Tag Archives: vancouver

Register for Vancouver SkeptiCamp 2011

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While not an atheist event, SkeptiCamp is a great venue for testing your critical thinking skills and getting active in the “reality-based community.”

Designed as an “un-conference” where attendees are also speakers, SkeptiCamp encourages anyone and everyone who attends to prepare a 5-10 minute talk and to present it in an interactive format.

This August will be Vancouver’s fifth SkeptiCamp, and I participated in the past two and highly recommend it.

Here’s the registration email and contact information if you want to get involved:

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Vancouver atheists get charitable

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Over the past few weeks, which have been quite busy for me as evidenced by my absence, CFI Vancouver has gotten involved in a couple of really great acts of selflessness (except for the selfish self-promotion reasons).

First, we kicked off our Partners For Life challenge with Canadian Blood Services with a blood drive a couple weekends ago. And while not everyone was eligible to donate (for a variety of reasons), we did manage to donate enough blood to save at least 12 lives!

cfi_blood_drive

Then, this past weekend, more members of CFI Vancouver raised funds for our Relay for Life team to raise money for the Canadian Cancer Society. The entire event raised over $188,000, with CFI members raising $1685 between our 11 team members.

cfi_relay

Both of these events are the kick-off to much more charitable outreach, with blood drives scheduled for every two months and the Vancouver Pride Parade (with the BC Humanists and CFI Vancouver working together), atheists in Vancouver are proving how good you can be without god.

Credit for both photos goes to Fred Bremmer.

Wi-Fi fear mongering enters the Lower Mainland

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A local skeptic who started SkepParents.org alerted me (through CFI Vancouver) that this Wednesday, the NDP MLA for Maple Ridge, Michael Sather, will be hosting a forum on the effects of wi-fi and cell phone towers.

While I support open dialogue on the issues, that dialogue must be based on reality. Teaser statements like this worry me:

There Has Been an Explosion of Wireless Technology. Some Studies Indicate That These Technologies May Cause Serious Harm to Human Health, Especially to Children

Why is ever word capitalized? What studies?

The local skeptic lets us know that the following presentations are likely:

Speakers include a homeowner who has had to live beside two towers, a consultant (consultant of what? – I don’t know) and a representative from Citizens for Safe Technology.

CST states on its website (which has a baby reading the newspaper, how cute):

Just as harm from wireless technologies has not been proven to the satisfaction of our present governments, neither have they ever been proven to be safe. Due to the fact that there are no unaffected populations left, there can be no "control" for traditional experimentation. 

Oh noes! Them radio waves is gunna pollute me precious bodily fluids!

Of course rather than link to any real studies, they post a bunch of videos from their self-selected sample of shoddy research.

Here’s an experiment: If you claim these radio wave sources are dangerous, then the effect should vary in proportion to exposure. Electrohypersensitivity (the non-existent condition they blame on emf) should increase when a wi-fi antenna is stuck to someone’s head and cranked to full. Have it be blinded by repeating with multiple patients where some antennas are on while others just blink lights. Also require that it be double blinded so that the supervising doctor be unaware of which antenna are on as well.

Luckily, they’ve done this study.

37 times.

And found little to nothing.

At some point the rational mind must change and accept the evidence. The doubters, deniers and luddites will continue to fear-monger, however.

BC Liberals ignore humanist voters

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Earlier this week, I sent out an email to the leadership candidates for the BC Liberal and NDP parties on behalf of the BC Humanist Association.

While not unexpected, it is nevertheless unfortunate that I received no responses with the vote for the BC Liberal leader scheduled for later today (Saturday, 26 Feb).

Here’s the letter I sent to the members of the BCHA:

The BC Humanist Association sent a list of eight questions to the leadership candidates for the BC Liberal and BC NDP parties this past week, and as of today, the day of the BC Liberal leadership vote, we have received one response.

An aide to candidate Kevin Falcon’s campaign responded simply stating that, “Unfortunately, leadership campaigns are substantially different than full elections, and we do not have the resources to respond to questionnaires.”

The questions varied in topic from attempting to ascertain the candidates’ religion to their views on government funding of charter religious schools and their support for action on global climate change. We also asked if they would alter the Marriage Act to afford non-religious organizations the right to perform marriages and whether they would remove the opening prayer from the legislature, or allow Humanist speakers.

The Victoria Secular Humanist Association sent a similar questionnaire to the candidates, and only received a response from BC Liberal candidate Mike de Jong during a Globe and Mail online interview. Their short question related to his support for evolution and sex ed in our schools as well support for private schools. De Jong replied: “I am a great believer in choice for parents and therefore support the private school options that exist. Within our public school system I believe we need to proceed on a strictly secular basis.”

