Category: Video+discussion

A video of an interview of John McWhorter

11 a.m., January 22, 2023

Join the Humanist Forum, in person OR on Zoom.

This Sunday we will watch John Stossel interview Professor John McWhorter, author of “Woke Racism.”
Professor John McWhorter argues that condescending leftist ideology hurts black people. He argues that “Woke Racism” hurts black people in many ways: from treating them as incapable of logic, to calling for abolition of tests, to insisting that violent kids stay in schools. He says that all these ideas are propped by a religion-like ideology that “requires that you sequester your brain for illogical thinking.” They are also driven by a desire to claim victimization status, and to somehow cast oneself as continuing the civil rights struggles of the past. McWhorter compares Black culture of today with that of the 1950s. Even though racism was far worse then, he claims, Black people were pragmatic in their willingness to make the best our of a terrible situation, instead of wallowing in victimhood. The disparity of performance on testing, for example, was not as gaping as it is today.
John Stossel is a libertarian television presenter, author, consumer journalist, and pundit. He has been a host a host on ABC News, Fox Business Network.
John McWhorter is a famous American linguist with a specialty in creole languages and Black English. He is currently associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University. He has also authored books on race relations and African-American culture. McWhorter characterizes himself as “a cranky liberal Democrat.”

You can attend our forums in person with fellow humanists in the Maple Room of the Mountain View Community Center at 201 S Rengstorff Ave, Mountain View. Lunch will be served after the forum. We request a $10 donation for lunch.
If you attend in person, COVID protocols will be followed. Vaccinations and masks will be required. If you have symptoms that may be COVID, kindly attend on Zoom (see below).

———-

Also, we will continue to present our forums on Zoom. To join and be able to ask questions and make comments, click here.
No password is needed — our host will admit you from the waiting room. Joining the meeting via the link will download and install the Zoom app on your desktop computer (if it’s not already installed), and then take you to the meeting. You can also install the Zoom app on your computer or smart phone, and then enter:
Meeting ID: 816 5389 0712
Passcode: 250634

You can also call any of the following phone numbers and then enter the above Meeting ID and the Passcode in order to join the meeting by phone.
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You can find international phone numbers to call here.

———-

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Do your online shopping at https://smile.amazon.com/ch/94-6173979, and Amazon donates to the Humanist Community every time you do. Note that Amazon plans to wind down AmazonSmile by February 20, 2023. https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-closing-amazonsmile-to-focus-its-philanthropic-giving-to-programs-with-greater-impact

A video of a talk by Michael Shellenberger

11 a.m., January 15, 2023

Join the Humanist Forum, in person OR on Zoom.

This week, we will discuss a follow-on to last week’s presentation with the video, “Why I Changed My Mind about Nuclear Power” by Michael Shellenberger. This week we will have lots of time for Q&A to discuss among ourselves our thoughts about nuclear Power’s Pros and Cons.
You can view this video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciStnd9Y2ak.

Michael Shellenberger is co-founder and Senior Fellow at the Breakthrough Institute, where he was president from 2003 to 2015, and a co-author of the Ecomodernist Manifesto. Over the last decade, Michael and his colleagues have constructed a new paradigm that views prosperity, cheap energy and nuclear power as the keys to environmental progress. A book he co-wrote (with Ted Nordhaus) in 2007, Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility, was called by Wired magazine “the best thing to happen to environmentalism since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring,” while Time Magazine called him a “hero of the environment.” In the 1990s, he helped protect the last significant groves of old-growth redwoods still in private hands, and bring about labor improvements to Nike factories in Asia. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

You can attend our forums in person with fellow humanists in the Maple Room of the Mountain View Community Center at 201 S Rengstorff Ave, Mountain View. Lunch will be served after the forum. We request a $10 donation for lunch.
If you attend in person, COVID protocols will be followed. Vaccinations and masks will be required. If you have symptoms that may be COVID, kindly attend on Zoom (see below).

———-

Also, we will continue to present our forums on Zoom. To join and be able to ask questions and make comments, click here.
No password is needed — our host will admit you from the waiting room. Joining the meeting via the link will download and install the Zoom app on your desktop computer (if it’s not already installed), and then take you to the meeting. You can also install the Zoom app on your computer or smart phone, and then enter:
Meeting ID: 816 5389 0712
Passcode: 250634

You can also call any of the following phone numbers and then enter the above Meeting ID and the Passcode in order to join the meeting by phone.
+1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
+1 408 638 0968 US (San Jose)
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
+1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
+1 646 876 9923 US (New York)
You can find international phone numbers to call here.

———-

RSVP on Meetup here.
Like us on Facebook here.
Follow us on Twitter here.
See videos of our past Forums here.
Add this event to your Google Calendar

Do your online shopping at https://smile.amazon.com/ch/94-6173979, and Amazon donates to the Humanist Community every time you do.

