Editor's note: Craig Spence has generously offered to contribute some posts to our blog. He submitted the following as his introduction. ~Ian

Writing is my way of understanding, it’s a vocation, in other words, a part of who I am. So I have built my career – my peculiar contribution to society – around writing. If I could, I would have been among the world’s most popular novelists, and spent my life intensely engaged in speculative fiction of one sort or another. Being ‘successful’ as a creative writer is still my goal. But the necessities of living, and contributing to a family, have taken precedence for the last 30 years. So I have followed my passion in other forms: for 15 years as a community journalist; and another 15 as communications manager with a large, urban school district. More recently I am back behind the editor’s desk at the Ladysmith-Chemainus Chronicle, a small weekly on Vancouver Island. Along the way I have written five novels, had two published, and have plans for at least five more works of fiction, if my health holds out.

The other weekend, my wife and I cantered the 400-odd kilometres from Lethbridge to Calgary and back to attend a forum organized by St Andrew’s Church on the subject of physician-assisted dying. A learned panel of speakers had been assembled consisting of two physicians, one of whom was also an Alberta MLA, two lawyers, a priest and an Edmonton chapter member of Dying With Dignity Canada. The whole affair was moderated by an emeritus professor, who suffered from moderately severe logorrhea.

By Tara Martin, CSIRO and James Watson, The University of Queensland

When we think about adapting humanity to the challenges of climate change, it’s tempting to reach for technological solutions. We talk about seeding our oceans and clouds with compounds designed to trigger rain or increasing carbon uptake. We talk about building grand structures to protect our coastlines from rising sea levels and storm surges.

However, as we discuss in Nature Climate Change, our focus on these high-tech, heavily engineered solutions is blinding us to a much easier, cheaper, simpler and better solution to adaptation: look after our planet’s ecosystems, and they will look after us.

On Sunday, February 14, 2016, Dr Ahmed Hussein, a professor of nuclear physics and a visiting scientist at TRIUMF and Los Alamos National Laboratory, spoke to 38 of us on the next generation of nuclear power plants based on thorium fluid fuel. A lively but short discussion followed Dr Hussein's detailed explanation of how nuclear power is better than coal and how the dual fluid fuel fission reactor his group had designed is the next big step forward in nuclear power. He claims it to be much safer, much cheaper to build and operate, and best of all, it is able to reuse radioactive waste from current generations of nuclear reactors as part of its fuel.

By Benjamin Purzycki, University of British Columbia

For the bulk of our evolutionary history, human groups were small, tightly knit communities. Only quite recently, some human groups started evolving into the large-scale societies with vast interconnected trade networks we know today. Urban areas in Mesopotamia, for example, developed around 5,000 years ago. Whether trading or purchasing goods online, many people all over the world now interact with multitudes of anonymous people on a regular basis. How did this dramatic growth happen?

Editor's note: While this article deals primarily with conscientious objections by American pharmacists, similar arguments have been and are being made today in British Columbia and across Canada. This is particularly relevant in relation to the current debate over whether to permit doctors, pharmacists and health care institutions to opt-out of providing physician-assisted dying in Canada. The BC Humanist Association has called called on policymakers to prioritize guaranteed access over giving doctors and institutions an opt-out of doing their duty.

This article was originally published on TheHumanist.com.

By Luis Granados

I drink a fair amount of wine, much of which I purchase at my local convenience store. Suppose I show up there one day and find the wine section replaced by something less pleasant, like detergent. I complain to the owner, who tells me she just doesn’t feel like selling wine anymore or that she thought she could make more money selling detergent instead. I’d be a little miffed, but that’s the way the free market works.

Suppose instead she told me she’d just converted to Islam, or Mormonism, and that’s why she no longer sold alcohol. I’d be even more unhappy (not proud to admit that, but it’s true), but my grumbling wouldn’t extend as far as “There ought to be a law…” I’d just go somewhere else, most likely for all my non-alcohol purchases as well.

Today’s question is: should the same thinking apply to pharmacies? It’s a highly relevant question, because a case involving pharmacists’ right to refuse to fill prescriptions has just been petitioned to review by the Supreme Court.

Unfortunately our scheduled speaker was unwell this week so on Sunday, February 7, 2016, a group of 36 of us watched a video of Jared Diamond speaking about the ideas in his new book, The World Until Yesterday. Diamond (who was just named the 2016 Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association) argues that there is a lot we can learn about risk, raising children and more by studying traditional societies.

We hope to reschedule Dr Samir Gandesha's talk on terrorism and nihilism at a later date when he's recovered.

By Andrew Jackson, Newcastle University

In a 1978 essay, titled Where Am I?, the philosopher Daniel Dennett suggested that the brain was the only organ of which it’s better to be a transplant donor than recipient. Now Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero wants to turn philosophical thought experiments into reality by transplanting the head of Valery Spiridonov, who suffers from a debilitating muscle wasting disease, onto the healthy body of a dead donor.

Beside posing questions about personal identity, there are more prosaic challenges that must first be overcome. The brain would have to be kept alive during surgery by cooling it to 10-15°C, and the immune system would need to be powerfully suppressed to prevent transplant rejection. But the greatest hurdle may be how to restore connections to the spinal cord. Without this connection the brain would have no control of its new body.

On Sunday, January 31, 2016, Cherise Louie of Canadian Blood Services spoke to 35 of us on the value of donating blood, as well as their new initiatives, One Match for bone marrow and stem cell donations and cord blood donations. Read more about how, starting in February, we will be hosting regular blood donation sessions in Vancouver.

Take god out of anthem

Today the BC Humanist Association and Centre for Inquiry Canada wrote to Liberal MP Mauril Bélanger asking for God to be taken out of O Canada. Last week Bélanger tabled a private member's bill to make the national anthem gender neutral. Read the letter.

Symbols like the national anthem may not have a great effect on the day to day lives of most atheists but they matter nonetheless.

People have asked me why, as a Humanist, I'm involved in the interfaith events and why I think the BC Humanists should be involved in the interfaith movement in general. After all, what are a bunch of non-believers doing associating with religionists?

There are a few reasons why I believe it is important that we take part in interfaith activities. It helps to boost our name in the larger community. It allows people of faith to learn about us. And it is one way of showing the world and each other that we care for our fellow humans and are able to put differences of worldview aside in order to accomplish a greater good.