Wednesday, 1/20/16
Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell Street @Van Ness
$8, all ages
Tickets available here
With Auld Lang Syne still reverberating in our ears, the first Nerd Nite SF of 2016 draws nigh. If your New Year’s resolution was to learn new things, meet interesting people, or kill more brain cells with beer then we have the event for you! A scientist will tell you how to replace those brain cells, an insider dishes on D.C., and a third talk to be announced. Plus special guest: The SF Department of Elections! After hearing about behind the scenes of D.C. politics, you’re probably going to want to vote, and these folks will get you registered. Come out for three fascinating talks, plus music, drinks, food, voter registration, and your fellow nerds. Be there and be square!
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“Hype, Hyperbole, and Human Nature: An insider’s tale of working on the front lines of politics” by Jill Stracko
Is working in politics as goosebump-inducing as the West Wing, as dark as House of Cards portrays, or as hormone-laced as Scandal? People come from all kinds of backgrounds to work for elected officials, and their motivations and experiences run the gamut. Come throw back a few and hear about working in the eye of the storm of politics in Washington, D.C.
Jill has worked at Google in Communications since 2011, and before that was in Washington DC where she worked at the White House and in the United States Senate. Jill also owns a (working!) Nintendo 64, loves 80s music, and is a grammar nerd whose love for the Oxford comma will never die.
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“BYOSC: Bring Your Own Stem Cells” by Ramsey Najm
Have you ever wondered how your years of partying and general debauchery have damaged your organs? What if we can do something about all of the damage we have done—and might continue to do—to our brain, liver, and other organs? What if we can extend human life indefinitely? With recent research into stem cell technology and regenerative medicine, we can start asking these kinds of questions. This talk will give you a glimpse into the potential of stem cell based therapies to repair the brain and other tissues damaged by disease, lifestyle, and aging in general—and hopefully by the end you’ll feel slightly more immortal.
Ramsey Najm is a graduate student at the Gladstone Institutes and UCSF. He is studying how to utilize stem cell technology to regenerate cognitive function in Alzheimer’s disease. He suggests that you not waste time trying to save your existing neurons. Just put new ones in.
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“The Fate of the Universe (spoiler: everyone is going to die)” by Jessica Kirkpatrick
Will the universe end in a fiery implosion or expand forever until even the nearest star is too far away for us to see? We’ll learn how cosmologists are determining the fate of the universe using telescope data.
Dr. Jessica Kirkpatrick earned a PhD in Astrophysics from UC Berkeley where she studied some of the most distant and brightest known objects in the universe, quasars, and worked with large and complex data sets. She now works as a Data Scientist for Hired.com. Instead of spending her days finding patterns in the structure of the universe, she spends them finding patterns in the behaviors of people in order to help everyone find the job they love.
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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.
Food: Cross Hatch Eatery serves up delicious hot bao buns!
Plus: The San Francisco Department of Elections will get get you registered to vote, sign up poll workers, and answer all your queries about voting.
Wednesday, 12/16/15
Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell Street @Van Ness
$8, all ages
Tickets available here
Video art, ants, and brain stimulation while under the influence of alcohol sounds like a crazy new modified Ludovico technique, but no, it’s just another Wednesday at Nerd Nite SF! Come out for these three fascinating talks, plus music, drinks, food, librarians, and your fellow nerds. Be there and be square!
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“Headswitch and the Angry Half-Inch: The History, Technology, Art, and Preservation of ½” Open Reel Video” by Kelly Haydon
The first widely popular video format, ½” open reel video was introduced in the late 60s and quickly adopted by artists looking for a new medium and activists looking to hijack TV airwaves. Obsolete for over 40 years and rapidly deteriorating, works on ½” open reel are rarely seen today, though efforts to digitize and preserve the material are ongoing. Learn the short and electric history of ½” open reel video – the technology, the major players, and how preservationists are battling “sticky shed syndrome” and the extinction of deck repair guys. Bonus: a mini-screening of ½” open reel video art.
Kelly Haydon is a video preservationist at Bay Area Video Coalition with a couple of schmancy degrees. She occasionally goes to TRX classes.
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“Ants: The Invisible Majority” by Brian Fisher
Shakespeare once wrote, “Though she be but little, she is fierce.” What they lack in size, ants more than make up for in numbers, and they offer countless behaviors to explore. Ants are Earth’s first farmers and shepherds, they engineer floating pontoons and enslave other ants, and their combined weight actually equals humanity’s. Yet despite all these intriguing facts, we mostly ignore this global community of ants beneath our feet… except when they enter our kitchens uninvited.
Brian Fisher is an ant specialist and Curator of Entomology at the California Academy of Sciences. He discovers and documents global ant diversity for conservation action. Founder of AntWeb.org and discoverer of 1000+ new species (including the vampire, trap jaw, and “cliff-jumping” ant), you can follow his pheromone on Twitter at @ant_explorer!
