Jesus as a historical figure
One question I often get asked when discussing religion with Christians is “you do accept Jesus as a historical figure, right?” The argument goes along the lines of this: There is evidence that there...
View ArticleThe Little Paris Kitchen
Rachel Khoo is a business genius. If you’ve seen her BBC Two show, The Little Paris Kitchen, you may have heard her claim she opened her own restaurant. You’ll then no doubt notice that what is has...
View ArticleHistory: A Very Short Introduction
I was somewhat disappointed when I first began reading History: A Very Short Introduction. I was originally coping for a compact and concise list of everything that has happened in the past few...
View ArticleThe Quest for the Historical Jesus
At a recent Atheist Society meeting, Karel du Pauw provided a brick by brick deconstruction fo any claim that Jesus could have been a historial figure. A similarly great deconstruction, though not as...
View ArticleDecade in the Sun
Recently, I was thinking that it must be coming up to ten years since I registered my first domain name, in the next couple of years. When I actually checked, it was two months ago. In May 2002, I...
View ArticleWere the Catholics Framed?
For my seventh project in my Toastmasters Competent Communicator manual, “research your topic”, I presented a talk entitled “Were the Catholics Framed?” This looked at whether the gunpowder plot was...
View ArticleSurfin’ Bird
Often, our society fails to give scientists the credit they deserve. Take homo erectus for example. A lot of scientists have had a lot of laughs out of the fact that they managed to convince the world...
View ArticleMyth of Islam
One of my friends recently started a new blog on the origins of Islam. It challenges the claim that is sometimes made by Islam itself that its origins are factual – as the blog goes on to explain, this...
View ArticleOrigins of Islam
At the April meeting of the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire, Guy Otten presented a talk on the origins of Islam. The thesis of the talk was that the origins were mythological, and were created in a...
View ArticleConfessions of a Tarot Reader
Last month, Dr Joely Black presented a history of tarot. Joely was an animated and interesting speaker who is well worth going to see. If you missed it, you can watch it online via Worfolk Lectures. We...
View ArticleTemple Works
When we were looking for venues for the Sunday Assembly I visited Temple Works. It is located just down at the bottom of town and was once the biggest room in the world. It really is massive. When I...
View Article39 photos from when we were younger
No, this is not a BuzzFeed article. I had to go through a lot of my photos recently while updating my website and I thought it might be nice to post some of the old ones. The whole thing might take a...
View ArticleAll the Countries We’ve Ever Invaded: And the Few We Never Got Round To
“Out of 193 countries that are currently UN member states, we’ve invaded or fought conflicts in the territory of 171.” Or so the book’s description reads. The author, Stuart Laycock, begins by talking...
View ArticleThe Man Who Won The War
This is my Toastmasters speech for Project #5 of the Storytellig manual ‘Bringing History To Life’.
View ArticleSapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is a non-fiction book by Yuval Noah Harari. It is the most interesting book I have read in a long time. I was ignorant of a lot of early human history. For...
View ArticleQuicksilver
Quicksilver is a historical novel by Neal Stephenson. It is part of the The Baroque Cycle, although I don’t really know what that is. It jumps around which kept things interesting. The pace differs....
View ArticleKing of the Vagabonds
King of the Vagabonds is the second book in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, following on from Quicksilver. When I say “following on” the story is unrelated but just the next in the series. It follows...
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