atheist adventures pt 1

yesterday:  We were ready to go to the PZ Myers talk, but the babysitter called to say she was late.  We only had 30 minutes to get to the train station.  Well... we got there late and had to end up paying another set of tickets.  And it's not even normal ticket price of 16 pounds, it was like 50 pounds...  Well ok, we were frustrated but at least we got on the train and got to London.  In London we walked to the conference room and saw some street art on the way.  Looking out for street art is definitely a new hobby, love it.  Got to the talk, and started feeling uneasy with their atheism introduction, sounded a bit dogmatic.  I was a bit distressed, but then PZ Myers came out and he was awesome, funny and informative.  Walked back, ended up with 45 minutes to spare before the train.  Success.

today: The babysitter assured us that she was going to be here on time and she was.  So this time, the 30 minutes was enough time to get to the train station.  So far, so good.  Ate on the bus, read, which is a privilege when you have a kid...  Got there with not much time left to get there, started doing the whole walking super fast thing.  Of course, google and with its misdirections... why must you fail me, google?!  But we got there in time, we made our way into some seats and started looking around and just checking out the space.  It was an auditorium.  Suddenly, we see people trying to block the doors.  What's going on?  People start storming in and chanting 'shame on dawkins..something something.'  I was like what? creationists? or what?  They didn't have posters, so it was really hard to know what they were protesting.  Anyway, they made themselves comfortable in the stage, yelling their chants.  I was like WTH, I don't have time for this, I have to catch a train, this cannot be delayed!  They wouldn't leave.  The security and police wouldn't persuade them.  Apparently here police doesn't ram into protesters, I was kinda in awe at that.  After ten minutes or so, I started figuring out that they are upset about the tuition costs.  What does this have to do with Dawkins?  NOTHING!  WTF is their problem.  Yes, Dawkins just agreed to participate in a private college, but how is he, a biology professor, going to change the laws to appropriate taxes into tuition funds for all.  How?  These people were not reasoning.  I was all for their cause which was free education for all, but man, their tactics are illogical...  They remained in the room for quite a while, 20 minutes after it was supposed to start, the police backups came and walked them out.  Finally, it started, and then one of protesters yelled out something about Dawkins being greedy.  Dawkins was clearly about to lose it, in a very stern voice as the police was walking that protester out, he said 'Every penny I make from lectures goes into charity.'  He is great.  Dawkins and Myers talked about biology/atheist interesting stuff.  More protestors got thrown out.  Then they cut short to go to the Q&A part.  Interesting discussions arose.  As they were about to say goodbye, another protester walks up to the microphone and starts telling him to support the fight for free education.  This time the protestor was not rude, so Dawkins was calm and stated that he does support that, and votes for political parties that support those ideas.  'Who paid for your education professor?' and then the organizer said that was enough.  We looked at the clock, only 28 minutes until our train leaves, we started running to the tube station, got there, a transfer, and got to the train station only to see our train leaving.  So we got on another train to Colchester expecting someone to check the tickets midway and make us pay again (and way more).  The whole train ride I was expecting to be thrown out of the train, or fined or something.  And it didn't help things that the train was packed, so I felt guilty taking two seats.  They didn't check our tickets.  In the train stations they always check your tickets on your way out of the station, so I was fairly scared.  But they didn't.  Got home.  Crazy, success.

More details to be added on the foreigners blog in a later post. :)