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Upcoming Meetings and Topics
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Next Meeting
Space-Based Solar Power
Speaker:
Chuck Lesher
July 12th, 2009 9:00 am
Location: HomeTown Buffet, 1312 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale |
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Once again, we are happy to welcome our HSGP member Chuck Lesher. Chuck was born in Kansas, raised in Colorado, graduated high school in Southern California, and then moved to Phoenix, where he joined the Army. He spent the next four years in Maryland, Germany and Texas. Upon returning to civilian life, Chuck earned a BS in Engineering Mechanics-Aerospace from the University of Wisconsin and a MS in Materials Science from Arizona State University. After graduation, Chuck worked at Space Data/Orbital Sciences Corporation designing, building and launching small sounding rockets and high altitude weather balloons. Later, he served as Quality Assurance Manager for Hybrid Design Associates in Tempe, a small manufacturing company that specializes in harsh-environment electronic assemblies.
Chuck is married to HSGP member Peggy, has three grown children and four grandchildren. He writes Speculative Fiction under his full name, Charles Lee Lesher. His debut novel, Evolution’s Child, was selected as 2007’s Best of the Moon Fiction by the Lunar Library. Check out his website at: http://www.charleslesher.com
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Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Event:
Book Club
July 25th, 2009 10:30 am
Location: Mesa Main Library, 64 East 1st Street |
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The Humanist Book Club meets on the fourth Saturday of each month at 10:30 a.m., Mesa Main Library, Main Branch, 64 East 1st Street (East of Country Club Way at the intersection of N. Centennial Way -- N.W. corner)
From Amazon.com:
Malcolm Gladwell poses a more provocative question in Outliers: why do some people succeed, living remarkably productive and impactful lives, while so many more never reach their potential? Challenging our cherished belief of the "self-made man," he makes the democratic assertion that superstars don't arise out of nowhere, propelled by genius and talent: "they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot." Examining the lives of outliers from Mozart to Bill Gates, he builds a convincing case for how successful people rise on a tide of advantages, "some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky."
Outliers can be enjoyed for its bits of trivia, like why most pro hockey players were born in January, how many hours of practice it takes to master a skill, why the descendents of Jewish immigrant garment workers became the most powerful lawyers in New York, how a pilots' culture impacts their crash record, how a centuries-old culture of rice farming helps Asian kids master math. But there's more to it than that. Throughout all of these examples--and in more that delve into the social benefits of lighter skin color, and the reasons for school achievement gaps--Gladwell invites conversations about the complex ways privilege manifests in our culture. He leaves us pondering the gifts of our own history, and how the world could benefit if more of our kids were granted the opportunities to fulfill their remarkable potential. --Mari Malcolm
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Humanism: The Next Generation!
Moderator:
Susan Sackett
July 26th, 2009 9:00 am
Location: HomeTown Buffet, 1312 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale |
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Join us for a discussion and planning session for educating the "next generation" of Humanists! We will welcome parents and grandparents as well as interested members as we discuss the plans for our Childhood Education program. Share your ideas, interests and concerns. Discover how we can make our organization "family friendly."
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Hot Topics
Speaker:
Dr. Maureen Sander-Staudt
August 09th, 2009 9:00 am
Location: HomeTown Buffet, 1312 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale |
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Dr. Maureen Sander-Staudt returns for her third talk to our group. Always delightful, Dr. Sander-Staudt will speak on a number of hot-button issues, including same-sex marriage, gender identity and inter-sex, the ethics of pornography, care-giving, the ethics of public breast feeding and more!
Dr. Sander-Staudt holds a BA in English Literature from Alverno College in Milwaukee, WI and an MA from the Univ. of WI-Milwaukee. Dr. Sander-Staudt completed her Ph.D.at the Univ. of Colorado-Boulder where she specialized in gender theory and feminist ethics. Her dissertation work was on the topic of the political implications of the ethics of care, and in it she develops the beginnings of a political philosophy of care. During this time, she received several fellowships and served as a teaching mentor to her department.
Her current scholarly interests continue to be in the area of care ethics, as well as applied ethics, particularly bioethics, reproductive technologies, and moral education. Her most recent work examines the impact of women’s responsibilities as care-givers on their political understandings and activism. Dr. Sander-Staudt has also written an essay using feminist ethics to assess the development and use of artificial womb technology. She has continued an interest in philosophy and popular culture, Eastern philosophy, and the applications of gender and sexuality to reproductive technology, criminal justice, and spirituality. Future projects include a paper on the role of bodily perception in moral experience, an analysis of the human genome project and stem cell research from the perspective of Care Ethics, and an application of Care Ethics to the comparative status of fetuses in abortion and crimes against pregnant women.
