental health care to those who need it. The advantage to which though is that you get to life in a society where you know your child isn’t going to be shot in the head by a gun-toting young person in need of psychatric care.

Much like providing freedom of expression has the unfortunate consequence of meaning you have to provide nutters like Nick Griffin a platform to spout their views, if you want to live in a society that loves guns and hates universal healthcare, you have to accept the consequences of your actions.

The reality is, that the United States chooses to have these massacres on a regular basis. That is the true tragedy of the situation.

This man has a tattoo of Leviticus 18:22.

The verse is as follows.

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

Unfortunately, he apparently got that before reading any further. For example, Leviticus 19:28 says the following.

Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you

In short: no tattoos.

Ever wondered what the etymology of the term Boxing Day is?

Given the amount of sport that takes place on Boxing Day, you could be forgiven for assuming that it was the day that traditionally was used to stage big boxing matches. But it isn’t. Or at least it probably isn’t, the origins of the term are unclear.

The leading theory claims that it was traditionally the day when tradesmen would collect a box of gifts from their superiors – hence boxing all the gifts up.

What do you mean I can’t come into work today?!?!?

If you’re trying to get around documents in VIM using a Mac keyboard, you may feel fairly stumped without a page up and page down button. But you need not be!

VIM has an extensive set of commands, including moving backwards and forwards through a document a page at a time. They are logically named too – Ctrl+F will go forward a page and Ctrl+B will go back a page.

Last week, I was showering, while thinking about how silly it would be for someone to mount the argument that any level of intoxication removed a person’s ability to consent to sexual activity. Then, by coincidence, the next day I saw some tweet that exact argument.

Of course it wasn’t a very good argument, because you only have 144 characters, and therefore no space to actually make an argument to back up the claim you have stated. But even with more space, it would seem difficult to make such an argument.

Before we dive into the politics here, let us first remember that under British law, any gender can rape any other gender (or indeed the same gender), so there is no split down gender lines here.

Under British law, you are still responsible for your actions, if you get drunk. it’s called voluntary intoxication, and it is no defence to a crime. If you knew that you would become intoxicated when you took the substance, and with alcohol you do know, then the law deems it your own fault if you do something stupid.

Presuming we want to live in a fair society with only a single standard that applies to everyone, you would therefore assume the opposite was true – if you get drunk and do something you later reget, but did it all voluntarily, you can’t then blame someone else for what you did. We all have to take responsibility for our actions.

But some advocates would have you believe that once someone has consumed so much of a drop of alcohol, they are no longer responsible for their own actions, and can later change their mind, and decide they were raped instead.

This is nonsense. What we’re talking about here is completely consensual sex – ie, a boy gets drunk, explicitly agrees to come back to my place and have sex, then wakes up next morning, changes his mind and says he was raped because he was unable to consent due to intoxication.

This brings up a whole new round of rational dilemmas – most notably, if we’re not going to hold people responsible for their own actions while intoxicated, then surely if the alleged rapist is also intoxicated, how can you hold them responsible, given you have taken up a position that states people are not responsible for such behaviour?

To differentiate between them creates a double standard.

For some reason, Miah’s Kitchen had a limo. Bryce wanted a picture next to it, but I couldn’t fit the whole car in lol.

With our most recent meeting being the last of the year, I had organised a meal at Miah’s Kitchen after the meeting, so we could celebrate the festival season at Leeds City.

Last weekend, myself and George headed up to Weetwood to watch the Leeds Celtics american football team play.

It was dry, but never the less very cold and due to what we suspect was the ambulance getting lost, the game didn’t kick off until an hour after it’s scheduled time – a risky move when you have so little day light these days.

By this point, we were too cold to watch the whole manage, but in the first half Leeds Celtics scored two touchdowns, both with two point conversions, against the Northumbria Mustangs.