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“Using Electromagnetic Fields to Overclock Your Brain” by Ted Zanto
Your brain sucks and it’s only getting worse with age. You’re getting pwned by n00bs. You want to crank up your awesome but adderall and cocaine isn’t cutting it anymore. Isn’t there something else you can do? Maybe! Recent years have seen an exponential increase in the use of electromagnetic fields trying to enhance brain function, but should you really zap your brain? This talk will give you the low-down on non-invasive brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Armed with this information, you can decide for yourself!
Ted Zanto is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at UCSF. It is his professional opinion that using electromagnetic fields to overclock your brain is nowhere near as fun as using alcohol to underclock your brain.
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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.
Food: Delicious hot goop between crispy slices of bread, brought to you by the scientist of the sammie, Grilled Cheese Guy.
Plus: The San Francisco Public Library will be on hand to dole out library cards, reading lists, and the hottest branch gossip.
Wednesday, 11/18/2015
Doors at 7 pm, show at 8
Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell Street @Van Ness
$8, all ages
Tickets!
Should you elect to come to Nerd Nite this month, we guarantee – cross our quackish little hearts – that you’ll come away cured of a certain amount of ignorance. Now, isn’t that something to be thankful for? Join a speed obsessive, PR flack, a medical historian, a vinyl-spinner, some bad-ass librarians, the gracious Rickshavians, and your humble co-bosses: Be there and be square!
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“Hypervelocity Launchers: How to Launch a Projectile at 10 Miles/Second? (That’s right, per second!)” by Vincent Tanguay
From bows and arrows to rail guns, man has been perfecting tools to launch projectiles at ever greater speeds for tens of thousands of years. Launching projectiles at hypervelocity is routine today and these launchers are very useful for science. While they have enabled major breakthroughs (think access to space), scientists always need more speed! We’ll discuss what hypervelocity is, its applications, and the various technologies that make it possible. Of course, we’ll talk about their limitations and how to push the frontier of possibilities. Somehow, we’ll manage to include some explosions in there – hopefully we get it right!
Vincent Tanguay, Ph.D., has a background in explosives and detonations and formerly worked as a scientist for a Canadian National Lab. When not busy blowing stuff up, he was developing an explosive-driven hypervelocity launcher.
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“A San Francisco Politicking Primer” by Alex Clemens
As you probably noticed, that election just happened. There’s another one in June, and one more (for President and other stuff!) in November 2016. Our town is undergoing a transformation, which is amazing and wonderful or wretched and incomprehensible, depending on where you stand. Alex will help put San Francisco’s current politics and policies in perspective, take your questions, and probably crash and burn in an overzealous attempt to be funny.
Alex is founder of Barbary Coast Consulting, a media talking head, PR flack, coalition builder, and lobbyist. He also lectures about ethical advocacy at USF, but without a Bulleit Rye in hand (sadly) because accreditation has rules. Ask him to recite “Jabberwocky.”
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“Why be Deaf? The Heyday of Fakes, Frauds, and Fads in Deafness Cures” by Jaipreet Virdi-Dhesi
What’s the difference between a quack with a scheme and a visionary with a theory? A finger in the ear. No, seriously. Finger surgery was one of many unregulated services promising a miraculous cure for hearing loss. Advertisements for galvanic belts or caps, artificial eardrums, vibrating massages, and special diets boasted that even incurable deafness could be corrected. Learn about the colorful history of deafness cures (the holy holies of quackery) and how audacious charlatans thrived by selling worthless courses of treatments or hearing devices, simply because any cure was better than none.
Jai is a historian of medicine based in Toronto who spends nearly all her free time on Twitter sharing images of weird and wacky medical histories.
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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.
Food: Delicious hot goop between crispy slices of bread, brought to you by the scientist of the sammie, Grilled Cheese Guy.
Plus: The San Francisco Public Library will be on hand to dole out library cards, reading lists, and the hottest branch gossip.
Are we alone? You certainly won’t be at Nerd Nite SF, where hundreds of the playfully curious gather every month for lectures, beer, DJ Alpha Bravo, Grilled Cheese Guy, and SFPL librarians! Dr. Som will discuss searching for life in the frontier of space, while Heather Yager tells of scientists of yore in the frontier of the “Wild West”, and Alexander Reben explores the frontier of human robot relations. Be there and be square!
Wednesday, 10/21/2015
Doors at 7 pm, show at 8
Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell St @Van Ness
$8, all ages
Tickets available here!
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“Searching for Life Elsewhere: A discovery of Earth and a glimpse into the value of humanity” by Dr. Sanjoy Som
Astronomers are finding thousands of planets orbiting far away stars. Why are we so keen in discovering them? We’ll discuss the interdisciplinary approach of searching for life beyond Earth, and what it may mean to be human. Geologists, atmospheric scientists and astronomers (among others) work hand in hand to answer one of the most exciting question in science: are we alone?
