Secular Portal Blogs

Learning in The Library

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

Yesterday was the usual Tuesday night A-Soc social once again at The Library as the union is closed until next week. They finally had food back on this week so I took the chance to order one of Scream’s rather tasty mixed grills to which they didn’t have any steak for :o. I mean, what is a mixed grill without the steak? They ended up doing me double chicken and double gammon though so I’m not complaining.

Attendance was good, Nicola is back in civilization if only for a few days and The Gijs put in a guest appearance too. As ever, a successful night in the end.

Back to normality

Friday, December 26th, 2008 | Leeds Atheist Society | No Comments

Well, that's it. Christmas is over and we can get back to normality and a more sensible approach to all things festive.

I recommend everyone catch up on this year's address to the nation from Her Majesty. It will get you in the mood for some real debate and argument at A-Soc in the new year.

Hope you are all enjoying your time off and that you are ready for the new semester which is only 11 days away!

Twas the A-Soc before Christmas

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

Last night saw the first A-Soc social of the holidays, regular meetings having been suspended until everyone gets back to Leeds in January. Given it was holidays, and indeed the 23rd of December, we did alright for attendance, I think we had a total of eight of us in the end.

I was a good night as I got to chat to Paul about some of my suggestions regarding the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire and we also battled with Facebook to try and sort it out as his new phone is geared towards Facebook but won’t actually let you register or anything.

In a highly amusing situation also, Norm got ID’d. Clearly the big beard is taking years of his look .

AHS festive party

Monday, December 22nd, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

Friday saw myself, Norm and Liz head down to sunny Tamworth just outside of Birmingham for Jenna’s AHS festive party. It turned out (as if we were expecting anything less!) to be a really good night talking to plenty of old faces and some new faces too.

The food was good though I think I got through more than my far share of pigs in blankets (you snooze you loose I guess) and there was much fun to be had with games of Extreme Jenga, which is like regular Jenga but the blocks have sloping slides (rhombi). It was also made more difficult by the fact myself and Norm insisted on taking two of the bottom three pieces out each time .

It also turns out that Jenna’s dad, Bob Catley is a massive rockstar. Not only does he have a Wikipedia page (as if that isn’t enough), his band Magnum have had 14 studio albums, a top 10 charting album, a Gold Certified album and have supported the likes of Ozzy Osbourne and Whitesnake - what a legend!

Having had a good night we headed down to Weatherspoon’s for a recovery breakfast, after all, it’s never too early for a good steak! Big thanks to Jenna for hosting said party, it might have to find it’s way into the AHS annual calendar .

Tamworth and Leeds

Monday, December 22nd, 2008 | Will Wybrow | No Comments

Oh man, Bob Catley is a fucking rockstar. He’s basically a superhero. I met him, and shook his hand, and was all “yo AHS, check out Bob Catley,” and they were all “woah, his music is awesome!!”

We went to Tamworth for Jenna’s generic-winter-festival party and saw her dad and sister and town. We had a great party.

Then I went back to Leeds (again) to share Liz’s birthday party with Chris and Norman at their four-fifths atheist domicile…

Then I came home. I got back to Leamington and almost kissed the ground with happiness. But not because I’d been away, but because of what happened while I was away. Basically, I was glad to be home without regretting being gone. Let’s leave it at that.

That’s the summary of all the decent things that happened this weekend. Not at much detail as last time, I guess I’m just not in the mood.

Merry Chrismukkawaleid

Thursday, December 18th, 2008 | Leeds Atheist Society | No Comments

First off, I would like to thank everyone for their continued support of A-Soc and I am sure you will all agree that this semester has been one of the busiest we have ever had! Some of my personal highlights have included Make Your Own God, Debating the Theists, The AHS Conference, Interfaith Panel and our trip to London.

Not to worry though, we haven't exhausted all our good ideas and semester 2 will be just as jam packed as ever with exciting things to do and see. Things to watch out for include our new course Perspective, our inaugural formal debate with the Islamic Society and of course the much anticipated Rationalist Week 2009.

As always we rely on your support to make these events happen, so I hope we will see all of you again in the New Year and if you have enjoyed what you have seen then why not tell your friends and bring them to meetings too!

We will continue to run our weekly socials over the holiday period, so those of you still in Leeds are more than welcome to join us for a few festive beverages.

Good luck for those with exams in January.

Merry Winter Solstice (or Chrismukkawaleid)!

Oxford and Leeds

Thursday, December 18th, 2008 | Will Wybrow | No Comments

Oxford

So began the first of my holiday outings last Wednesday, when I went to visit the wonderful Jenna at her Oxford University college: Linacre.

We decided to try and cram as many awesome things into the day as possible, which is why we set off to Modern Art Oxford and the Natural History Museum (which were great) and also swung past the “castle,” or the mound-where-a-castle-once-used-to-be (which was not so great - not only was it a lame attraction, but Jenna confessed that she hated me so much that she was skipping the country to avoid spending new year’s eve at my house).

Modern Art Oxford was a very pleasant experience. They had a few exhibitions on (including one which was disappointingly closed), ranging from boring to plain weird. It was all loosely connected by sharing common binaural techniques to create the sense of sounds coming from positions they weren’t, which was interesting and entertaining. We stopped by the gift shop and I was bought a 25mm badge.

