Atheist Society recently welcomed Leo Dragon for a magic show and talk on illusions.
Leo describes himself as an honest liar in that he is tricking us but it’s ok because we all know it’s an illusion and we accept it – basically, it’s like democracy in cabaret format. Interestingly, along these lines, Derren Brown writes, in his book Tricks of the Mind, that all magicians are inherently bad people because their life is to trick people. Luckily, at A-Soc we don’t tend to subscribe to the idea of inherent evil.
Leo wowed the audience with a range of tricks, even after having appointed Michael to make sure there was no funny business going on – this means that either Leo is genuinely magic, or Michael should be permanently banned from working for the Child Protection Agency.
We recently headed down to Distrikt for Sunday lunch.
It is located just across the road from my apartment which is convenient though it is a bit of dive inside. It’s nicely done out, but it is underground and that comes with inherent implications as well as it being like a sauna.
The bar itself had an excellent range of drinks including several flavours of Belvedere and 42 Below which are some of my favourite vodkas. The food itself was very nice. They do their beef really rare, which I don’t mind, but put some people off a little.
The bar staff were a little surly at first but I think they had just been having a hard time as their kitchen wasn’t working for the first thirty minutes. Things lightened up however, after she heard my ring tone however and discussed whether you would peg me as a Rhianna fan or not 😀 .
For the final session of Perspective Citywide, Nicola Jackson presented a talk on Judaism.
It could almost be Transhumanist Week between my talk the day before and Michael and John’s talk on Transhumanism and The Singularity at Atheist Society on Tuesday.
I recently headed over to Hull to present a talk to Hull & East Riding Humanists.
The journey was reasonable, I was pretty starving by the time I got there but the only place I could find to eat was a Little Chef so I ended up going hungry 😉 . Having arrived with an hour to spare, I decided to have a look round Hull. Turns out some parts of it are quite nice.
The talk was fairly well received, there was a good mix of skeptics and believers though I perhaps didn’t answer the critics well enough – there was nothing suggested that wasn’t pre-answered by Kurzweil or De Gray and that perhaps prevented us from discussing the criticisms which actually do stand up in more depth. Still I found it a very much enjoyable talk to give.
The venue was the Plotting Room of Ye Olde White Hearte which is apparently where the English Civil War was started. It’s a hard act to follow to be honest, I feel a bit of a let down after I found that out.
Having a post-Wendy fry up for a second month in a row, definitely makes it a long standing tradition. Even Fonze stuck around for greasy goodness.
For the March meeting of Leeds Skeptics in the Pub we welcomed Pauline Neale, who is a speaker for Oxfam, to talk about climate change. The talk was enjoyable though I think I should be made it clearer to Pauline before the event that we all accept climate change as I think she was initially expecting a far less friendly reception!
Thanks to Rob for the photos.
Continuing our theme at Buzz of mixing and matching between high-quality restaurants and all you can eat buffets, we followed the previous work social at Red Hot World Buffet with a trip to Piazza by Antony.
They had a reasonably well-stocked bar with a range of good vodkas and knowledgeable staff too. The barmaid suggested I followed my Kettle One up with a Belvedere Intense. Given I drink Belvedere at home, I thought it was worth a shot, and turned out to be an excellent recommendation.
Unfortunately, the rest of the night was rather disappointing. I began to feel really ill after having my starter (I don’t think there was anything wrong with the food as other people had the mussels and everyone else was fine) and ended up barely touching my main and heading home straight after the meal to get some sleep.
Having decided to stage a curry night to discuss some of the pressing issues for Leed Skeptics I set about trying to find us a nice restaurant to enjoy said curry. I eventually settled on Cafe Guru – but they were full so we went to Chaophraya instead.
Luckily, they didn’t disappoint either. The service was excellent and the restaurant was well fitted out. It was however very easy and the place itself was quite cramped with the amount of tables they were fitting into the size space. In reality though, it’s hard to fault a place with does a Thai curry sauce, in a Yorkshire pudding, on a steak.
James gave the place a similar thumbs up though having later spoken to Gijsbert about it, he said that he had a good experience the first time but since then it has been poor – maybe we need a second visit to get a more well rounded view, which definitely sounds like an excuse to go back.
Having finished up with the Perspective Citywide session on Zoroastrianism, we headed down to Livebait to grab some dinner.
I’m always dubious of sea food restaurants because they seem very lazy. They present you with food that it still in it’s shell and then expect you to get it out for them before you can eat it. This seems incongruent with other restaurants where it is traditional for the chefs to prepare the food for you before serving it.
I started off with the salmon which was good, but I prefer my salmon to be very well cooked and this definitely was not. The bread that came with it was very nice though.
Following this, I decided to give lobster a go. It’s not something I have ever really had a desire to eat but I do have a desire to try new things and given that I’ve never had lobster before and it didn’t seem too much more than the other mains I was looking at, it seemed worth a punt.
Overall I have to say I was disappointed. Not only was it tricky to get the meat out, but the meat itself just wasn’t that tasty. Opinions since have disagreed about the cause – Nicola suggests it is because lobster simply isn’t that nice, while Rebecca suggests I simply got bad lobster (having not been Durham educated, I’ve never had good lobster 😉 ).
The atmosphere in the restaurant was pleasurable – it’s a small place and having only sat down at 9pm, we found ourselves with the place to ourselves by the end of the meal. Service was acceptable – friendly but a little inattentive, especially given we had the place to ourselves. I wouldn’t go back in a hurry, but that is mainly down to me not being a huge fan of sea food.
