Category: Video+discussion

The Laws that Sex Workers Really Want

Gauri van Gulik

11 a.m., April 7, 2024

At this Sunday’s Humanist Forum, we will watch a discussion about laws to regulate or eliminate prostitution and their actual effect on sex workers. Activist Juno Mac explains four legal models that are being used around the world and shows us the model that she believes will work best to keep sex workers safe and offer greater self-determination.

In a second video, Human Rights for Sex Workers, Gauri van Gulik, the former Deputy Europe Director of Amnesty International, explains why Amnesty International voted to pursue a policy to protect the human rights of sex workers.

You can watch these videos at:
https://www.ted.com/talks/juno_mac_the_laws_that_sex_workers_really_want
and at:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/08/sex-workers-rights-are-human-rights/

———-

On the first and third Sunday of the month, such as this Sunday, you can attend our forum in person with fellow humanists at the Mountain View Senior Center, 266 Escuela Ave., Mountain View, CA 94040. Lunch will be served after the forum. We request a $10 donation for lunch.

If you attend in person, COVID protocols will be followed. If you have symptoms that may be COVID, kindly attend on Zoom.

If you can join us in person, please email vp@humanists.org to help us make sure we have room for you.

———-

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 smartphone, 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.

———-

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Visit the Humanist Community web site:
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RSVP on Meetup:
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Retweet our announcement on the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter:
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Watch videos of our past Forums: https://vimeo.com/user2798508

What Our Language Habits Reveal

Steven Pinker

11 a.m., March 31, 2024

This Sunday we will watch and discuss a video of Steven Pinker. In this TED talk, Professor Pinker discusses how the way we form sentences reflects subtle facts about our thinking and how we perceive reality. He looks at how languages expresses what goes on in our minds, and how the words we choose may communicate more than we realize.

Steven Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University specializing in visual cognition and developmental linguistics.
View this video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjQM8PzCEY0/

———-

This week, you can attend our forum in person with fellow humanists at Maker Nexus, 1330 Orleans Drive, Sunnyvale CA, 94089. (On the first and third Sunday of the month, you can continue to attend our forum at the Mountain View Senior Center.)
We invite you to bring a dish for a potluck luncheon after the forum.
If you attend in person, COVID protocols will be followed. If you have symptoms that may be COVID, kindly attend on Zoom.
If you can join us in person, please email vp@humanists.org to help us make sure we have room for you.

———-

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 smartphone, 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.

———-

Subscribe to our events in your Apple Calendar:
webcal://p162-caldav.icloud.com/published/2/Mjk3Nzk1MTgyMjk3Nzk1MRBa7aU6zKSIJMfDjhqBP8r3muvKK3GLLCRnZoCneHpXv08CyGJAJRVI5yyh-SVWxGJE9xHfdUs72pmiBNlOBpY

Add this event to your Google calendar:

Like us on Facebook:
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Visit the Humanist Community web site:
https://www.humanists.org/blog/2024-03-31/
RSVP on Meetup:
https://www.meetup.com/humanistcommunity/events/300096056/
Retweet our announcement on the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter:
https://x.com/HumanistCommSV/status/1773772871384584466.

Watch videos of our past Forums: https://vimeo.com/user2798508

The US vs Itself – and Other Top Global Risks in 2024

Ian Bremmer

11 a.m., March 24, 2024

This Sunday we will watch and discuss an interview by TED’s Helen Walters with Ian Bremmer about the top global risks of 2024.

Ian untangles what’s in store for the war in Ukraine, the state of the Israel-Hamas conflict, and the tensions putting democracy in the United States to the test, while AI continues to evolve faster than governments can regulate it.

Ian Arthur Bremmer is an American political scientist, author, and entrepreneur focused on global political risk. He is the founder and president of Eurasia Group, a political risk research and consulting firm. He is also a founder of GZERO Media, a digital media firm.
He has a BA degree in international relations, magna cum laude, from Tulane University and subsequently obtained both an MA and a PhD, in political science from Stanford University. His doctoral dissertation was “The politics of ethnicity: Russians in the Ukraine”.

———-

This week, you can attend our forum in person with fellow humanists at Maker Nexus, 1330 Orleans Drive, Sunnyvale CA, 94089. (On the first and third Sunday of the month, you can continue to attend our forum at the Mountain View Senior Center.) A simple lunch will be served after the forum. If you attend in person, COVID protocols will be followed. If you have symptoms that may be COVID, kindly attend on Zoom. Help us make sure we have room for you. If you can join us in person, please email vp@humanists.org to let us know.

———-

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 smartphone, 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.

