On Tuesday Simon Singh came to the University of Leeds to talk about liable reform. Obviously as a free thinking group the Atheist Society was particularly concerned with such lawsuits for speaking out against obvious nonsense we asked Liberty@Leeds to be involved and had Sophie and Norm deliver a quick introduction on why it was important to us.
The talk itself was very good, it was both amusing and very informative. It is hard to believe how biased the legal system is (actually have studied law I don’t find it that unbelievable but that certainly isn’t a good thing) and how easy it is to bring a liable suit forward – makes me wonder what would happen if the thousands of people who have seen Simon speak and are behind him brought a frivolous suit against the BCA.
I seem to be writing a lot of open letters these days. It’s mainly for two reasons. The first is that it’s a lot cheaper to write an open letter than one you post in the traditional matter – the cost of a stamp may not seem much but actually I need to buy a book of stamps and a pack of envelopes, I then use one of which and the rest eventually get lost which is a waste not to mention the huge cost of my time for doing all this. The second is of course that Royal Mail would probably lose the letter at the end of all that. But anyway…
Having read the recent BHA e-bulletin, Pepper kindly pointed me in the direction of this Conservative blog post in which David Cameron is quoted as saying
take me to a humanist soup kitchen
Given that David was at the time talking about religiously-inspired volunteering (as opposed to volunteering carried out simply because you have good morals and care about your fellow human being) it seems appropriate to use the Biblical quote “ask and you shall receive.”
As a consequence I would like to extend an invitation to Mr. Cameron to spend an evening with the Humanist Action Group here in Leeds which regularly go out to offer soup and hot drinks to the homeless living on the streets.
Come spend some time helping out – not because your god or your holy book tells you to but purely on the basis that it’s the right thing to do. I’m sure many religious people volunteer for the same motives but the suggestion that volunteering is purely the pursuit of the religious is simply beyond laughable.
Even a quick glance at statistics show that the non-religious give more to the charity than the religious do. But of course that doesn’t even begin to paint an accurate picture because most non-believers don’t give to charity in the name of atheism so the actual higher is much higher.
So come down, spend some time volunteering in Leeds, see how it’s possible to give out a cup of coffee without a verse from a holy book cleverly inscribed on the lid.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Chris Worfolk
Back in November, we announced our plan to create humanist communities that would act as a hub to bring secular humanists together in the community. This will begin with a pilot programme in Leeds and hopefully expand outwards from there.
As a consequence, today we are officially announcing the Humanist Community of Leeds. Our first community and hopefully first of many which will hold it’s first meeting next month. I hope you will be able to join us at 10:30am (for an 11am start) on February 14th at the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Leeds.
A Humanist Community is described as a secular alternative to church. You won’t find any worship or praying in our events but you will find a friendly welcoming atmosphere where you can get to know other secular humanists in the local community.
For the first event will feature a short talk from Richard, humanisted related news and some funny videos from Gijsbert, a chance to get to know each other and plenty of tea and coffee. The event will last around an hour and will be followed by everyone going for Sunday lunch together. We hope you can join us!
You can read more about the group on the website and if it sounds interesting you can sign up for the mailing list there too. You can also find out more and subscribe for event invites on our Facebook group. As usual, we will be continuing to post updates on our Twitter feed so you can follow us there too.
We finally have a YouTube channel up and running for the foundation. Currently, it only has introductory videos from myself and Gijsbert introducing the basics of our thoughts behind what we want to achieve but more content is on its way – Rich is busy making a documentary as we speak so hopefully that will be along shortly!
The inevitable march of aging means we rarely venture out of our houses to hit the down these days. I’m often at the pub as little as three or four times a week these days and clubbing is a whole different sorry state all together.
However given I’m playing plenty to live in a very nice city centre apartment which allows me to go out, get drunk and walk home all with relative ease the very least it seemed appropriate to do was to re-start a regular schedule of Wendylicious, particuarly as I always try to be around that Saturday for Skeptics in the Pub.
I have to say I’m glad I did because it was a pretty epic night. I think I’ve discovered the best formula for Wendy, drink at home, go to The Old Bar, drink some more there, then wander into Wendy around 11:30-midnight as it’s brilliant for the first few hours but then gets a little repetitive.
As such awesome times ensued including several short appearances from Amerijohn (even if he wasn’t actually hanging out with us for the most part, traitor) and some kind of end of night drunken cooking which is always a victory when it doesn’t burn the place down. Good times.
Yesterday’s homeless action saw the best attendance for a Humanist Action Group of Leeds event in the history of the group.
As you’ll probably be aware the weather in the UK has been rather cold over the past month with several heavy snowfalls and as a result the group has made a special effort to make sure volunteers were on hand when needed.
Luckily everyone living on the city centre’s streets managed to make it into a shelter during the snowfall – it’s actually a really good feeling when you go out in the snow and find nobody because it means chances are they are somewhere warmer. Now people are back on the streets however we really need people to continue to sign up and volunteer their time.
If you are interested in volunteering you can register your details on the website or find out more about the group on their Facebook page.
At Leeds Skeptics we recently celebrated our first birthday with a talk by Steve Wade on big foot and other urban legends entitled “What’s That Coming Over the Hill?” The talk was reasonably well attended given the weather outside though we didn’t get anyone working on the bar which was a little disappointing. Still plenty of drinks from the bar downstairs later and everyone was enjoying themselves so the good times continued.
So I’m sitting here at work thinking “how late do we have to be here until we order Chinese into the office?” I say thinking, I’ve just said it out loud, then after that we had a conversation about it.
Anyway, the problem is this. We don’t know how long this problem is going to take, it could be solved in the next 30 minutes, it could be we’re here until 10pm. If we solve it at 6pm then it will have been pointless ordering Chinese because we can just go home and have dinner. But if we don’t order it and we’re stuck here till 10pm then we’ll be really hungry. But at what point do you say, right, this is the point I’m going to order Chinese food even though I still don’t know how much longer I will be there.
This problem occurs regularly with pub trips. You wonder if people are going to be there for a while because you don’t want to get there as they are leaving but the longer you leave it the more likely that is of happening. And at the end of the night, when you haven’t gone you say to yourself “if I had gone at the start I would have been there drinking for ages – but now it’s too late because they will be leaving soon.” Indeed this could well be applied to almost any point in the night.
The thing is, I’m sure this is some kind of grand philosophical problem that I am just applying to pub and takeaway activities. Anyone know what it is?
Lachlan having sent us over a picture of himself on the beach in Melbourne where they are currently enjoying 42 degree days we decided to enlighten him on the sudden heatwave that had hit the UK causing us to head off to the beach on Monday. A quick snaps and non involvement of Photoshop later and the email was on it’s way. You can’t tell by the pixels or anything…
Props to Vince for touching up everything slightly given the time constraints we were working under.
On Monday evening I headed over to York to speak at a meeting of the North Yorkshire Humanists a rather nice invite sat in between Ariane Sherine in December and Andrew Copson in February.
The talk went fairly well, I could really tell that it had been a while since I had done much public speaking and was somewhat out of practice but everyone I spoke to said they found it quite interesting and there were plenty of questions so the feedback was positive. Having run through it the night before I was a little taken aback at how much stuff I had so it’s probably for the best I kept things moving at a good speed.
Interestingly the street we were on, Priority Street, apparently has seven churches on it – five separate church buildings and two other church groups which meet in the same community centre as the Humanist group hold their meetings – most exciting of all was the Rock Church next door :D.