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Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond
Event:
Book Club
August 22nd, 2009 10:30 am
Location: Mesa Main Library, 64 East 1st Street |
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The Humanist Book Club meets on the fourth Saturday of each month at 10:30 a.m., Mesa Main Library, Main Branch, 64 East 1st Street (East of Country Club Way at the intersection of N. Centennial Way -- N.W. corner)
From Amazon.com:
Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is the glass-half-empty follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel. While Guns, Germs, and Steel explained the geographic and environmental reasons why some human populations have flourished, Collapse uses the same factors to examine why ancient societies, including the Anasazi of the American Southwest and the Viking colonies of Greenland, as well as modern ones such as Rwanda, have fallen apart. Not every collapse has an environmental origin, but an eco-meltdown is often the main catalyst, he argues, particularly when combined with society's response to (or disregard for) the coming disaster. Still, right from the outset of Collapse, the author makes clear that this is not a mere environmentalist's diatribe. He begins by setting the book's main question in the small communities of present-day Montana as they face a decline in living standards and a depletion of natural resources. Once-vital mines now leak toxins into the soil, while prion diseases infect some deer and elk and older hydroelectric dams have become decrepit. On all these issues, and particularly with the hot-button topic of logging and wildfires, Diamond writes with equanimity.
Because he's addressing such significant issues within a vast span of time, Diamond can occasionally speak too briefly and assume too much, and at times his shorthand remarks may cause careful readers to raise an eyebrow. But in general, Diamond provides fine and well-reasoned historical examples, making the case that many times, economic and environmental concerns are one and the same. With Collapse, Diamond hopes to jog our collective memory to keep us from falling for false analogies or forgetting prior experiences, and thereby save us from potential devastations to come. While it might seem a stretch to use medieval Greenland and the Maya to convince a skeptic about the seriousness of global warming, it's exactly this type of cross-referencing that makes Collapse so compelling. --Jennifer Buckendorff
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Why Ben Stein is Wrong About Science and History
Speaker:
Dr. John Lynch
August 23rd, 2009 9:00 am
Location: HomeTown Buffet, 1312 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale |
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Dr. John Lynch last spoke to us in February, 2008. We are pleased to welcome him back for his fourth visit to HSGP!
Dr. Lynch teaches for Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University (where he is also affiliated with the Center for Biology & Society, and the History and Philosophy of Science Program). He received his initial training as an evolutionary biologist and, while he continues biological research, he now largely teaches and researches within the history of biology. Specializing in theological and cultural responses to evolutionary ideas, his ongoing primary research is an examination of Catholic responses to evolutionary thought. He has been studying American anti-evolutionism since 1996, and was involved (with other ASU faculty) with the fight to maintain strong evolutionary principles in the AZ K12 standards following challenges in 1998 and 2004. He has presented on anti-evolutionism and Intelligent Design Creationism at legal, educational, scientific, and public gatherings country-wide.
Dr. Lynch writes: "In 2006 I talked about the history of the intelligent design movement (IDM) and how it was dealt a decisive blow with Judge John Jones III's decision in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover. Since that decision, the IDM appears to have adopted two arguments. The first is to argue that the academic freedom of members of the IDM is being infringed by the academic mainstream. Secondly, they argue that 'Darwinism' has pernicious social effects and lead to the Holocaust. Both of these arguments were presented in Ben Stein's 2008 movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which portrayed 'Darwinism' as an evil empire bent on destroying freedom of thought. My talk will debunk these arguments"."
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Humanism and Ethics
Speaker:
Dr. Harvey Turner
September 13th, 2009 9:00 am
Location: HomeTown Buffet, 1312 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale |
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HSGP member Dr. Harvey Turner was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1932. His undergraduate work was at Columbia University, where he majored in psychology and contemporary civilization. He attended medical school at University of Berne, Switzerland. That was followed by an internship in 1960 and general surgery residency in Brooklyn, NY and thoracic surgery residency in Boston, MA. Dr. Turner has been an Arizona resident since 1987 and is on several hospital ethics committees. He taught medical ethics at Gateway Community College for several years. Dr. Turner retired from active practice in 2000.