While the vote for the BC Liberal leadership is later today, the BCHA will continue to pursue answers from the BC NDP leadership candidates before their vote on 17 April.

Ian Bushfield

Secretary, BC Humanist Association

http://www.bchumanist.ca

In the future it will definitely help if I have the email out more than a week before the vote and try to follow up my email with a phone call and letter to the local papers. Hopefully during the next election (at any level), I’ll be able to get a bit more noise and response.

Physicist to simplify complexity at UBC tomorrow

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I just got a message from my department (SFU Physics) that there’s going to be an interesting talk tomorrow at UBC’s St. John’s College. The talk is by retired physicist Leo P. Kadanoff and is titled “Making a Spalsh – Breaking a Neck: Complexity in Physical Systems.”

Here’s the abstract:

The fundamental laws of physics are very simple; but the world about us is very complex. Living things are very complex indeed. This complexity has led some thinkers to suggest that living things are not the outcome of physical law but instead the creation of a designer. Here I first examine how complexity is produced naturally in fluids, and then use that as a template to suggest how complexity might be produced more generally. Examples described in detail include splashes, the formation of drops, a square dance, turbulence in a fluid heated from below, and the explosion of a star.

The talk’s tomorrow (Wednesday, 8 December) at 7:30 PM, in the Fairmont Lounge of St. John’s College and I’ll hopefully be there.

Jen McCreight storms Vancouver

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This was a great weekend for atheist-feminist-skeptics in Vancouver as Blag Hag author and University of Washington PhD candidate Jennifer McCreight was in town for not 1, not 2, not even 3, but 4 different talks!

This was Jen’s first ever visit to Canada, so it was fitting that she was greeted at the border on Thursday with a True Canadian Blizzard, which ended up closing Simon Fraser University at the exact time that her Atheism and Feminism talk was scheduled to begin. Nevertheless, a half-dozen of us ventured to one of the restaurants on campus and discussed the differences between our two countries as well as the talk itself over dinner.

Friday was much clearer, with the traditional Vancouver winter rainfall washing away most traces of the previous day’s snowstorms. That evening we all ventured to UBC for her talk “My Visit to the Creation Museum,” which had an audience of over 30 people. Afterward we stormed The Cove pub, as our planned venue was permanently closed. It’s quite lucky when you can find a pub able to take 35 people on a moment’s notice at 10pm on a Friday night in Kitsilano. Check out Old Earth Accreationist’s write-up of Friday’s fun.

After closing down the pub on Friday night, Saturday morning was a bit rough for Jen, but we still made it to Harbour Centre first for Jen to do an interview with Radio Freethinker, then for CFI Vancouver’s Cafe Inquiry where a packed room of 20-30 discussed bringing more women into skepticism (although at almost all her talks this weekend the gender representation was 50-50). After a lively and productive discussion, many headed over to Steamworks pub for some food, drinks and dialogue.

Finally, yesterday morning featured Jen’s “Boobquake and its After-Shocks” talk for the BC Humanists crowd which began early in the morning (the talk was started by 10:30 am). Despite the early hour, a group of 25 or so still crowded the Oakridge Senior’s Centre and hung on her every word. Many of the older humanists were quite impressed by the splash made by an under-25 atheist, and enjoyed the idea of using humour to promote rational thinking.

After a bite for lunch at White Spot, Jen had to buy ketchup chips (unavailable in the USA) and a Cadbury Caramilk bar (also unavailable) before heading back to her graduate studies in Seattle.

Probably 75 unique people saw Jen speak over the weekend and at least 5 people saw more than 2 of her talks.

All-in-all it was a great success, to which we should thank Jen for her time and the Secular Student Alliance for helping pay for her gas.

Be sure to read Blag Hag for her always humourous analysis.

Jen McCreight Vancouver Snowstorm Tour

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Snow in Seattle, snow and cold in Vancouver!

Yes, it’s 5-10 cm total, and lows of –10 C, but it’s a wet cold dammit, and we have the right to complain because we’re the only country to host the Winter Olympics without any actual snow.

But all of this (God unwilling) won’t stop heathen Jennifer McCreight from making the drive across the border for her four-day, four-stop whirlwind tour of Vancouver starting tomorrow.

