Chris Worfolk's Blog

Recently, Jason recommended I check out a series called Human Planet, which first aired earlier this year. The series looked at how humans have adapted to live in every environment on Earth, and it was incredibly interesting – so you’ll imagine how shocked I was when I found out it hard first aired on BBC One ;).

Some of the stuff just seems impossible – one guy can free dive without coming up for air for over five minutes. As the show suggested, I tried to hold my breath along with him, but even before he had got half way down I was gasping for air, let alone the time it takes for him to walk around down there and spear the fish.

Other highlights included hunters in Africa who would just walk up to lions and take their meat, then get out of there before the lions realised what was going on, and tribes in Brazil who build their houses at the very tops of trees in the rain forest. Long range photos of uncontacted tribes in the rainforest were also pretty breathtaking.

You could also tell when they were showing you mother nature at it’s biggest and best, as occasionally they would be describing an event, and then zoom out into orbit – and you could still see it!

Great series, well worth checking out. You can find out more information on the BBC website.

Laster this month will see the inaugural Genital Autonomy conference taking place in at Keele University. It’s a two-day event looking at “Law, human rights, and non-therapeutic interventions on children.”

My friend Antony Lempert from the Secular Medical Forum will be speaking on the subject of “Conscience and Foreskins: A Medical Paradox”, which is well worth attending as anyone who made it to his talk at Enquiry 2010 will know.

Last week I decided to buy a crab. There was a disappointing amount of meat inside, but it was fun to prepare.

We’re pleased to announce the launch of Sunrise Conference 2011, our second annual conference on community leadership and activism. Join us on Saturday 3rd September for a day of learning and sharing ideas and experience in running local community groups.

Sunrise ran for the first time in 2010, featuring talks, workshops, seminars and discussions from community groups leaders from across the UK.

This year’s event will be run as a virtual conference, streamed live across the internet so you can attend from wherever you are based. Best of all, registration to this year’s event is free, so it is accessible to everyone.

Registration is now open, so sign up today to reserve your spot.

Recently, I’ve been trying to finish off some candles so I can get rid of them. This has resulted in a rather alarming number of romantic nights in with Norm and George. Still, at least it brings back memories of Munich…

Today, we’re proud to launch our latest project, Worfolk Lectures! The site is an online archive of academic lectures on a variety of ever expanding topics, all available to download or stream in full high definition.

Over the past twelve months we have been rapidly recording and editing together lectures from a variety of talks, conferences and events and after a long and hard slog, we’re finally able to bring this content to the world.

As well as issues with transferring and editing the content together, the final piece fell together in June when Dailymotion offered us a partnership agreement to allow us to host the content, in full HD.

There are already ten lectures available on the site and we will be releasing a new video every Friday in something we’re hoping to coin the Friday lecture. No prizes for guessing how we managed to come up with that name!

Speakers will include Professor A. C. Grayling, Processor Chris French, Dr Gijsbert Stoet, Dr Antony Lempert, Dr Terrence Kee and many others. You can follow us on Twitter to keep up with all the latest updates.

Recently, Bradford Atheists headed over to Leeds to join us at Nation of Shopkeepers.

Last week, we headed down to Alea Casino for a poker night that had been organised by the analysis team.

Row One, aka myself and Jason where there to represent the office and I brought Norm along too. After the night we had, I think future tournaments might be restricted to analysts only though.

As part of an elaborate tactic, I went out first to make sure I wasn’t stealing chips off Jason and Norm. They then went on to place first and second, taking almost all of the prize money. Good times.

Having officially launched Atheist Stock out of beta last month, we’re pleased to announce the next stage of development – the Atheist Stock API.

The new API service will allow our partners to integrate with our site to allow them to offer our content to their users! It is easy to integrate with and comes with a full software development kit (SDK) as well as documentation to make everything as simple as possible.

While mentioning I had just written up a negative review of Trio recently, Norm suggested that I was too negative and just hated everything. As such, I wanted to write a short piece recommending a few of my favourite restaurants in Leeds, to point out a few places that I would highly recommend eating.

Blackhouse, one of the best steak restaurants in Leeds, nice atmosphere if a little noisy, but that is mainly due to the live pianist they normally put on. The steaks are fantastic.

River Plate, another fantastic steak restaurant, this one Argintinan. A bit on the pricey side, but arguably the best steak you will get in Leeds.

Chaophraya, despite mixed reviews from some of my friends, I have to recommend Chaophraya as the best Thai restaurant in town. I’ve always enjoyed amazing food and good service there.

Sam’s Chop House, if you’re ever in the mood for a bit of traditional English, if such a thing actually existed, you can’t go wrong with this place.

Cattle Grid, another great steak restaurant, perhaps not quite Blackhouse or River Plate, but what it only slightly lacks in quality, it definitely makes up for in portion size. Try the ribs, they’re amazing.

Las Iguanas, two for one cocktails and fantastic Latin tapas make for an excellent combination, and according to our waiter at their South Bank branch, Leeds is the best one in the country – staff even get sent up here to train.

Also, honourable mentions to The Restaurant, which despite it’s steep prices and odd name, win lots of points for greeting me with “good evening, sir” as well as having great food, and Oranaise, which I wouldn’t describe as the best Moroccan restaurant in Leeds, but is certainly the friendliest.