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Tuesday evening was spent at the Atheist Society to hear Rick Barker discuss recent developments in physical anthropology with the charming title You Me and the Chimpanzees: You Can Choose Your Friends But Not Your Relatives. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the weird creationist from four years prior was in attendence and again made the same claims as prior. This time I managed to respond to the claim that there were no transitional fossils, but before I could respond to the matter of speciation - behold! - she got up and exited the room (again!). After completing the question I als decided to follow, whereupon the creationist cycled off as fast as they could. Three times now they've run away from proof of speciation! In a case of deja vu, Alambama is trying to teach creationism in public schools.
On a related topic, Saturday evening was the meeting of the Victorian Secular Lobby on religious instruction in public schools, addressed by Mike Stutchberry and Stephen Stuart from the Victorian Humanists. A well-attended meeting, the key messaages were that the indocrtinating Special Religious Instruction differed from a educational secular comparative religious studies, that SRI was divisive and was conducted by unqualified instructors. The next step will be the VCAT case brought forward by the Humanists, and then ramping up the campaign with the the AEU and, of course, FIRIS. On a related topic, the speaker at the Unitarians yesterday (with an excellent turnout) was Leslie Cannold, speaking on Did Jesus Have a Sister? and promoting her historical fiction novel, The Book of Rachael.
On Saturday (also at the Unitarian hall) was Andrew Pam giving an excellent presentation on Linux Games. Currently very impressed to see that an old favourite, Red Alert, is now available as free and open-source software. In more traditional gaming, played Best Friends on Thursday and Pathfinder Planescape on Sunday. The latter contributes a great deal to the just released double issue of RPG Review, which also has an interview with the people from Crafty Games, a D20 Overview, an anti-D20 rant, some D20 CoC stats, movie reviews and more. Also on the movie side of things spent Friday night at the double Sherlock Holmes special at Melbourne's best deco cinema, the Astor.
On a related topic, Saturday evening was the meeting of the Victorian Secular Lobby on religious instruction in public schools, addressed by Mike Stutchberry and Stephen Stuart from the Victorian Humanists. A well-attended meeting, the key messaages were that the indocrtinating Special Religious Instruction differed from a educational secular comparative religious studies, that SRI was divisive and was conducted by unqualified instructors. The next step will be the VCAT case brought forward by the Humanists, and then ramping up the campaign with the the AEU and, of course, FIRIS. On a related topic, the speaker at the Unitarians yesterday (with an excellent turnout) was Leslie Cannold, speaking on Did Jesus Have a Sister? and promoting her historical fiction novel, The Book of Rachael.
On Saturday (also at the Unitarian hall) was Andrew Pam giving an excellent presentation on Linux Games. Currently very impressed to see that an old favourite, Red Alert, is now available as free and open-source software. In more traditional gaming, played Best Friends on Thursday and Pathfinder Planescape on Sunday. The latter contributes a great deal to the just released double issue of RPG Review, which also has an interview with the people from Crafty Games, a D20 Overview, an anti-D20 rant, some D20 CoC stats, movie reviews and more. Also on the movie side of things spent Friday night at the double Sherlock Holmes special at Melbourne's best deco cinema, the Astor.