Last week, I took Elina to meet my friends at York Brights. It was a rather strange evening as when I walked in I found them sitting in a whole different corner to the usual one, due to the amount of people at the pub. For creatures of habit, like myself, this simply isn’t cool and I spent a good twenty minutes repeating over and over again “this isn’t where we sit…” ;).
There were also lower numbers than usually turn out, perhaps due to so many people taking holidays at this time of year – which also contributed to a slightly lower than expected turn out to Skeptics this month.
Never the less it was a great night all the same, and we tried the food for the first time which turned out to be average.
On the way back, the heavens opened to what I think was the heaviest rainfall I have ever driven through, possibly even heavier than the torrential downpour I went through on my way to appear on Ummah Channel. We’re talking so heavy that I was driving significantly below the speed limit! Nothing wrong with rain, when you’re inside though ;).
We’re pleased to announce that free stock photography website Atheist Stock is now out of beta!
We launched the site in March 2010 and since then we’ve been working to add to the collection and road test the functionality. In October, we reached 1,000 images and the collection is still growing!
Given everything seems to be in working order and we’re now moving into the next phase of development, we’ve now removed the beta sticker from the website. If you haven’t had use of the thousands of available images, then perhaps now is the time to browse our collection.
Last week, we headed over to Nation of Shopkeepers for the Tuesday night Atheist Society social.
In general, I was very disappointed. Given we’re in summer socials, the nights always involve dinner but we couldn’t find any suitable seating that had enough space for us all and still allowed us to conveniently eat.
The food was quite nice, but nothing special and there was distinct lack of drink choices. This was a huge disappointment as usually when you go somewhere trendy that at least have a very well stocked bar to compensate for the high pricing.
It wouldn’t be a bad call on a warm summer night when you could sit outside but for now it didn’t seem worth the trip. If I wanted to hang out in a pretentious bar I would just go downstairs to Call Lane lol.
Having travelled round Europe last week I saw some amazing architecture, especially in Milan, Salzburg and Verona (where which both myself and Heather Nova now dream about).
However, thanks to the hard efforts of myself and Elina, Leeds now equally has its place among the great architectural works of the world, with our newly constructed Kopparberg tower.
This month’s Wendy House turned out to be a bit of a handful. The night started off with Viki’s 21st birthday party, to which none of Viki’s mates turned up, but luckily the three of us are so popular that we made up the numbers with our own friends ;).
To celebrate we did trays of shots, and managed to mix around eight different spirits leading to be receiving the following text next day from Jonni…
Fuck your shots. I woke up in the doorway of my old flat.
As I explained, it’s not really a good night unless you wake up on someone else’s porch. Having carefully planned ahead to make sure I would have chicken wings ready for when I got home too, what more could you really want from a night out.
Thanks to Nicola for the photos.
This month at Leeds Skeptics, Dr Jim Wild made the trip over to talk about weathering solar storms – how coronial mass ejection from The Sun has a significant impact on The Earth and given it has the power to knock out our electricity grid, is something we need to be taking seriously.
It was one of the best talks we have had a in recent times with great feedback coming from those who attended. Big thanks to Jim for making the trip over, you can find out more about him on his website.
On Thursday, I met Elina’s mum.
She and her boyfriend are currently over in Leeds visting Elina and with it being her birthday, we decided to go out to dinner. We ended up at Las Iguanas because I presumed Elina was joking when she told me to sort out a restaurant, which was apparently a silly mistake lol.
It was always going to be an interesting evening as I don’t speak any Finnish and Riitta doesn’t speak any English, and as you all know, Elina isn’t the most chatty person ever 😀 . Still, a bottle of rioja later and things were fine.
We also found some common ground on our love of vodka and Riitta’s boyfriend told me about his career as a ship designer. So all in all, an enjoyable dinner and only slightly more awkward than introducing Elina to my parents.
Last Wednesday, I was out with the Humanist Action Group doing our usual feed the homeless bit, when we found a man who looked rather ill.
When we spoke to him, he said he was suffering from septicemia. He was clearly in a bad way, one foot was swollen so much you could see how much bigger it was than the other and he had some nasty holes in his legs which were slowly oozing puss. It really wasn’t something I enjoyed looking at.
When we asked him whether he had been to the hospital, he said yes and they had given him some antibiotics. However, they were about to run out and now he couldn’t afford any more.
Now, you would assume that a) he is clearly in need of medical treatment and b) he doesn’t have a job so doesn’t really have any means to pay for prescriptions, you would think that the supposed free healthcare system we operate in the UK, would provide.
But it doesn’t.
If you take a look at the NHS website, it explains that there are only a handful of exemptions to prescription charges and unless you’re on income support or income related job seekers allowance, you still have to pay. Of course, homeless people rarely are on these schemes, leaving them very little access to medical treatment.
I think my tax bill is very high. But, every month when I took at my payslip and see how much has been taken off by the government before I even get to see it, I take some comfort in the fact that it is going to help those less fortunate than me, I mean that’s the point of having a social welfare state right? But incidents like this make you question, how many people are slipping through the gaps?
Last Tuesday, I headed down to Nottingham to present a talk to Nottingham Skeptics in the Pub.
Nottingham seems to be a lot like Leeds – a reasonable sized city with a confusing one-way system running through the middle and a few gems hidden away inside it, such as our venue, Fellows Morton and Clayton, a traditional Victorian pub, with a traditional Victorian fruit machine by the door.
I got down there in plenty of time to grab some food beforehand (and because you never know with the M1) and found the place easily enough. The food was OK, the grilled chicken was excellent though the ribs were somewhat disappointing. However, given the last time I had ribs was at Cattle Grid, my standards are probably simply still tuned too high.
I also met Andy, who runs the group and is an absolutely lovely guy. He also works with computers so we managed to squeeze in a few minutes of geek talk before the event!
The talk itself went pretty well, at least from my perspective lol, and I hope the audience enjoyed it too. I think the questions and discussions afterwards lasted until nearly 10pm, which from a 7:30pm start is quite a lot of discussion.
In general, I think the talk was well received by the audience. They certainly weren’t as critical as when I spoke to Hull Humanists – not that I didn’t very much enjoy the tough questions I took there!
In general, a really enjoyable evening and a big thanks to Andy for inviting me down.