A video of a talk by Alex Vitale

11 a.m., November 27, 2022

Join the Humanist Forum in person OR on Zoom.

At this Sunday’s Humanist Forum, we will watch and discuss a video of a talk by Alex Vitale.
Due to several high-profile accounts of abuse, police are seen as both oppressors and protectors. The problem, says Prof. Vitale, is that police are trained in highly militarized ways. He says that diversifying the police force or requiring them to wear body cameras will not change the underlying systemic racism in police procedures. He discusses the history and nature of this racism, what defund the police really means, and why the call to defund the police is reasonable.
Alex Vitale is an American author and professor of sociology at Brooklyn College. He is also the coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, The Appeal, USA Today, Vice News, and other media outlets. Vitale is the author of The End of Policing (2017), which argues for the abolition of police.
The video is produced by Skeptics in the Pub, an international discussion form. You can preview this talk at https://youtu.be/q_ysKdFbDhA

On the following Sunday, December 4, Vic Schachter will speak to us, in person.
You can attend our forums in person with fellow humanists in the Maple Room of the Mountain View Community Center at 201 S Rengstorff Ave, Mountain View. Lunch will be served after the forum. We request a $10 donation for lunch.
If you attend in person, COVID protocols will be followed. Vaccinations and masks will be required. If you have symptoms that may be COVID, kindly attend on Zoom (see below).

———-

Also, we will continue to present our forums on Zoom. To join and be able to ask questions and make comments, click here.
No password is needed — our host will admit you from the waiting room. Joining the meeting via the link will download and install the Zoom app on your desktop computer (if it’s not already installed), and then take you to the meeting. You can also install the Zoom app on your computer or smart phone, and then enter:
Meeting ID: 816 5389 0712
Passcode: 250634

You can also call any of the following phone numbers and then enter the above Meeting ID and the Passcode in order to join the meeting by phone.
+1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
+1 408 638 0968 US (San Jose)
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
+1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
+1 646 876 9923 US (New York)
You can find international phone numbers to call here.

———-

RSVP on Meetup here.
Like us on Facebook here.
Follow us on Twitter here.
See videos of our past Forums here.
Add this event to your Google Calendar

Do your online shopping at https://smile.amazon.com/ch/94-6173979, and Amazon donates to the Humanist Community every time you do.

Drs. Lilliana Mason and Nathan Kalmoe

11 a.m., November 20, 2022

Join the Humanist Forum this Sunday at 11 AM, in person OR on Zoom.

At this Sunday’s Humanist Forum, we will watch and discuss a video from the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University on Understanding Radical American Partisanship.
Political violence is rising in the United States, alarming citizens and leaders alike. How many Americans endorse partisan violence and other forms of extreme hostility? What are its deep social, political, historical, and psychological roots? What can be done about it? And what does it mean for democracy?
In this talk, Drs. Lilliana Mason and Nathan Kalmoe make sense of our contentious politics with a groundbreaking study of radicalism among ordinary American partisans. Their individual-level studies utilize more than a dozen new nationally representative surveys and experiments to trace recent trends since 2017, reactions to elections and violent events, broader conditions that spur support for violence, links from violence attitudes to aggressive behavior, and the role of leaders in enflaming or pacifying their followers.
The results reshape the study of modern American political behavior by showing that ordinary partisanship is far more volatile than scholars have recognized in the past century of study.
Dr. Lilliana Mason is an associate professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Dr. Kalmoe is interim associate dean for undergraduate studies and administration and an associate professor of political communication at LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication and Department of Political Science.
You can pre-watch this one-hour video here.
You can attend our forums in person with fellow humanists in the Maple Room of the Mountain View Community Center at 201 S Rengstorff Ave, Mountain View. Lunch will be served after the forum. We request a $10 donation for lunch.
If you attend in person, COVID protocols will be followed. Vaccinations and masks will be required. If you have symptoms that may be COVID, kindly attend on Zoom (see below).

———-

Also, we will continue to present our forums on Zoom. To join and be able to ask questions and make comments, click here.
No password is needed — our host will admit you from the waiting room. Joining the meeting via the link will download and install the Zoom app on your desktop computer (if it’s not already installed), and then take you to the meeting. You can also install the Zoom app on your computer or smart phone, and then enter:
Meeting ID: 816 5389 0712
Passcode: 250634

You can also call any of the following phone numbers and then enter the above Meeting ID and the Passcode in order to join the meeting by phone.
+1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
+1 408 638 0968 US (San Jose)
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
+1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
+1 646 876 9923 US (New York)
You can find international phone numbers to call here.

———-

RSVP on Meetup here.
Like us on Facebook here.
Follow us on Twitter here.
See videos of our past Forums here.
Add this event to your Google Calendar

Do your online shopping at https://smile.amazon.com/ch/94-6173979, and Amazon donates to the Humanist Community every time you do.