Young Australian Skeptics

So, my unintentional quest to meet everyone involved in this site continued today when I met Joel Birch, who I somewhat stupidly hadn’t figured out was actually one of the people involved in keeping this website going. Oops. I owed him a coffee for correctly guessing the last Rock Prophecy haiku. For those who missed it:

We had a good chat about all things skeptical (including the event on Saturday which you must all attend), before heading off in our separate directions.

My direction, as things turned out, was rather interesting.

Halfway to the library, I was approached by a man who asked me if I was a student at the university. He introduced himself and explained that he was — wait for it — a monk with the Hare Krishnas! He was there to hand out books in exchange for a small suggested donation to cover printing costs — I really wanted a big hardcover book he had with him, but the suggested donation was $10 (which I didn’t have in cash), so instead for $2 I got a thinner paperback book called Elevation to Krsna Consciousness — from the blurb:

“Krsna Consciousness is not an artificial imposition on the mind. This consciousness is the original actual energy of the living entity. In the material concept of life we are busy in the matter of sense gratification as if we were in the lower animal stage. Herein Srila Prabhupada discusses the step by step process of reviving our original peaceful and happy condition.”

I’m as excited as a teenager in a liquor store about reading that one, and because it’s so small I may do so before I get around to the Ray Comfort book. We’ll see.

I was derailed again on my way to the library, this time by the sale currently on in the university bookstore. Here, I was sucked in to buying a number of books I probably wouldn’t have even known about otherwise:

• Black Markets — about the international market for human body parts.
• Early Cold War Spies — pretty self explanatory.
• The Philosophy of The X-​​Files - I can’t keep myself away from these pop-​​philosophy books…and I do love the X-​​Files.
• Encyclopedia of the Negro — This one fascinated me. It’s a 1946 prospectus for an evidently never realised ‘Encyclopedia of the Negro’. Contains the prospectus, which takes the form of a proposed layout with an indexed bibliography to pre-​​1945 sources on African, African-​​American and African Diasporic history, as well as two sample articles.
• The First Way of War — about the early American wars and how it shaped American military heritage. Looks at early conflicts with Eastern Seaboard Indians through to the conquest of the Transappalacian West. Should be interesting.

After my purchases, I thought that’d be it for interruptions and that I’d be on my way to the library…but it wasn’t to be. Outside the library, a uni bible study group was signing up interested parties and had some literature to give out…so naturally, I had to take some. One of the guys on the booth saw me browsing the literature and came over for a chat — I’m fairly non-​​confrontational most of the time so I had a brief chat with him during which he gave me a DVD to watch about the fulfillment of the prophecies of Daniel, and how they establish the validity of the bible. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to watching them.

Watch this space, people. I got information overload today, and it’s gotta get out of my brain somehow!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Richard Hughes, Skeptic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.