A Day Out in Brighton

Yesterday, 1st September, I took the train to Brighton with the aim of attending the meeting in the evening of the Brighton and Hove Humanist Society. The speaker was Denis Cobell, a former President of the NSS, on "Why I am Not a Christian", though in fact it was mostly about his upbringing, in the Brighton area, within an Evangelical family.

Since the talk only began at 8 pm I spent most of the three hours preceding in the Odeon cinema, watching a very noisy film, "Inception" starring Leonardo DiCaprio which was about people who could set up realistic dream worlds, and dreams within dreams. Coming out at the end I wondered if I was back in the real world or not, especially as the way out of the cinema was something of a maze.

Another reason for going to Brighton was to visit the Apple store with a view to perhaps changing my computer for an iMac or MacBook. However the only address I had was Churchill Square which proved to be a large shopping mall, and despite walking round most of it, never found the Apple store, or any map of the place! I did get some fish and chips at the BHS restaurant, and a couple of cotton Oxford shirts at the M&S store opposite (since they don't seem to be available in Hastings).

I also found time to sun myself on the beach for a while, though Brighton Beach was indeed very crowded, as it is traditionally supposed to be.

It's A Humanist Life

I've not posted anything here for a while, since I've been mostly occupied with Humanism, which is dealt with on my other blog for the Hastings Humanists.

On 15 June My Humanist Hero essay on Robert Owen was published on HumanistLife. It was the second in what is now a long series.

I've also been contributing a number of biographical and descriptive pieces to the new Humanist Heritage site. For example, the entries for Down House, Leicester Secular Society, Alan Turing, Paul Dirac, and Richard Carlile are mostly mine, though of course the information in these articles is not new.

On 26 June I went to the BHA Conference on Humanism, Philosophy and Arts at Conway Hall.

On 3-4 July I went to Lewes to join in celebrations of Tom Paine.

Random Thoughts

I played another couple of chess games on Friday evening, at a slow rate without clocks, and won both of them against a player who seemed quite strong, so perhaps I'm getting back into the right frame of mind. One ended in a knight checkmate, the other in a queen against rook superiority. The more rapid play games which we played on previous weeks require one to react much more instinctively, rather than contemplate each move carefully.

Why are there no longer any malt-flavoured cereals being produced? I used to like malted shreddies when they were produced by Rowntrees, but as soon as Nescafe took them over they changed the recipe so that the malt taste was far less. I complained at the time, but got no helpful response. Now they have removed the malt altogether! This seems to be part of their policy of claiming that everything is "whole grain".

My article on "Howard Jacobson and the Temple of Darwin" appeared on the new HumanistLife website on my 70th birthday, 8th February, but has not attracted any comments. Perhaps this means that it is perfect as it is and doesn't need any further comments? Probably not! I'm glad to see that more articles are appearing with a greater frequency now. There are strong disagreements between Humanists on a number of issues, for instance the assisted dying question, and whether the burka should be banned. These have attracted the most comments.