The Museum of Natural History, where I had previously had the pleasurable experience of watching Richard Dawkins face off the imposing John Lennox in debate, was another fascinating experience, made even more so in the light of the remnants of the memories of my last visit; atheism and evolution tend to go hand-in-hand these days.

I got to spend some time in Linacre college, which my friend Tom Etheridge tells me is “not a real college, [because it's] full of grads.” But what if I’m visiting a “grad”, Tom? The college was nice and modern (but still with that Oxford University class pretension about it). The student rooms were cosy and nice and the dining area was homely.

The most important thing that I can say about Linacre, however, was that when I got a shot at using one of their computer rooms, I got a nice surprise. Some of the new motherfuckingly huge iMacs were there, but what did their screens have plastered all over them? It wasn’t Leopard… it was XP! That was quite an unexpected highlight that appealed to my technological nature.

In the evening, we stayed in the college’s common room, and I met some people. We had fun playing darts and Pictionary and watching some Channel 4.

Leeds

The first thing to note about Leeds is how fucking far away it is! Regardless, hitching the train up there was alright; I do like getting trains. While I was there to see and hang out with all of Leeds’ remaining A-Soc, strictly speaking I was Liz’s guest.

When I arrived at the station, I moved into the shopping centres, passing through all sorts of different bits, including “Victoria Quarter,” which had an interior made of gold and had shops whose very names were too expensive to pronounce. Liz and her housemate Michelle intercepted me (despite the terrible description I gave them of my location) and we wandered around the city centre for a little while. I spotted four Caffé Nero coffee shops, and visited two of them (Stuart, have pride). After some guilty confessions from Liz that she didn’t actually know her way around Leeds’ centre, we decided to try and find the restaurant that we were meeting A-Soc at later. We did find it, and spent the waiting time in Wetherspoon’s (where else?).

The restaurant served fairly standard food but I’d say it was overpriced as well. Nice atmosphere, though, and the glass panel in the middle of the landing of the first floor was just terrifying. Afterwards, we didn’t return to Spoons, as was my initial inclination, but headed off to somewhere a little quieter, which was a better idea now that I think about it. I heard about the London antics of Leeds Atheist Society and met and spoke to some cool people.

i think a-soc is a pretty cool guy. eh debates god and doesn’t afraid of anything

After things wound down (meaning: they closed at 11pm and didn’t give me the required time to finish my bottle of wine), Chris gave me a lift back to his house, stopping at Tesco to pick up the classic Southern Comfort and Pepsi Max party drink. Back at “Atheist House” (which is not as good as the name “Fort Atheist”), we stayed up most of the night watching various animated shows (American Dad prominent amongst them).

In the morning, I got up and sped off to Leeds station to catch a ride back home, but not before having my half-can of Relentless thrown off the First travel bus. They got their comeuppance, however, because I scrawled “FGW Are[sic] cunts” on the First Great Western train that was my final connection to Basingstoke (and last public transportation vessel for the day). That will teach them not to allow cans of drink on their Leeds buses.

Winter Solstice Meal

Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

Massively disappointing is all I can really say about Casa Mia.

When we initially approached them to host our Winter Solstice meal they were very enthusiastic and said they loved to get student groups down there. However things turned sour a few days before the event when they started getting arsey with us and started demanding Norm’s credit cards so they could bill if we didn’t turn up with the exact number of people.

When we got down there they were alright though not overly friendly and they can’t add up apparently. They gave us 15 menus for the 16 of us, a mistake which they refused to correct, which is odd that they would get it wrong given they were so insistent we bring that number of people.

The food was alright, I rather enjoyed by rib eye steak but the portions were small and all I got was a steak with chips, nothing else which is cheap given you get a bit of salad with your £5 pub steak. I will admit the ribs were nice though.

Finally as we settled up the bill they tried overcharging us which we quickly shot down. All in all, I don’t think we’ll be ever going back there.

Afterwards we headed on to Courtyard (though the freshers went home because they just can’t keep up :p ) for a few drinks which was really good. It’s not the cheapest place but not out of line for the city centre and they have a quiet atmosphere and very comfortable seating so I stand by it as an excellent choice.

Sports night II

Sunday, December 14th, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

We ran a second sports night at A-Soc on Friday for those who didn’t want to engage in the traditional end of term celebrations. It was quite well attended given how many people have gone home for the holidays.

I didn’t stay long as I was still feeling awful but I did see some of the marathon Trivial Pursuit game - never underestimate how long that game takes!

Sports night

Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 | Chris Worfolk | No Comments

Last Friday we ran our inaugural sports night at A-Soc. IT was very much targetted at the needs of our society members - sports included Scrabble, Magic: The Gathering and Monopoly (what, those are real sports!). We tried out best to keep physical sports out but a few crept in, in the form of pool and badminton.

To round off the evening Carl also turned up and after narrowly beating him in a game of pool (the man is a shark, we rarely get such a challenge from fellow A-Soc members though I am yet to play Moz) we sat down to talk about the Gospel and do some faith healing on Nicola. She informs me the bruising hasn’t gone away though, which it normally should have done naturally by now, so I’m not sure what is going on there.

In any case it was a good night on the most part and one we’re hoping to repeat soon.