Wednesday, 9/21
Doors at 7:30, show at 8
Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell Street @Van Ness
$8
All ages
Facebook event
Beer! The city! Tiny, intricate spaceships that get blown up! Name something cool and we gotcher nerds who’ll learn you all about it. September brings back-to-school back-to-stage and back-to-the-bar, as we meet, mingle, and nod our heads to the beat of obscure records–oh, and also hear from experts on practical special effects, the history of your favorite frothy beverage, and the urban land- and mindscape. Be there and be square!
————————
“Practical Special Effects: Livin’ Large in Miniature” by Fon Davis
Fon may appear to be a grown man who plays with toys–and he is–but he has also built models and props for movies for over 20 years, from The Nightmare Before Christmas to the Star Wars series. While computer-generated effects have snagged all the headlines in recent years, practical effects are often the best approach for some visual effects challenges, especially if you want something to blow up, burn, or shatter. Nothing looks more realistic than actual explosions, fires, and crashes! Yeah, in this industry, it’s best if you don’t get too attached to your work. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at practical effects in movies and the role they will play in the future.
Davis is a visual effects veteran with over 20 years of experience, having worked on such films as the Star Wars prequels. He had nothing to do with Jar-Jar, so please don’t blame him. Fon runs his own shop, Fonco Creative, is the creator of MORAV and has just released a DVD on professional model-making called Introduction to Professional Model Making with Fon Davis.
————————
“Worth Its Weight in Gold: A History of Beer” by Yug Varma
While most of us imbibe beer in all its forms frequently and freely, few of us stop to consider the sheer weight of history that has molded beer into its present form. Beer, in turn, has molded history as well, from its ancient origins in times shrouded in mystery, through war and peace, celebrated and persecuted in equal measure: Its story is as riveting as it is long. Beer also figures prominently in many events in American history, such as shaping the migration of early American settlers, and from the War of Independence to witchcraft. Yug takes us through a woefully short but delightfully twisting journey through the history of the world’s favorite alcoholic beverage.
Varma is a postdoc in the Fischbach lab at UCSF, where he studies the human microbiome and the consequences of its interactions with the human body. An avid cook, homebrewer and cocktail enthusiast, he loves to salsa and travel. When he’s not stuffing his face, he will speak to you with a fake accent and inundate you with a torrent of trivia.
————————
“Urbanism: 1,000 Years of Error, Accident, and Serendipity” by Benjamin Grant
From Jerusalem to Black Rock City, urbanism has always had a central place in the human imagination. Cities are real physical and organic phenomena, with pressing problems like traffic, disease, and conflict. But cities are also the arena for our aspirations, fears, and hare-brained schemes, appearing continually in art, film, and literature. Utopian visions often come with vivid urban plans, as if we can’t imagine reforming ourselves without reforming built space. Real cities are shaped by the messy collision of these practical and imaginative impulses, and become living artifacts of our culture and consciousness. Urban designer, curator, and writer Benjamin Grant will examine some of the most interesting, illuminating, and preposterous episodes in the history of urban form, asking, among other things: Straight or curvy? Were things better back then? Where are our personal hovercrafts? Skyscrapers: the disease or the cure?
Grant is SPUR‘s Urban Design and Public Realm Program Manager, and an urban form nerd. He has curated numerous exhibitions both at the SPUR Urban Center and with city/space, a nonprofit he co-founded in 2001. He has taught courses in urban design and the history of urban form at San Jose State University and the San Francisco Art Institute and has worked on a wide variety of planning and urban design projects for public and private clients, including an ongoing master plan for San Francisco’s Ocean Beach.
————————
Plus: DJ Alpha Bravo selects vinyl cuts to illuminate our presenters’ themes. Alpha Bravo is VP of left-field pop label, Radio Khartoum, and was one of the forces behind legendary SF pop-club nights, Anisette and Schokolade.
Wednesday, 8/17
Doors at 7:30, show at 8
Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell St @Van Ness
$8
All ages
Facebook event
Chocolate, wine, and white blood cells: three wondrous substances that make life worth living–or possible at all! Lucky for us there are serious nerds out there who have pledged themselves to exploring how to make them better, or better understood. And Nerd Nite SF will have these nerds live, onstage, for you to marvel at, cross-examine, and play drinking games with! A technology designer demos a cross-reality chocolate factory; a winery architect plunges us into high-tech booze bunkers; and a cell migration researcher takes us on safari with the ruthless, yet elegant, microbe hunters: neutrophils. Be there and be square!
