Archive for the ‘books’ tag
Book Club Vote - October 2008
This month’s book is “Biblical Nonsense” by Dr. Jason Long, and I’m thinking about scrapping the live discussion. It is fun when you get to invite the author along (as with Hemant Mehta) but otherwise it usually ends up with 2 people discussing the book for about 5 minutes, and then turning onto something else.
So the discussion for this book will simply take place over in the forums.
We need to start choosing a book for October.
Do not vote unless you wish to read the book or take part in the discussion!
I’d also like to know who out of my readership is interested in the book club, so please make a comment if you think you’ll be able to subscribe to it regularly. I’d also love some feedback on it.
Postponing Carl Sagan
Sorry for the late announcement, but I’ll have to postpone the online discussion of Carl Sagan’s book “The Demon Haunted World” until Tuesday 2nd September. That gives everyone an extra 3 days with the book in case they need to finish the final chapter!
I need to get up early tomorrow as I am attending my dad’s wedding, and so I won’t be online to oversee the book club meeting tonight. I’ll be back in action on the 2nd, and if I get access to a computer before then I will update everyone with information. Hopefully I’ll be able to set up a vote for October’s book on the 1st.
Busy Busy Busy
Woah! A whole two days of nothingness on the blog. It feels empty to me so I guess it probably feels empty for my readers! I have an excuse though:
Refurbishing an entire house is hell.
Not literally hell of course, for obviously no such place exists. However if I were to believe in a hell, it would probably have me cleaning and tidying a student house for all eternity. All my housemates have arrived now, and in addition to all the house-keeping, we’ve been setting up phonelines, internet connections, and routers. We now have cable running through the entire house which on two occasions has nearly caused me to break my neck (it gets caught around my feet easily).
A couple of days ago I got a visit from a representative of the UK Brights who came to talk to me about our plans to hold a “Brights Awareness Week” at the university (part of my student group Atheist & Agnostic Alliance). Our hope is to hold an event that beats the crap out of the Christian Unions “Jesus Awareness Week”, which is why we have started planning so many months in advance.
Finally, I totally missed the book club result for September, which is:
Biblical Nonsense by Dr. Jason Long
Luckily it is a book I suggested in the forums, and therefore I already have it in my bookcase. Its available on Amazon though. Preliminary date for discussion is Saturday 28th September.
Book Club Vote - September 2008
So this months book is “The Demon Haunted World” by Carl Sagan, and the discussion will be held on Saturday 30th, at 23:00 UTC. Again, if you need to work out your time follow these steps:
- Visit the website http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/
- Scroll down past the first table of countries and you will see another box that has the words “Current UTC (or GMT/Zulu)-time used: “
- With the time/date shown in that box, you can work how how far ahead or behind you are of UTC.
Everything will be confirmed nearer the time.
Now for the vote for Septembers book.
Do not vote unless you wish to read the book or take part in the discussion!
Atheist Blogger Book Club - September 2008
- 50 reasons people give for believing in a god by Guy P. Harrison (29%, 2 Votes)
- Biblical Nonsense by Dr. Jason Long (43%, 3 Votes)
- God's Problem by Bart Ehrman (14%, 1 Votes)
- Exmormon by C. L. Hanson (Free for reviewers) (14%, 1 Votes)
Total Voters: 7
Voting lasts 7 days.
Freedom Evolves But I Messed The Discussion Up
The forum discussion for Daniel Dennett’s book “Freedom Evolves” is up. Apologies to anyone who went to the live discussion, which I had put an hour later so that Aussie readers could get out of bed. It seems people still thought it was the same time, so I showed up an hour “late” and nobody was there.
Just so everyone knows for future reference, the book club live discussion is now taking place at midnight (UTC+1). So if you go to this world clock website and scroll down, you will see the time written in UTC. When that time is 23:00, it’s time for the discussion!
Voting for Septembers book will take place tomorrow.


