Biking route

TerryFox/Credit River 17k route

Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

Goodreads

The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures by Nicholas Wade




Interesting history of dance and singing in the evolution of religion.

View all my reviews >>

2010 Annual HPHC General Meeting

The meeting was held on Tuesday, May 18th at Cheri's beautiful place in Caledon. It was well attended by stalwart members as well as newbies. The discussion centred around what Humanism meant to each of the attendees. This was in preparation for the appointment of the new executive committee which was as follows:

John Jackson, President
Cheri Cowan, Vice-President
Mark Devenish, Treasurer
Jim Young, Secretary
Kostas Tsembelis, Webmaster
Matthew Bin, Communications

Welcome to newest member Kerem

Darwin Day Event

When: Monday, February 22, 2010 @ 6:30 pm

Where: UTM, South Building, Room 2080
Who: Dr. Jason Head (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UofT)



Jason Head is a vertebrate palaeontologist and biologist who studies the evolutionary histories of reptiles, primarily from 66.5 million years ago to the present. He received a B.S. in biology from the University of Michigan in 1995, a Ph.D. in geology from Southern Methodist University in 2002, and has conducted field research in Pakistan, Tanzania, Mali, India, Jordan, and North America. While collecting Miocene reptile fossils in Pakistan, Jason developed an interest in the relationship of reptile diversity and body size to climate change, especially in snakes. His subsequent research includes quantitative analysis of skeletal morphology in modern and fossil lizards and snakes in order to reconstruct historical patterns of genetic control and development of the reptile axial skeleton, as well as continuing studies of paleoecology and paleoclimate, inferred from the fossil record. In 2009, Jason described the Worlds largest snake, Titanoboa cerrejonensis, and developed a method for estimating paleotemperature from body size in fossil reptiles. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Toronto, Mississauga, a research associate and the Royal Ontario Museum, and an Adjunct Assistant Curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

He will be giving a talk entitled “Natural selection and adaptations as logical theories in studying evolution”

Humanlight celebration and Tree of Knowledge dedication

December was an exciting month as we had our HumanLight celebration on the winter solstice, December 21st, 2009, at my place in Mississauga.

However, preceding this social event to close off our annual activites, we had a dedication ceremony to a Tree of Knowledge at the Halton-Peel Freethought Centre at 5330 Creditview Road. The event, styled after the annual event in Philadelphia, saw a few friends and members of the centre decorate a tree with their favourite book covers, laminated to protect them from the elements. The event was covered by the local Mississauga News.

======================
Humanists celebrate the season

Many people decorate trees this time of year, and the Halton Peel Humanist Community didn't want to be left out of the fun.

The group, founded three years ago, hosted an event Monday night in which its members decorated a tree with covers from some of their favourite books read this past year.

Being humanists, there were plenty of books that focused on science and logical thinking; Charles Darwin's Origin of Species made an appearance as did Al Gore's The Assault on Reason and David Suzuki's The Sacred Balance.

Kevin Saldanha, the group's president, said the event wasn't designed to denigrate people's faith. Rather, it was a way for the group to celebrate and enjoy the season in a way that's in line with their beliefs.

"It was our way of celebrating with a tree that we felt was appropriate and, hopefully, would inspire people," said Saldanha. "It allows us to celebrate the season in a positive way without being offensive."

About 15 people took part in the tree decorating, which was held on Saldanha's property on Creditview Rd.

Saldanha said it seemed like a good idea because many people are decorating Christmas trees this time of year. He pointed to the recently erected Loving Memory Tree for grieving families outside City Hall as another example.

"Our tree promotes knowledge, education and scientific literacy," said Saldanha.

cclay@mississauga.net .

October Meeting - Advance Directives

The October meeting was held on Friday, the 23rd instead of our usual 'third Tuesday of the month' due to non-availability of the Acorn Grill at the Oakville Town Hall for that day.

It was well attended by the public as a result of the announcement in the Oakville Beaver and a last minute reprieve by Ruth von Fuchs, President of the Right to Die Society and the editor of their newsletter 'Free To Go'. This public meeting was to be a workshop on creating your living will by a representative of Dying with Dignity but due to adminstrative changes at the organization, they were unable to provide us with a speaker. Edgar Coxeter, a long time supporter and co-founder of the Oakville Humanist Community used his charm to help us out. Ruth braved a blustery evening to make the GO train ride out to the Oakville station from where I picked her up.

Driving in to the venue, I was concerned that due to the adverse weather, we may not have anyone show up for the event and was pleasantly surprised at the turnout, mostly of members of the public who were interested in the topic for personal reasons. As it turned out, most of them had first hand experience with the prevailing medical dictat of preserving life regardless of the quality that they wanted to make sure that their own wishes would be honoured.

Ruth spoke about her own experiences and how she got involved with the Society, eventually becoming it's president. In her own soft-spoken way, she explained how an advance directive document needs to be personalized, using her own as an example of what she meant. She also handed out some material on appropriate books and websites to access for guidance. One link from the Right to Die website will take you to a comprehensive guide to creating a living will from the University of Toronto's Joint Centre for Bioethics. To access the pdf documents, you will have to register and agree to the terms of their disclaimer.

We all left a little more enlightened into the workings of our wonderful medical system and how to ensure that our wishes would be at least be acknowledged if not honoured.