Chris Worfolk's Blog

I’m very dubious about this phrase. I mean, surely there is only one sky? On Planet Earth at least, but then that is the only sky we’re supposed to be watching – surely we’re not supposed to be watching over planet’s skies?

In any case, I was invited onto BBC Radio Leeds on Wednesday morning for a debate with the organiser of the Exopolitics conference taking place in Leeds this weekend. It was only a 15-minute slot, including going over to the US to speak to Riley Martin – a man who has spoken to aliens (they tell him, “friend Martin…”) but was never the less interesting.

Anthony seemed a very well educated and smart guy (kind of like the good kid that falls in with the bad crowd 😉 ), he seemed very rational about the whole thing. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the Exopolitics movement as a whole. A quick look at their website is very revealing.

The era of looped debating whether ETI [extra-terrestrial intelligence] exists and are engaging our species has pragmatically shifted to assuming this to be the case – until we can gather and validate further information.

Basically, they’ve given up trying to work out whether aliens are visiting Earth and just decided they will assume they are until someone proves them wrong. Because that’s how science works 😉 .

EDIT: Since the blog post was written, http://www.exopolitics.org.uk/ has closed.

While what’s really important in any community group is really interesting and well thought through content (which I will be blogging about over on the Leeds Humanists blog), what I was most excited about this month was us rolling out our new happy humanist roller banner! Look at it sitting there behind Gijsbert, how nice 😀 .

With Mr Foley’s looking like our home for the moment, we had a great Skeptics in the Pub meeting in July with a really strong turn out despite it being in the middle of summer. Perhaps due to the excellent quality of talk delivered by Jonni on “The Mind, Illusion and the Need for Science.”

Beginning the ground work for our trip to Monte Carlo next month, we hit Grosvenor Casino recently to get some practice in (because everyone knows the more you practice at games of chance, the luckier you get).

It was an interesting contrast to Alea which is a bit more up market but as a consequence the food and drink is a bit pricer, as are the minimum stakes.

Grosvenor was instead a little more cheap and cheerful but never the less had some great views and friendlier croupiers, even if some of them did struggle a little with the whole adding up on black jack.

Plus Norm managed to walk with with more than double his stake I can only came away £4 down so on balance it was a really good night. Unfortunately things didn’t go quite so well for George.

Because I don’t yet have a partner to send individual congratulation cards with both our names on it, I thought I would just give a shout of congratulations to all those who have recently graduated.

Most notably my sister who recently received a 2i in Theatre Costume Design. Of course, it’s not quite as good as having a degree from a Russell Group university such as the University of Leeds, but it’s very good none the less and that’s the perfect amount for remaining on good terms with me.

Also congratulations to Kat, Sarah, Charlotte (kind of), James and anyone else who has graduated recently who I genuinely do care about, just not enough to remember you’ve just graduated.

I finally got to see Gijsbert’s new house yesterday. It’s very nice indeed! Located in Adel, the street could easily be confused for a JCT600 showroom with lines of Mercedes, BMWs and and Audis. Detached and everything.

It was quite a nice garden at the back too – you could even describe it as being very appropriate for humanist summer BBQs similar to those held by the North Yorkshire Humanist Group which I attended last summer.

Michelle dropped by last week in between her many travels.

We went to Blackhouse, the steak house in the city centre now located where Est Est Est used to be which I really, really recommend! I’m not convinced it was better than River Plate but certainly matches it and River Plate was amazing in itself. Cannot recommend it enough.

Afterwards we headed up to The Hedley Verity which is the new Lloyds No. 1 bar (essentially, a Wetherspoon’s with disco lights). That is located where Baja Beach Club used to be. I can’t say I spent much time in Baja because I didn’t start really going out and getting drunk until I was 18 and was therefore already three years too old to be hanging out in Baja.

What struck me though was how easily we all quickly slipped back into old times, arguing over socialist vs conversative politics and getting drunk. Good times.

I was thinking about the selective attention videos Jonni was showing me earlier and that lead me on to thinking about some videos I saw many years ago that made me jump.

Such videos to something along similar lines of this: they present to you two identical pictures and ask you to “spot the difference.” Of course there isn’t any and as time goes on your eyes move closer and a closer to the screen as your concentration increases to try and spot the differences you are told are there to be spotted.

Suddenly a ghostly image appears and a scream comes hurtling through your speakers and the majority of people will jump. There is a crude example of such a video here.

This got me thinking, it’s actually quite easy to scare someone. How many times have you walked up behind someone concentrating on a computer screen for them to suddenly realise you are there, jump and claim you “scared the life out of them.” Probably many times.

And yet, horror films continually fail to scare us on a regular basis. When was the last time you watched a horror film that was actually scary? I found Silent Hill had a good attempt but that was a few years ago now and most people found that rather tame. Of course it varies from person to person but most people I talk to, at least among my male friends, claim they haven’t seen a scary movie in a long time. Of course they could just be embarrassed to admit they were scared but for the moment lets take them at their word and assume all recent horror films haven’t scared them.

Surely we must be able to put some science behind this?

Take roller coasters for example. There is a lot of research and engineering that goes into making roller coasters and exhilarating experience. The problem is now that they simply can’t make them go any faster, drop any steeper or throw people around any more than they already do without injuring people.

So, as a friend was explaining to me, they’re now working on techniques to make people feel disoriented. The current avenue of research is to attempt to recreate the feeling we all had when we were children and went rolling down hills (I say children, I would imagine in Michelle’s case, it was last week as I presume it still works 😉 ) and that sensation of tumbling over and over. They can do this already but not without people throwing up everywhere, so the research continues.

I would have thought, in the same way, we could apply new techniques to horror movies rather than just adding even more blood, gore and guts to each film. Maybe they already are of course, but I think so far, the general consensus is that it isn’t working.

Browns played host to this year’s End of Year Ball in Leeds, with them providing us with no less than two private rooms – one for the reception and one for the dinner. As a bonus my fish came as an entire fish too.

The World Cup manages to get everywhere – and arguably so it should – though it was surprising to find that it even made it as far as the Humanist Community of Leeds with Gijsbert dressing up in all orange to support his home country, The Netherlands.