Posts Tagged ‘gijsbert’

As my friends and I get increasingly old, it’s nice to remember that some people are still young guns with hopes and dreams. Mini-Gijsbert, better known as Samantha, is one such person.

It turns out that it is really difficult to buy a present for a one year old. Even soft toys are often come with a two plus years age rating. As one of my other friends pointed out, I should probably have just got a present for Gijsbert and Weili. Like a large bottle of gin for example.

I have some nice photos. However, I am not posting them because I do not know what percentage of the people who read this blog are pedophiles. So instead, here is a picture of the birthday cake.

It is made by Maxi’s Chinese restaurant. Apparently they are a good place to get a cake made as they only require 24 hours notice.

Last week we had dinner with Gijsbert who pointed me to the new version of his PsyToolkit. This is a piece of software for building psychological experiments, though more relevant to us civilians are the tests and scales available on the website

There are now over 60 on them, so myself and Elina spent Saturday night filling them all out. Of course how much you can take from them is questionable. However, they are all academically published scales.

I came up with some interesting results:

• I am not a psychopath – which was the result I was hoping for
• I am only slightly dissatified with my life – win
• I’m only minimally depressed
• I have high self-esteem – probably thanks to me being so great
• I’m not narcissistic – pretty surprised at that!
• I am highly sceptical of adverts
• I have high general anxiety
• I do not have internet addiction – apparently
• I am a perfectionist – did not expect that!

Of course I am now basically going to do nothing with this information. However, it was fun to do the tests.

I also suggested he added the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) which he prompted did. Pleasingly, my score dropped from 11 to 9 this week, meaning I am no longer postnatally depressed!

Gijsbert has published a new video based on his latest research findings.

After three and a half years of serving on the board of trustees for the Foundation, Gijsbert has stepped down.

He recently accepted a position as a Reader at the University of Glasgow, and as a consequence will be leaving Leeds next month. We would like to thank him for all the work he has done over the years and wish him the best of luck in his new position.

At the rather delayed meeting of the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire which had to be moved back to accomodate term times at the Swarthmore Centre that took place recently, Gijsbert presented a talk on Pacifism and Humanism.

It’s a tricky subject and one which has been debated before in the group – notably when there was a suggestion that as a society we should lay a wreath on Remembrance Day.

It was a really interesting talk, and I agreed with Gijsbert that going to war simply doesn’t make sense in modern times. However, as I blogged about in December, the real question facing most of us today is are we willing to go along with the state’s brainwashing of the lower working class to convince them go die in Afghanistan on our behalf.

You would assume the answer would be no, but it becomes more tricky when, as a Humanist, I am also an interventionist when it comes to things like genocide. How do we work out whether someone really is going the military voluntarily, knowing what the reality of war is, or simply because of “it’s noble to die for your country” propaganda and economic conscription. Such issues cause me a great struggle in trying to reconcile both my Pacifism and my Interventionism, with my Humanism.

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.

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!

Yesterday Gijsbert returned to Leeds Atheist Society to deliver a One Life session on human needs.

On Thursday, The Gijs delivered his talk “Intelligence and Scepticism” to the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire.

The thrust of the talk was that there was an inherent contradiction in Humanism and a rational approach to life because Humanism is something that is very positive and the world on the whole isn’t positive with all the crime, senseless violence, falling out with the people you care about, etc. Although admittedly a lot of this revolves around the Humanist manifesto.

It was never the less a very interesting talk and even though it turned into a bit of a socialist preaching ground at the end (from the audience, not The Gijs) it was a good evening. We finished off at The Well, the rebranded Joseph’s Well which had actually locked their doors because nobody was in there until we came hanging on the door.

Yesterday at Skeptics in the Pub, Gijsbert delivered a talk regarding whether Dawkins and Darwin could truely replace the holy Bible – and the conclusion was no.

The theme of it was that as well as the “religious” stuff shall we say, religion also does a great job of catering for people’s emotional needs such as self esteem and gaining respect from your peers. Therefore is the non-beliver movement is going to grow as I’m sure many of us hope it will, we are going to have to have to find some what that people’s basic emotional needs can be catered for rather than just rubbishing their belief system.