—————-
“Serious Games: FXPAL and the Virtual Chocolate Factory” by Maribeth Back
Willy Wonka has nothing on this! The Virtual Chocolate Factory is a research project at the FX Palo Alto Laboratory (FXPAL) that uses high-end game engines to investigate practical uses of virtual, mobile, and mixed-reality systems in industrial settings. FXPAL is building mirror-world representations of TCHO–a real-world chocolate-maker start-up in San Francisco–by importing real-time sensor data into a cross-reality environment for simulation, visualization, and collaboration. An FXPAL senior research scientist will demo the Virtual Chocolate Factory 3D world and its iPhone app. Oompa Loompas not included.
Maribeth is a technology researcher/designer who builds real-world, socially informed, exploratory applications for new technologies. Her research areas include smart environments, applied ubiquitous computing, mixed reality interfaces, and sound design and audio engineering. She completed her doctorate at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and spent more than five years in ubiquitous computing research at Xerox PARC.
—————-
“Calibrating Fermentation in Dr. No’s Lair” by Matt Hollis
Secret complexes buried beneath an innocent-seeming hillside. Stainless steel cauldrons containing one of the world’s most treasured commodities. High-tech laboratories in search of the perfect formula for wealth and fame. What is this, a James Bond movie? Some kind of mad science? No! This is the unknown world of winery architecture! Architect Matt Hollis will give you a crash course on the surprisingly complex, and occasionally odd, province of winery-building.
Matt is an avid surfer and San Francisco native from a family of artistic wine devotees. As principal of MH Architects and consultant to other architects, he has contributed to the design and construction of over 20 different wineries in the last 10 years. When he’s not designing wineries or drinking their output, he watches old James Bond movies with his family.
—————-
“Neutrophils: Microbe Hunters That Make Waves” by Sheel Dandekar
Neutrophils are one of the first immune cells to reach sites of infection in the body, where they pursue and quickly engulf foreign invaders like bacteria. With only the tiniest whiff of scent, they are able to dodge obstacles while relentlessly tracking down their prey. We’ll watch a National Geographic-style chase scene, and discuss a protein that displays beautiful patterns inside these cells that a UCSF lab believes is the key to understanding how they hunt.
Sheel is a biophysics grad student in the Weiner Lab at UCSF, where he works on developing new tools for studying cell migration. He spends most of his days taking movies of cells eating things, and most of his nights looking for good things to eat.
—————-
Plus: DJ Alpha Bravo wielding slabs of vinyl and tweeting a real-time playlist. Alpha Bravo is VP of left-field pop label, Radio Khartoum, and was one of the forces behind legendary SF pop-club nights, Anisette and Schokolade.
Wednesday, 7/20
Doors at 7:30, show at 8
Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell St @ Van Ness
$8
All ages
Facebook event
Here in San Francisco, July is NOT the month for chasing ice cream trucks, running around in sprinklers, and wearing cut-offs and tank tops. No, it is the month of advection fog. And we like it that way! But don’t let the fog roll into your brain; come check out three talks that are guaranteed to get you hot, a little bothered, and a lot smarter! A history buff recounts all the good stuff your teacher left out of the ancient Rome lesson, an aquatic biologist talks “ceph sex,” and a pest-control pundit explains how not to let the bed bugs bite. Be there and be square at your friendly, neighborhood nerdy-lecture-series-in-a-bar!
—————————-
“Hail Caesar!: The DOs and DON’Ts of Roman Dictatorship” by Caleb Bushner
Take a tour of the history, customs, and culture of the ancient Romans: who they were, what they accomplished, and how they shaped our modern world. And, of course, their murderous and dysfunctional political system that somehow endured for several centuries. There WILL be an assassination drinking game!
Caleb is an amateur Roman history buff and a professional nerd. He’s spent the past two years studying Rome, geeking out on primary source material and peer-reviewed scholarship, and wants to share the exciting stuff, while sparing you the trouble of all those paper cuts from old books.
—————————-
“Boneless Sex: How Cephalopods Make Sweet, Sweet Love” by Richard Ross
Octopus, cuttlefish, nautilus, and squid are not just smart, not just masters of camouflage, but also masters of reproduction! This talk, which amounts to ceph porn, is packed with dirty pictures and dirty video of your favorite 8-armed animals in various stages of dirty relations, from the deed itself to “birth.”
Richard works as an aquatic biologist at the Steinhart Aquarium in the California Academy of Sciences, maintaining many exhibits – including the 212,000-gallon Philippine Coral Reef – and caring for many cephalopods. An avid underwater videographer who has scuba dived all over the world, he enjoys spending time with his patient wife, his incredible daughter, and their menagerie of animals, both wet and dry.
