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Death Care Options:
Your Rights, Your Choices, Their Impacts

Deborah Meckler – President, Funeral Consumers Alliance

February 3, 2013

Deborah Meckler is President of the Funeral Consumers Alliance of San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. The Alliance is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping people find meaningful, dignified and affordable death care for themselves and their loved ones. Besides leading the Alliance, Deborah is also actively working to make ‘green burial’ an option on the San Francisco peninsula. She has a B.S. degree in natural resources management and has worked as a land steward and as an environmental consultant.

Green burial is a topic that some members will be acquainted with and others may know nothing about. To quote from the Funeral Consumers Alliance website, ‘Green burial is a way to return human remains directly to the earth so that they will biodegrade naturally and become soil. It is a way to deal with human remains with as little resource use, energy use, and land disturbance as possible’.

Please come and learn more about this important, environmentally sound option for dealing with the final disposition of human remains, with the dual benefits of keeping pollutants out of the soil and, at the same time, helping to preserve open space in a near-natural state.

More information about green burial and the Funeral Consumers Alliance is available at www.fcapeninsula.org/.

Slides of the presentation are available. You may also view the notes by clicking on the blurb in the upper left-hand corner of each slide. This presentation with the notes contains considerable, valuable research information.

Deborah also recommended two books on the subject of funerals: The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh and The American Way of Death Revisited by Jessica Mitford.

Humanist Community Forum (2013-02-03): Death Care Options: Your Rights, Your Choices, Their Impacts (Deborah Meckler) from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.

Designing Your Own Secular Spirituality

Manuel Manga

January 27, 2013

The concept and experience of spirituality does not have to have a religious connotation. Human beings need an explanation of their cosmic journey, and a story of human evolution that gives meaning to their lives. A science based explanation and story is in need to be told and to be enriched by the diversity of our human diversity and cultures.

In this presentation spirituality will be defined as a naturalistic, scientific, ethical, philosophical, secular process that can enlarge your sense of self, participation and meaning in life.

Given that humanity is facing an evolutionary crisis, we each need to create a sense of purpose and meaning that not only enriches our lives but also contributes toward the transformation of our evolutionary crisis.

Slides for this outstanding presentation are available here.

Manuel is the director of the Center for Evolutionary Leadership, which develops leaders for building a just, flourishing, and sustainable world. He is also a leadership coach and organizational consultant.

Center for Evolutionary Leadership: www.evolutionleader.com. “Homo sapiens-ethicus evolutivo: being ethical & choosing to bring forth relational systems that are loving, just, flourishing, & sustainable.”

Humanist Community Forum (2013-01-27): Designing Your Own Secular Spirituality (Manuel Manga) from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.

Leonardo and Steve:
The Young Genius Who Beat
Apple to Market by 800 Years

Dr. Keith Devlin

January 20, 2013

The first personal computing revolution took place not in Silicon Valley in the 1980s but in Pisa in the 13th Century. The medieval counterpart to Steve Jobs was a young Italian called Leonardo, better known today by the nickname Fibonacci. Thanks to a recently discovered manuscript in a library in Florence, the story of how this little known genius came to launch the modern commercial world can now be told. Dr. Keith Devlin (Executive Director, H-STAR Institute, Stanford University) will present this talk which will be based on his latest book The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci’s Arithmetical Revolution (Walker & Co, July 2011), and his co-published companion e-book Leonardo and Steve: The Young Genius Who Beat Apple to Market by 800 Years.

Slides from this presentation are available here.

Dr. Keith Devlin, also presented the Forum “Which Flawed Voting System Do You Support?” in 2012.

Humanist Community Forum (2013-01-20) – Leonardo and Steve: The Young Genius Who Beat Apple to Market by 800 Years from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.

Brother Sam in Silicon Valley

Brother Sam

Sam Singleton, Atheist Evangelist

(Roger Scott Jackson)

January 13, 2013

Sam Singleton, Atheist Evangelist: Writer-actor Roger Scott Jackson’s satiric Sam Singleton is a comedic character, not a comedian. His shows are best described as one-person theater pieces with audience participation. The 2012 premiere of Cats, Sheep and Goats: The Taxonomy of Atheists, Believers and Preachers marks his fifth work in as many years.

Those with strong views on the existence or nonexistence of God may see what Brother Sam does as activism, though he insists that his aim is simply to get some stuff off his chest. He says, “Somebody else, who had to deal with snake- handling tongues-speakers as a child, might become a homicidal maniac or a teacher at a Bible College. I talk to the world’s most astute ticket-buyers.”

For more information check the web site:

http://www.samsingleton.com/About.html.

Unfaithful Men in History
(Men who abuse their spouses,
or Men who cheat)

Ken Abraham

January 6, 2013

Exploration of various characters in history and fiction who feel guiltless in their treatment of women including the English King Henry VIII, the actor Errol Flynn and Ovid, a Roman poet who glorified the abuse of women. The talk was followed by many and varied comments from the Humanist Community. The only common theme seemed to be that women, and in fact all of us, would benefit from a better balance between women and men of both economic and social power.

Humanist Community Forum (2013-01-06): Unfaithful Men in History (Ken Abraham) from Humanist Community-SiliconValley on Vimeo.