———-

Subscribe to our events in your Apple Calendar:
webcal://p162-caldav.icloud.com/published/2/Mjk3Nzk1MTgyMjk3Nzk1MRBa7aU6zKSIJMfDjhqBP8r3muvKK3GLLCRnZoCneHpXv08CyGJAJRVI5yyh-SVWxGJE9xHfdUs72pmiBNlOBpY

Add this event to your Google calendar:

Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/humanistcommsv/
Visit the Humanist Community web site:
https://www.humanists.org/blog/2024-03-10/
RSVP on Meetup:
https://www.meetup.com/humanistcommunity/events/299947030/
Retweet our announcement on the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter:
https://x.com/HumanistCommSV/status/1771035519021179373.

Watch videos of our past Forums: https://vimeo.com/user2798508

An Introduction to Ukraine

Milena Naymark

11 a.m., March 3, 2024

In this wide-ranging lecture, Milena Naymark will look at Ukraine in several ways.

  • Geography and basic facts
  • History
  • Demography and language
  • Culture, including music, folklore, and cuisine
  • Famous scientists and achievements
  • Modern history, including the current 10-year war
  • Prospects for the future and hopes.

In addition to telling and showing us about Ukraine, Ms. Naymark has offered to cook some Ukrainian dishes to share with us.

Milena Naymark was born in Kyiv, into a Ukrainian, Polish, and Russian mixed family. As a child, she studied piano, voice, and music theory. She competed as a figure skater until she was 14, and joined archeological expeditions most of her life.
For her education, Ms. Naymark received a Bachelor of Math with honors at the National Math and Science Lyceum, Kiev. She earned a Masters in Architecture from National Art Academy, Kyiv, and studied in the PhD program in Architecture at the Moscow Prototype and mass Housing Institute.

Ms. Naymark spent her professional life in New York, New York for 14 years, and two years in Berlin, Germany. In New York, she worked as an architect focused on mass transit, healthcare, and schools and public buildings.
Starting in 2005, she worked in healthcare design at Kaiser Permanente and Stanford Medicine in California.
Currently the Head Architect Northern California for Kaiser Permanente, she lives in Woodside.

In the charity realm, Ms. Naymark co-founded Nova Ukraine, a Ukrainian-focused charity which was Number Two in the US from 2013 to 2022. She founded YOUkraine in 2023, where she still serves.

3/3/2024 Milena Naymark from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.

———-

On the first and third Sunday of the month, you can attend our forum in person with fellow humanists at the Mountain View Senior Center, 266 Escuela Ave., Mountain View, CA 94040. Lunch will be served after the forum. We request a $10 donation for lunch.

If you attend in person, COVID protocols will be followed. If you have symptoms that may be COVID, kindly attend on Zoom. Help us make sure we have room for you. If you can join us in person, please email vp@humanists.org to let us know.

———-

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 smartphone, 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.

———-

Add this event to your Google calendar:

Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/humanistcommsv/

Visit the Humanist Community web site:
https://www.humanists.org/blog/2024-03-03/

RSVP on Meetup:
https://www.meetup.com/humanistcommunity/events/299473144/

Retweet our announcement on the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter:
https://x.com/HumanistCommSV/status/1762697146770604295.

Watch videos of our past Forums: https://vimeo.com/user2798508

Birmingham, 1963: Three Witnesses to the Struggle for Civil Rights

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

11 a.m., February 25, 2024

This Sunday we will watch and discuss a video of businesswoman Mary Bush, University President Freeman Hrabowski, and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, three lifelong friends, as they recount what life was like for Blacks in Jim Crow Alabama in the late 1950s and early ’60s.
In Birmingham, Alabama, 60 years ago, black students, some still in elementary school, marched for an end to segregation. They were met with police dogs, fire hoses, and handcuffs. Today, three people remember those events because they themselves were students there.
You can watch this one-hour panel discussion, recorded on February 7 at the Hoover Institute, at: https://www.hoover.org/research/birmingham-1963-three-witnesses-struggle-civil-rights

———-

This week, you can attend our forum in person with fellow humanists at Maker Nexus, 1330 Orleans Drive, Sunnyvale CA, 94089. (On the first and third Sunday of the month, you can continue to attend our forum at the Mountain View Senior Center.) We may visit a nearby restaurant for lunch after the forum. If you attend in person, COVID protocols will be followed. If you have symptoms that may be COVID, kindly attend on Zoom. Help us make sure we have room for you. If you can join us in person, please email vp@humanists.org to let us know.

———-

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 smartphone, 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.

———-

Add this event to your Google calendar:
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/humanistcommsv/
Visit the Humanist Community web site:
https://www.humanists.org/blog/2024-02-25/
RSVP on Meetup:
https://www.meetup.com/humanistcommunity/events/299385260/
Retweet our announcement on the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter:
https://x.com/HumanistCommSV/status/1761118187687682430.

Watch videos of our past Forums: https://vimeo.com/user2798508