"The Vampire has fascinated Western Europe from the early 1700s, but the tradition was a real part of Eastern European lives for a considerable time before that. In the last three centuries, the icon has been taken up by art of all kinds - literature, film and graphics - and it has had a lasting effect on fashion and culture. But what is the authentic story behind tales of the predatory, living dead and can we understand a little more about being human by studying these accounts? We will look at recent attempts to understand the folklore and try to work out how an Eastern European ritual made its way to late nineteenth century New England, USA.
Deborah Hyde writes writes, lectures internationally and appears on broadcast media to discuss superstition, religion and belief in the supernatural. She uses a range of approaches and disciplines from history to psychology to investigate the folklore of the malign and to discover why it is so persistent throughout all human communities & eras. She is currently writing a book ‘Unnatural Predators’. She is also a film industry makeup effects production manager who gets on the wrong side of the camera from time to time."

http://photos4.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/b/9/3/e/event_209327422.jpegWorried about attacks on science education by creationists from well funded USA and Australian bodies? Concerned about the fundamentalist wedge strategy in education? Think Intelligent Design belongs in an RE class rather than a science class?

Creationism is currently facing more opportunities in the UK education sector than it has ever before had. This talk will cover the current situation and what you can do about it.
You will also learn how to argue with creationists without using logic and evidence.
If we have time we will play "Creationism or Fiction?"

That's our speaker Mark Edon's brief and only slightly tongue in cheek introduction to the topic. A modern day 'Darwin's pitbull', Mark is one of the BCSE's public advocates. The British Centre for Science Education (BCSE) is the leading anti-creationist organisation in Europe. They are a well established professional group dedicated to promoting and defending science education in the UK. The BCSE is run as a cooperative organisation by part-time volunteers with free membership and a community forum where the general public can debate the key issues involved. It believes in the tools for everyone to think for themselves - Science, Education and Reason - and the outcome – Democracy, Pluralism and Liberty.

With Michael Gove and the coalition approving new Steiner Schools to open under the Free School Programme, it is timely to look closely at the origins and beliefs of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the occult movement of Anthroposophy.

Steiner was a mystic who believed he had direct clairvoyant access to cosmic knowledge. As such he developed an esoteric belief system based on karma, reincarnation, astrology, homeopathy and gnomes. His visions gave insights into architecture, art, dance, agriculture, medicine, education, science and diet. His racial hierarchy of spiritual developmental resonated in Germany in the early 20th Century turning a personal belief into a worldwide movement. Today we find hundreds of anthroposophically inspired organisations in the UK alone: everything from Steiner Schools, Biodynamic farms to banks, pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies, charities and cheese makers.

Andy Lewis is perhaps better known as his super alter ego, le Canard Noir and creator of the skeptical exocet that is www.quackometer.net

Andy has been trying to lift the veil on the inner secrets of the movement and will discuss how it has a direct impact on public life.

IMPORTANT NOTE: this event is on a Tuesday rather than our regular Thursday. We wouldn't want to create relationship difficulties by having a talk on Valentines Day

The LHC at CERN is one of the the biggest scientific experiments ever built, and in July 2012 after months of public interest, the discovery of a new particle looking very much like the Higgs boson - responsible for the mass of all fundamental particles - was announced.Professor Jon Butterworth will explain something about the discovery and what it means for physics, and will also discuss how CERN and the scientists coped with the huge popular interest.What are some of the possible implications for "science in public"?
Jon Butterworth is a physics professor at University College London. He is a member of the High Energy Physics group on the Atlas experiment at Cern's Large Hadron Collider

Observer columnist Nick Cohen talks about his tour de force polemic, You Can't Read This Book (fortunately you can but more importantly you should). Here's a snapshot:
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Communism, and the advent of the Web which allowed for even the smallest voice to be heard, everywhere you turned you were told that we were living in an age of unparalleled freedom.You Can't Read This Book argues that this view is dangerously naive. From the revolution in Iran that wasn't, to the Great Firewall of China and the imposition of super-injunctions from the filthy rich protecting their privacy, the traditional opponents of freedom of speech - religious fanaticism, plutocratic power and dictatorial states - are thriving, and in many respects finding the world a more comfortable place in the early 21st century than they did in the late 20th.
This is not an account of interesting but trivial disputes about freedom of speech: the rights and wrongs of shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre, of playing heavy metal at 3 am in a built-up area or articulating extremist ideas in a school or university. Rather, this is a story that starts with the cataclysmic reaction of the Left and Right to the publication and denunciation of the Satanic Verses in 1988 that saw them jump into bed with radical extremists. It ends at the juncture where even in the transgressive, liberated West, where so much blood had been spilt for Freedom, where rebellion is the conformist style and playing the dissenter the smart career move in the arts and media, you can write a book and end up destroyed or dead.