Weekly Update 1/30/12

Hello, Secular Students!

Here's your weekly update from fourth week:

Next Meeting: What makes something convincing?
Politicians, demagogues and activists all use language to get their points across. They try to deceive, move, inspire and persuade us through word choice, rhetorical devices, cadence, framing and much else. Come to The UnCommon Room at 6 pm Tuesday, January 31, to learn how to spot these techniques and use them yourself.


Announcements

• Valentine Making: Next Sunday evening, at 5 pm, we're going to meet up (location TBD), eat pizza, and attach lollipops and other candies to evolution themed valentine's day cards, which are in the process of being designed. If you have ideas for the cards, send them in! We're also going to need people to table next week to sell these, so keep that in mind.
• Darwin Day!: Darwin Day is February 12, so we're showing Land Before Time and eating cake. Here's the facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/215367911881179/. Invite your friends!
• Life Before the Dinosaurs: First, check out this blog. Seriously. It's written by a 7 year old. Impressed yet? Well, on February 19th, SA will be taking Art, the author, and his family out to dinner.
• Greta Christina Talk: Short bio: Greta Christina has been writing professionally since 1989, on topics including atheism, sexuality and sex-positivity, LGBT issues, politics, culture, and whatever crosses her mind. She is on the speakers's bureaus of the Secular Student Alliance and the Center for Inquiry. She is editor of the "Best Erotic Comics" anthology series, and of "Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients." This awesome lady is coming to speak about Religion, Atheism and Sexuality on March 1, so save the day in your calendars.
• Blogging: We are still looking for students to blog for us! Are you interested in sharing an article or a video blog on our website? We'd love to have guest bloggers, as well. If you have an article written, you can email it to ssa.uchicago@gmail.com. Or, if you're just interested, but aren't sure what to write or talk about, email us about that too, and we'll help you get started.
  Also, if you run a personal blog about topics related to secularism, let us know, and we may feature it on the website as well.

Links You Should Follow

• Framing and rhetoric! Read this awesome piece about the uselessness of the 'wall' metaphor for the separation of church and state before our next meeting!
• Skepticamp just happened, and our secretary got some great compliments from this blogger's write up.
• Math, math and more math. In nature, and in good fun. From the excellent Vi Hart.
• Super intense, crazily inoffensive billboards. What will the reaction be?
• What are the ethics of paying for blood donations?

That’s all for this installment. In conclusion, this week’s quote is a surprisingly vitriolic one from Thomas Edison:

"I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake… Religion is all bunk."

Hope to see you on tomorrow!

~The UChicago Secular Student Alliance~
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