Wednesday, 9/17/2014
Doors at 7 pm, show at 8
Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell St. @Van Ness
$8, all ages
Tickets available here!
My, oh my, the things we will see! Infantapulting, dragonflies, and the body! Come learn the “science” behind launching a baby, the real science of dragonflies and their ecology, and the things you don’t want to know (but should!) about human biology. So come and drink beer, and laugh till you pee, at San Francisco’s best bar university.
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“Weinersmith’s Infantapaulting Hypothesis: Infant Aerodynamics as Evolutionary Adaptation” by Zach Weinersmith
In 2012, soon-to-be-father Zach pondered why babies are shaped like footballs and have more bendable bones than adults, theorizing that our human ancestors catapulted their infants into neighboring villages for gene dispersal. In 2013, Zach published his landmark hypothesis, which has incredible explanatory power for infant morphology, to tremendous acclaim.
Zach is the creator of the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal webcomic. His hypothesis spawned BAHFest – the Festival of Bad Ad Hoc Hypotheses – coming to the Castro Theatre on October 25th as part of the Bay Area Science Festival. BAHFest is a celebration of well-argued and thoroughly researched but completely incorrect evolutionary theory.
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“Through the Dragon’s Eye: Sex, Evolution and Extinction in one of the Oldest Insect Orders” by Christopher Beatty
Dragonflies are amongst the oldest extant insect groups, first appearing in the fossil record over 300 million years ago, and persisting relatively unchanged to the modern day. The unique ecology and behavior of these organisms have made them a model system for research in evolutionary biology. This talk will explore the ecology, reproduction and life history of this group, and also review recent research on the ‘petaltail’ dragonflies, a group of species that have persisted since the Mesozoic.
Chris is an evolutionary ecologist working on behavior, speciation and biogeography. His work on dragonflies has taken him to Spain, Peru, Kenya and the Fiji Islands. For the past five years he has taught ecology at Santa Clara University.
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“A Guide to Underappreciated Parts of the Human Body (or, Why Scrotums are Cool)” by Dani Behonick, Ph.D
Students often enter anatomy and physiology courses eager to learn the structure and function of brain, the skeletal muscles or the immune system. Rare is the individual who would wax poetic on the undercarriage. Join A&P professor Dani Behonick as she makes an argument for why, like fezzes and bowties, scrotums are totally cool.
After earning her Ph.D from UCSF, Dani Behonick ran like hell from basic research and began her teaching career. She currently spends half of her time teaching pre-health students how the human body works and how to talk to their future health care patients, and the other half teaching non-science majors how the human body works and how to talk to their health care providers. When she’s not teaching she’s reading educational code or lifting heavy things (on purpose).
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With: Alpha Bravo, who’ll be spinning tunes specially selected to match the presenters’ themes. Follow the setlist on Twitter @djalphabravo.
And delicious tamales provided by Alicia’s Tamales Los Mayas.