The Humanist Community of Leeds now has it’s own blog.
The new blog will cover some of the topics that we cover in meetings so if you miss a meeting you will be able to catch up on the topics that we covered. As the material grows we are also hopeful that it will become a usual resource for other humanists to look to for inspiration.
One of the guys in my office has been doing the Atkins diet for a while now. This caused me to take a look at the research carried out on low-carbohydrate diets to see if there was any basis for the misery he is putting himself through.
Most people including myself just kind of wrote off the diet because the pseudo-scientific explanation behind it didn’t make much sense. However in 2004 the flagship BBC science documentary Horizon broadcast an episode showing it probably does work for reasons differing from those that Dr. Atkins actually claimed.
In fact, looking into the evidence for low-carbohydrate diets, while there is a huge mixed bag of results, the overall consensus seems to be that while more research is needed in the area, such diets are generally safe and are effective in weight loss.
Of course this isn’t to say that everyone should jump on Atkins. Diets are no replacement for basic healthy eating and well all know this. We’re all well aware the way to be healthy is to eat a balanced diet, treat yourself occasionally, hit all the major food groups and avoid eating prepared meals, fast food or generally anything that doesn’t require you to put some effort in preparing yourself, as much as possible. However, if you are going to diet, Atkins at least isn’t any worse than any other diet.
I love Richard Dawkins. But sometimes I think he is a bit too nieve. Take for example the recent goings on on the RD.net Forum. A few weeks ago they announced that the forum was going to be replaced by a new system. A system which was “similar to a forum” but had some differences, most notably threads would be tagged instead of categorised and that all threads would be moderated.
They announced they would be leaving the forum operational for 30 days and then replacing it with the new system. However two days later the forum was locked down with a message from Richard saying the following…
Imagine that you, as a greatly liked and respected person, found yourself overnight subjected to personal vilification on an unprecedented scale, from anonymous commenters on a website. Suppose you found yourself described as an “utter twat†a “suppurating rectum. A suppurating rat’s rectum. A suppurating rat’s rectum inside a dead skunk that’s been shoved up a week-old dead rhino’s twat.†Or suppose that somebody on the same website expressed a “sudden urge to ram a fistful of nails†down your throat. Also to “trip you up and kick you in the guts.†And imagine seeing your face described, again by an anonymous poster, as “a slack jawed turd in the mouth mug if ever I saw one.â€
What do you have to do to earn vitriol like that? Eat a baby? Gas a trainload of harmless and defenceless people? Rape an altar boy? Tip an old lady out of her wheel chair and kick her in the teeth before running off with her handbag?
None of the above. What you have to do is write a letter like this…
You can find the entire thread here. Needless the say the letter that was written wasn’t in any way offensive – it was very pleasant and upbeat. But never the less it attracted widespread abuse from forum users. Here is why I think the reaction was nieve though…
Firstly, Richard’s first assumption is wrong. “What do you have to do to earn vitriol like that?” The answer actually is write a letter. Post a YouTube video. Visit /b. Basically anything on the internet attracts that kind of abuse, it saddens me that, that is the case but unfortunately that is how the internet is. Every time I post a YouTube video someone makes a stupid, inane and abusive comment, that’s life unfortunately.
Secondly I think it’s also a mistake to assume these comments are coming from people sympathetic to your cause. I suspect they didn’t. One possibility is they came from religious people just looking for any way to get to him but I suspect such comments actually came from general internet trolls who don’t really care about science, reason, debate or maybe even Dawkins, generally get off on the idea of annoying religious and non-religious people and just wanted to cause trouble. Basically imagine an even younger, more irriguous version of my friend Will.
I also suspect that it may be a nieve thought to think you can control and moderate the internet. I suspect a lot of the user base will be lost because people don’t like moderation because of the pressure it puts you under. However I could be wrong about this, only time will tell. At very least though you can see why this would annoy people.
This summer Birmingham, UK will play host to Enquiry 2010 Conference a national conference for atheists, humanists and sceptics on the topic of “atheism in the 21st century.” With three days of events, a dazzling array of speakers and all profits going to charity this is not an event to be missed!