Here’s the details:

Simon Fraser University Skeptics

Thurs. Nov. 25 3:30-5:30 pm in AQ 5037

Atheism and Feminism
Hour talk followed by Q&A

Free & open to the public
Likely impromptu pub night to follow

University of British Columbia Freethinkers

Fri. Nov. 26 7-9 pm in Buchanan A203

My Trip to the Creation Museum
Hour talk followed by Q&A

Free for members, $2 for general public
Post talk drinks and fun at the Regal Beagle (to be confirmed)

CFI Vancouver

Cafe Inquiry with Jennifer McCreight
Sat. Nov. 27 11 am-1 pm at SFU Harbour Centre
Tentative topic: Closing the gender gap in skepticism
20 min talk followed by discussion

Free & open to public (donations welcome)

British Columbia Humanists

Sun. Nov. 28 9:30-11:30 am at Oakridge Seniors Centre

Boobquake & Its Aftershocks
Hour talk followed by Q&A

Open to public & donations welcome ($2 suggested)

There is a small chance that if we get an absurd amount of snow or people crash at the one intersection on the way to SFU that Thursday’s talk will have to be cancelled. Keep an eye on the SFU Road Report for road conditions and if it’s closed we’ll try to reschedule something else for the evening.

Reason Vancouver moves forward

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I guess I haven’t really made any updates here about the Vancouver Secular Party since mid-August, so I thought I should fill you in on how that project’s going.

First off, we changed the name. While Secular Party is a great name to rally atheists, non-religious, and Katie-Christians ;-), it is a very single-issue name, even more so then the Green Party, and they’re still having trouble appearing as more than environmentalists. So we switched to Reason Vancouver.

Our emphasis is now on an open, empirical, secular approach to politics. We reject ideological dogmas of the left and right, and instead choose to focus on policy that is evidenced-based and rational.

Together with the founding members from those discussions in August, we have formed a non-profit society in BC, registered domain names and have opened a PayPal account to start accepting donations and memberships.

I presented on this project at Vancouver SkeptiCamp 2010-II to a warm reception. The most critical point came as to how do we define our priorities and values without an ideology.

After some thinking, I realized that the direction comes (at least in part) from listening to what the people want. Far too many politicians and political parties have become self-serving: just look at the recent US elections.

A Reason Vancouver rally

As part of this consultation and democratic listening, we established a policy wiki, where anyone can edit our policy and suggest directions for the party to go. Our only request (beyond registering, although its not necessary yet) is that all policy actions are referenced by evidence. We even incorporated the infamous (citation needed) tags from Wikipedia.

We have a Facebook Fan Page, Twitter account, YouTube and Flickr account (although the later two lack any content yet). Our logo is almost ready and we’re planning a policy conference in February (potentially formatted after SkeptiCamp – specifically see CiviCamp Calgary to which new mayor Naheed Nenshi was a part of).

Finally, with premier Gordon Campbell’s surprise resignation today, we launched the page for Reason BC for anyone in the province who wants to champion Reason’s flag at the provincial level. It will be much more difficult to win provincially, although if Campbell also steps down as an MLA, there will be a by-election in my own riding.

So things are getting exciting on this coast.

Marci McDonald in Vancouver

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McDonald Marci_cr Chick Harrity

On the topic of successfully co-sponsored events, the BC Humanists, CFI Vancouver and SFU Skeptics worked together to bring Marci McDonald, author of The Armageddon Factor, to Vancouver for a discussion of the state of secularism in Canada.

The talk, at SFU’s downtown Harbour Centre campus, was attended by about 50 people, and reviewed a lot of the topics of her book, with extra focus on the connections within Vancouver and BC.

Specifically, she pointed out how many of the leaders of Canada’s growing Christian Right are from right here in Vancouver and the lower mainland. She also mentioned the infamous Trinity Western University, which boasts an impressive political science internship program that fast-tracks Christian students to roles in the civil service and government.

She noted much of the criticism against her, and that very few journalists (especially ones without established writing careers) could maintain a career after the onslaught she’s received. Two days after an excerpt of her book was printed with a mistake in the Toronto Star, which had been redacted in print and online within hours, Ezra Levant got a blog post printed in the National Post attacking her, in some ways further evidencing her thesis. She said she has avoided (admitted) defamation lawsuits, preferring to let her work stand on its own. She was however quite shocked at the vitriol being spewed against her on the internet.

The questions were quite good, and there weren’t any shit-disturbers. Many of the questions focussed on “what do we do about this,” to which Marci couldn’t really answer, since a journalist (ideally) has to keep themselves on the sidelines. It was hinted that what she’s outlined about what’s worked for the Christians is probably a good model for anyone seeking influence and power in our system.

After she signed some copies of her books, we (a few of the SFU Skeptics, CFI and Marci and her husband) adjourned to SteamWorks brewpub for a few drinks and snacks. The discussion was interesting and I learned that my exploits in (attempting to) secularising the University of Alberta’s convocation had been noticed by her, but didn’t make the cut for the book. She also expressed interest in campus Conservative activism, specifically the organized attempts to defederate from the Canadian Federation of Students (which has opposed Pro-Life groups and the Genocide Awareness Project) and attempts to kill Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs).

All in all it was a pretty successful event, although I was hoping for a slightly larger turnout.

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