For the June meeting of Leeds Skeptics, Georgina Binnie presented a talk “A Look at James Joyce and Photography”.
For the April meeting of Leeds Skeptics, Dr Paul Marchant presented a talk entitled “Casting Light on Evidence … & Evidence on Light”. The talk looked at how data is used on public policy making, to varying degrees of success.
Paul Hopwood had previously spoken at Leeds Skeptics on the topic of “You Know Less Than You Think”. If you missed it, you can watch it online. He has since developed a follow-on talk, “Widening the View – Looking at the limits of Human Perception”, which he delivered for us earlier this week.
As ever, Paul delivered an interesting talk, though it is hard to listen to it all the way through without having an existential crisis. Not to mention the many additions to my reading list!
When I saw Galileo Day fell on a Saturday I immediately thought that would be an ideal day to have a Skeptics event. Being only three days after Darwin Day, I asked GabrielÄ— to present a talk on how viruses affect evolution. She very kindly obliged.
For the January meeting of Leeds Skeptics, Anna Semlyen spoke on why Leeds should have a blanket twenty mile an hour speed limit.
I thought it was a fascinating topic as it is one that really challenges us to think about our views (as opposed to Big Foot, that is just us basically laughing at stupid people). She made some great points about safety, though the other points about public health benefit (people walk more when the speed limit is lower) remain unproven. It invoked some engaging debate and I really enjoyed the event.
You can find out more about the campaign on their website.
Last month John Fletcher presented a talk entitled “A Skeptical Look at Statistics” at Leeds Skeptics. It was great to see people there who were really interested in stats. It was also the first event we have held at the Hedley Verity and while it isn’t perfect, it is certainly an acceptable backup venue.
Last month, Simon Singh came to Leeds Skeptics to promote his new book, The Simpsons and their Hidden Mathematical Secrets.
Turn out was excellent, we had 85 people there, topping our previous record of 68. We had to move a lot of the tables out of the room, move extra chairs in and still had people queuing out of both doors.
Simon put on a very entertaining talk and it was a pleasure to host him.
For our September meeting, Ian Bushfield presented a talk entitled “Skeptics with an Eh: A view of the Canadian Skeptical movement”.
For the August meeting of Leeds Skeptics, Kat Ford presented her talk “The Modern Face of Physiognomy”. The talk looked at how we make judgements of people based on their face. Kat was an entertaining speaker and we really enjoyed hosting her.
The talk is also available to watch on Worfolk Lectures.
Earlier this month we welcomed BBC Panorama reporter John Sweeney to present his talk “Oi! Scientology!”, a mini tour he is doing to support his book, Church of Fear. It was a bit of a shaky start when we couldn’t find John, but once resolved he gave us a highly entertaining insight into his experiences.
The discussions continued long after the event – indeed, it was nearly 2am by the time the last of us left the bar of Malmaison!