Guest speakers include Professor A C Grayling, Professor Chris French, Andrew Copson, Maryam Namazie and many others plus more guests still to be confirmed. There will also be evening entertainment and plenty of opportunities to get to know other conference attendees throughout the weekend too.
Enquiry aims to to bring a greater level of understanding on contemporary issues but in addition to that all profits are going to the Foundation to support the work we do including the Humanist Action Group, Humanist Communities and our work to support student groups. We’ll also be presenting some brand new initiatives which will be unveiled at the conference!
The event will take place on the first weekend of June – Friday 4th to Sunday 6th at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Birmingham. We very much hope you can join us there! Find out full details on the Enquiry 2010 Conference website.
After almost a year in development, we are pleased to announce the launch of Atheist Stock!
Atheist Stock is a stock photography website designed specifically for atheist, humanist and free-thinking societies. On the site you can find a wide selection of high-quality photographs to use in your advertising, websites and print material when designing creative for your group or society.
So whether you need a photo of groups at work and charity work to Conway Hall and Richard Dawkins, we have the image you need. They are all available as high quality – good enough to print – almost all at resolutions as good as you would find on professional stock photography websites.
Best of all, they are all available completely free to free-thinking groups! Just contact us with information about your group and will we provide you access. So why not check out our collection!
On Saturday we were down at the AHS (National Federation of Atheist, Humanist & Secular Student Societies) national convention to promote the services that we offer to student societies. Taking place in Oxford the convention drew in student groups from across the UK including some coming from as far as Belfast!
Despite still being in the recovery stage of flu I headed down to Oxford this weekend for the AHS national convention. We set off on the Friday afternoon as to be in time for Camp Quest UK director Sam Stein’s talk and stayed as late as the Sunday night to hear Dr Evan Harris’s talk on trying to introduce some common sense into Parliament – something which is not popular in there.
All this resulted in us not getting back into Leeds until 2am this morning, something which my body did not appreciate when I had to get up for work this morning. Never the less it was a great weekend. On top of the talks and conventions we also managed to fit in the Ashmolean Museum, the History of Science Museum and of course plenty of watering holes on the way.
Oxford is a beautiful city, if occasionally puncuated by some hideous buildings that really stick out and the colleges are all like mini-cities in themselves. Would be a really nice place to be invited to do postgraduate study (hint hint) 😉 .
At the recent meeting of Leeds Skeptics in the Pub Mike Granville delivered us the talk The Catholic Church: Big Church or Big Business? It was fascinating to learn that at the start of the 20th century the Catholic Church was actually on it’s knees and it was only alliances formed around World War II that restored it to power. Another interesting twist in the story of the Catholic Church.
For those who don’t know I was stuck down ill on Tuesday night. I managed to claw my way back into work today but that was probably a mistake given how I am feeling now.
In any case last night didn’t help. Having not really slept properly since Monday night I finally managed to drift off in the early-ish hours of this morning having gone to bed about 11pm. And by gone to bed I mean tried to sleep, I didn’t actually get out of bed at any point yesterday save to make myself some food.
Anyway, I had finally dozed off when I was awoken at the sound of my UPS beeping like crazy at 3:30am. The power had gone out.
Needing to sort out my computers I reached for my torch, carefully positioned on my bed side table for such occasions. Of course being ill and knowing I needed plenty of fluids I had carefully positioned a glass of orange juice next to my bed.
Of course, it went flying spilling it’s contents over the top of my bedside table as well as the wires and printer sitting below it. And of course I couldn’t see to mop it up because we didn’t have any power so none of the lights were working.
So here I am, cleaning up the mistakes of last night despite the fact I’m physically exhausted and despite the fact I still have loads more to do tonight before I can sleep.
But at least through it all, I know I have you. All of you. Everyone of you, each of you different and each of you amazing in your own special way. I honestly don’t know what I would do without you. Never leave me, Dairy Milk.
While my photography skills are far too amateur for me to call myself an amateur photographer, on reviewing the photos I got back from London I was quite pleased to find that some of them turned out quite interesting, particularly those where I had managed a short depth of field utterly blurring everything but the focal points.