Dr. Som is a scientist, engineer, and social entrepreneur passionate about space exploration and astrobiology, and how these disciplines can increase STEM awareness and excitement among the public. He founded and the non-profit Blue Marble Space and works at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA.
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“Frontier Myths and Rogue Science in the American West” by Heather Yager
From 1849 to 1852 San Francisco’s population sextupled in size, giving rise to the boomtown that housed the people and places we weave into the stories we tell today: The Gold Rush, the Barbary Coast district, the Vigilance Committees, Emperor Norton. In the midst of myth of the “Wild West,” seven men met and started a science club, formally named the California Academy of Sciences. With manuscripts and objects from the Academy’s archives, we’ll take a look at what it was like to be a practicing scientist in the late 19th century – the “nerds of the frontier” if you will.
Heather Yager is the Head Librarian of the California Academy of Sciences. She has spent the past ten years working in a variety of natural history museums, making science into history and making history into bytes. When not at the museum, she plays the piano.
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“The Robot Filmmaker and Our Relationship with Machines” by Alexander Reben
When you put a camera in a tiny cardboard box, and give it wheels, a cute face, and the ability to ask questions in an innocent child-like voice, something surprising happens: People will open up and share remarkably personal stories that would never otherwise be shared with strangers. A fleet of these were dispatched to record a unique documentary that reveals not just a lot about ourselves, but also how we interact with technology and people are becoming ever more integrated. Using this and other examples, we’ll learn about human-machine relationships, human-robot symbiosis and psychological projection onto technology.
Alexander Reben designs robots and novel interfaces to explore our evolving relationship with technology. Robots in Residence – the documentary shot and directed by robots – was showcased at the Tribeca Film Festival. He is currently the director of technology and research at Stochastic Labs, an incubator for sustainable creative design companies, where he is working on machine ethics and next-generation social robotics. He also is Founder and CEO of BlabDroid, a social robotics company.
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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.
Food: Delicious hot goop between crispy slices of bread, brought to you by the scientist of the sammie, Grilled Cheese Guy.
Plus: The San Francisco Public Library will be on hand to dole out library cards, reading lists, and the hottest branch gossip.
Wednesday, 9/16/15
Doors at 7, show at 8
Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell Street @Van Ness
$8, all ages
SOLD OUT – a limited number of tickets may be available at the door
When your underwire is pinching, Dothraki hasn’t made it to Duolingo, and reality is getting a little too actual: Don’t despair! Tikh hazze akka tikh square! Guest MC Kishore Hari–director of the Bay Area Science Festival and 3-time NNSF alumnus/pinch-hitter–will preside over a night of untold wonders, unfettered beer taps, undaunted disc jockeyism, and unusually delicious grub.
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“The VR Minute” by Norman Chan and Will Smith of Tested
“Why Klingon, Elvish, and Dothraki Should Be Considered Real Languages” by Trace Dominguez of DNews & TestTube & more
“The Ridiculously Complex World of Bra Sizing” by Sarah Harrison
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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
Plus: You’ll be able to don some headsets and enjoy VR demos by STEAM Carnival!
UPDATE in the days after: Whoa, that was a good show! Here are some links for your further delectation:
The VR Minute
Tested’s Flight on Birdly
Tested review of HTV Vive
Tiltbrush from Google
The Verge’s history of VR
Invented Languages from Trace Dominguez
DNews
David Peterson’s Constructed Languages
Learn Dothraki
The Klingon Hamlet
Bra Sizing from Sarah Harrison
Sarah’s UX site
A Revelation in Fit (Oakland Bra Shop)
History of Bras (National Geographic)
Steam Carnival
Event 11/6-8
Two Bit Circus
Tag your clown nose photos @SteamCarnival
Hangovers and regrets are the things we, your humble Nerd Nite hosts, associate most with absinthe and the conquest of the Western frontier. You won’t have any regrets about these talks, however! No promises about the hangover, though. Join us for these two talks, plus one more TBA, and plenty of beer, music, librarians, and the company of hundreds of other nerds. Be there and be square!
UPDATE: The third talk is no longer TBA!
Wednesday, 8/19/2015
Doors at 7 pm, show at 8
Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell St @Van Ness
$8, all ages
Tickets available here!
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“Absinthe-Minded: Exploring the Science Behind History’s Most Notorious Beverage” by Kat Powell
“Frontier Myths and Rogue Science in the American West” by Heather Yager
“Don’t Cook Your Balls and Other Stuff You Should Have Learned in Sex Ed” by Sara Naab
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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.
Plus: The San Francisco Public Library will be on hand to dole out library cards, reading lists, and the hottest branch gossip.