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Aladdin's Lamp: How Greek Science Came to Europe through the Islamic World, by John Freely
Event:
Book Club
September 26th, 2009 10:30 am
Location: Mesa Main Library, 64 East 1st Street |
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The Humanist Book Club meets on the fourth Saturday of each month at 10:30 a.m., Mesa Main Library, Main Branch, 64 East 1st Street (East of Country Club Way at the intersection of N. Centennial Way -- N.W. corner)
From "Booklist":
A historian of science, Freely chronicles the transmission of scientific ideas from ancient Greece and Rome to an early modern Europe on the cusp of the scientific revolution. Many ancients’ notions about nature were, Freely recounts, preserved from oblivion by scholars based in centers of Islamic learning such as Baghdad, Cairo, and Cordoba. Before reaching those destinations, Freely profiles the Greek sages, enumerating their surviving works and what information they held about mathematics, astronomy, and medicine, among other subjects. Leaving behind a roster of names that is likely familiar to the core audience, Freely’s account then addresses Islamic rulers, such as the first caliphs of the Abbasid dynasty around 800, who sponsored translations into Arabic of Greek texts. Freely ranges over the names of Islamic scholars so occupied, who served as arks for Greek science, and of original thinkers who formulated such topics as algebra, all of which reached the West in the cultural diffusion Freely describes. A sinuous odyssey through scientific ideas, Freely’s work will most appeal to tastes for intellectual history. --Gilbert Taylor
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Climate Change and Sustainability
Speaker:
Dr. Ann Kinzig
September 27th, 2009 9:00 am
Location: HomeTown Buffet, 1312 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale |
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Dr. Ann Kinzig is an Associate Professor at the School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University. Dr. Kinzig received her B.A. in Physics from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (1986), her M.A. in Physics from University of California at Berkeley (1989), and her Ph.D. in Energy and Resources from Berkeley (1994). Before arriving at ASU, Dr. Kinzig was a post-doctoral researcher and lecturer at Princeton University (1994-1998).
Ann Kinzig's research interests focus broadly on ecosystem services, conservation-development interactions, and the resilience of natural-resource systems. She is currently involved in three major research projects, including: (1) Advancing Conservation in a Social Context (examining the trade-offs between conservation and development goals in developing nations); (2) The resilience of pre-historic landscapes in the American Southwest; and (3) Assessments of ecosystem services, their valuation, and mechanisms for ensuring their continued delivery.
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Fall BBQ at HH
Event:
Fall BBQ at HH
October 03rd, 2009 3:00 pm
Location: Humanist House, 627 W. 8th Street, Mesa |
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Our property at 627 W. 8th Street in Mesa (between Country Club and Alma School) will serve as the location for a delightful Fall event as we join with our fellow Humanists and Freethinkers in an afternoon of fun, food and friends. There will be special activities for children, as we want to encourage families to attend.
More details TBA as we get closer to the event.
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October 04th, 2009 9:00 am To Be Announced
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October 18th, 2009 9:00 am To Be Announced
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October 24th, 2009 10:30 am To Be Announced
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Christianity and Science
Speaker:
Dr. Richard Carrier
November 08th, 2009 9:00 am
Location: HomeTown Buffet, 1312 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale |
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Richard Carrier is a nationally-renowned author and speaker. As a professional historian, published philosopher, and prominent defender of the American freethought movement, Dr. Carrier has appeared across the country and on national television defending sound historical methods and the ethical worldview of secular naturalism. He holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University in ancient history, specializing in the intellectual history of Greece and Rome, particularly ancient philosophy, religion, and science, with emphasis on the origins of Christianity and the use and progress of science under the Roman empire. He is best known as the author of Sense and Goodness without God and a major contributor to The Empty Tomb, as well as writer and editor-in-chief (now emeritus) for the Secular Web, and for his copious work in history and philosophy online and in print. He is currently working on his next book, On the Historicity of Jesus Christ, after which he will expand his dissertation for publication as The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire. Visit his website at: http://www.richardcarrier.info/
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November 22nd, 2009 9:00 am To Be Announced
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November 28th, 2009 10:30 am To Be Announced
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December 06th, 2009 9:00 am To Be Announced
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December 19th, 2009 10:30 am To Be Announced
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Annual Auction and Solstice/Human Light Party!
Moderator:
Susan Sackett
December 20th, 2009 9:00 am
Location: HomeTown Buffet, 1312 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale |
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Our Annual Solstice Party and Fund-raising Auction is always a great event. We will celebrate the Humanist holiday of HumanLight. We'll inaugurate our new board members and give out the annual Helen Goldsmith Awards to our most deserving volunteers!
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