Chris Worfolk's Blog

So, turns out Christianity isn’t at the heart of Christmas after all 😉 .

Saturday saw the first Leeds Skeptics in the Pub which went rather well at least for an initial meeting. We got around twenty people turning up in total with a mix of ages and backgrounds which is exactly what we were aiming for really.

I kept my actual talk fairly short as I wasn’t too sure what people were expecting for a first meeting, in future they will be a bit more well-rounded talks but for the moment I was more interested in people getting to know each other and having a good drink and a chat.

Hopefully we can build on the success of Saturday and build attenance even more in the future. We’ve booked up speakers as far as May so there is plenty going on.

Last night saw the first Wendy House of 2009 arrive and so having filled up on some always delicious Nando’s take-out we headed down for the traditional evening events of Liz getting really drunk before having to go to work at 8am. Good times.

Still still hates us!

I said hi to Claire at Wendy yesterday and enquired if we officially still hated each other. Turns out we do.

You guys have really f-ing screwed my life up, why the f would I want to talk to you?

Interestingly enough, I haven’t sensored that, that’s just how it was said.

Seriously though it’s been going on two years now. I can barely remember what happened anymore. I put the issue to bed a long time ago but I thought for the two minutes it’s going to take me I might as well see what happens. Maybe I’ll try again in another two years.

We took down the lettering we have in the office on the back wall to make way for a fresh coat of paint and the new logo to be put up there. Gaz then decided to have a play around with the leters, no a rather nice result I think.

There are a lot of people who I haven’t spoken to in a long time. Many of these I haven’t spoken to intentionally but there are still a good view I simply haven’t had chance to see recently. And so having fired off a few texts, Facebook wall posts and the odd email or two I ended up with a few more appointments for my diary, one of which was meeting up with Sophie tonight.

So, myself, Sarann and Sophie headed to Browns for a much needed drink with us all havinf arrived straight from work. Not that any of us were actually drinking alcohol but you just can’t beat a metaphorical pint. With their crazy pricing structure, I ordered 3 bottles of Pepsi and it cost £5.50. Do the maths, that is 183.3p each. Strange, strange people.

If you’ve been keeping an eye on the news today you may have seen the story that a bus driver refused to do his shift because he was given a bus with the new atheist advert on it.

I mean seriously, what the hell?

This is a clear case of discrimination against atheists. If an atheist tried this stunt with one of the many, many Alpha adverts that can be found on buses he would be ridiculed, told to stop being stupid and ordered back to work. But when the tables are turned it’s suddenly acceptable to walk off shift?

But it gets even more offensive…

“I was just about to board and there it was staring me in the face, my first reaction was shock horror.” “I think it was the starkness of this advert which implied there was no God.”

Horror? What horror is caused by this? An advert which has gone out of it’s way to accommodate religious people (it could have read there is definitely no god, now shut your cake hole). An advert with has already been approved by the Advertising Standards Agency.

What this really shows is the massive intolerance bread by religion. Who ever heard of someone refusing to drive a bus with a political party advert on which always push the boat out and get personal and yet as soon as something goes on that isn’t even offensive, the atheist community is suddenly under attack. Disgraceful.

I introduced a new regular segment into the podcast tonight entitled “a bragger’s tall”, hence the title. Basically I will make a claim, for example “I caught a fish that was a foot long” and the guests then have to brag about far more exciting, lavish and over the top stories to better my tale. Overall it went rather well.

The point is that podcasting is well and truely rolling again. And this time we finally remembered to take some pictures even if we did only get them of myself and Lil.

Labour MP Graham Stringer and sparked quite a debate by describing dyslexia as a “cruel fiction” invented by big wigs in the education system to cover up the fact that they can’t teach very well.

The charity Dyslexia Action hit back with a statement and claimed that six million people in the UK suffer from it. To be honest though I’m not really convinced such a figure really helps their case. For example the facts don’t really stack up if this figure is true and you take Mr Stringer’s point that…

“If dyslexia really existed then countries as diverse as Nicaragua and South Korea would not have been able to achieve literacy rates of nearly 100%.”

He also makes the interesting point that given there is so much finance support for the condition, it essentially creates an insentive to be bad at reading and writing. Personally I’m not convinced this actually much of an affect but it is certainly plausible that it does.

For further reading you may want to take a glance at the BBC’s coverage and Mr Stringer’s column itself.

Last night I headed down to the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire for Moz’s talk on religion in Pre Christian Britain. While it was mostly an excuse for Moz to show off the quality of pictures his very expensive camera can take, the talk was never the less etertaining and brought up some up some very interesting facts about the suprisingly rich heritage of Britain before the Romans arrived.

As I had suggested, Paul invited everyone to Joseph’s Well for a drink and the uptaking was very impressive, by Humanist Society standards anyway, we must have had a good fifteen of us stay for a drink compared to the usual quick evaporation of meeting attendees that traditionally takes place.

Having had a drink there I headed up to the union to meet the usual A-Soc crowd which had somewhat increased since the meeting first began, clearly people were in need of a good pint to calm their pre-exam nerves.