—————————-
“Do You Know Who You’re Going to Bed With? Protecting Yourself From Bed Bugs in the Modern Era” by Brittany Clark
It’s the dead of night. You’re curled up snug in your bed, sound asleep. But wait! Dramatic music swells and an ominous figure appears at your bedside. The audience screams, but you slumber on, blissfully unaware as this creature leans in to consume your blood. Even in the recesses of sleep, you feel something. You stir and waken. The beast quickly retreats, but you don’t have to see it to know the horror that has come to you. You have just been bitten…by a bed bug! Despite the fact that we have lived with bed bugs since the first caveman threw down some animal hides and curled up for a nap, most of us have only ever heard of them in nursery rhymes and media horror stories. What are the real dangers of bed bugs and how can we protect ourselves?
Brittany is a licensed field representative and bed bug specialist for Pestec Integrated Pest Management company in San Francisco. She has a B.S. in psychobiology from the University of New England. She’s a Leo who likes long walks on the beach, dogs, and protecting her bed from parasites.
—————————-
Plus: DJ Alpha Bravo wielding slabs of vinyl and tweeting all about it. Alpha Bravo is VP of left-field pop label, Radio Khartoum, and was one of the forces behind legendary SF pop-club nights, Anisette and Schokolade.
Wednesday, 6/15
Doors at 7:30, show at 8
Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell St @ Van Ness
$8
Facebook event
School may be out for the summer, but we’re not! And what true nerd ever looked forward to summer vacation, anyway? This month’s Nite is a total dork fantasyland: bizarre guitars, 192 giant laser beams, and The Simpsons teaching science. Be there or be square!
—————-
“Strum und Twang: A Brief History of the Guitar and Its Cousins” by Brian Davis
Most Americans have at least picked out a few chords on guitar, and all of us have enjoyed some of its diverse repertoire. But few people know the names of any great balalaika or lute player, so I ask you: “Why guitar?” Surely the guitar is not nearly as easy to play as the ukulele nor as sexy as the theorbo. This talk will attempt to cover the 4,000-year history of the guitar and its cousins, and what the guitar’s dominance means for the future of music.
Brian Davis is a game designer and amateur luthier whose work focuses on the modernization of early musical instruments. His completed instruments include a fretless bass mandola, electric Irish bouzouki, multi-scale firebird mandolin, and many other bizarre creations. If you are plagued by the question, “What would Bach sound like on electric lute?” or “Can you make black metal using only American folk instruments?” you should talk to this guy.
—————-
“Science in The Simpsons“ by Kishore Hari
“Ah, there’s nothing more exciting than science. You get all the fun of sitting still, being quiet, writing down numbers, paying attention… Science has it all.” – Principal Seymour Skinner. All those hours watching The Simpsons were not in vain! We’ll take a look at all the science those beloved characters have taught us over the past 22 years: genetic engineering, time travel, artificial intelligence, extraterrestrials, quantum physics, and more. And yes, in this talk we will definitely obey the laws of thermodynamics.
Kishore Hari is the director of the first-ever Bay Area Science Festival, led by UCSF. In a former life, he was an environmental chemist, but currently spends a majority of his time researching the combined impact of late-night cartoons and beer on the human brain and his marriage.
—————-
“Building a Star on Earth: The National Ignition Facility” by John Post and Tim Frazier
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is the world’s largest and highest-energy laser. Like, 192 giant lasers housed in a ten-story building the size of three football fields, capable of delivering 50 times more energy than any previous laser system. Just the sort of thing we need to blow up Alderaan and crush the Rebellion forever, right? But the NIF also has the goal of being the first to achieve laboratory-based, self-sustaining nuclear fusion–the process that powers the sun and the stars! John Post and Tim Frazier will guide us through the NIF’s achievement so far–a major step toward developing inertial fusion energy as a clean, safe and virtually unlimited energy source for the future.
John Post is an assistant principal associate director for the National Ignition Facility (NIF)/Photon Sciences Directorate organization at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in Livermore, California. John’s primary area of responsibility is strategic management systems, with a focus on project management.
Tim Frazier leads the Information Technology (IT) organization for the NIF and Photon Science Principal Associate Directorate (PAD) at LLNL. Prior to leading IT, Tim co-led NIF’s Shot Data Systems (SDS) organization. Both John and Tim seem to suffer from “abbreviate everything syndrome” (AES).
—————-
And, of course: DJ Alpha Bravo turntabling and tweeting away.
—————-
Wednesday, 5/18
Doors at 7:30, show at 8
Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell St @Van Ness
$8
Facebook event
Wait — we’ve been nerding it up in San Francisco for a year now? My, how time flies when you’re having fun! Come help us celebrate the first birthday of the best booze-addled, 3rd-Wednesday lecture series around, and get ready to have your mind blown, bent, and otherwise overhauled by a trio of presentationists holding forth on: the history and future of every nerd’s favorite museum companion, the audio guide; how sleight of brain makes for sleight of hand; and memory’s irksome tendency to obfuscate. Be there and be square!
—————–
“This Audio Guide Goes to 11: How Audio Guides are Getting Cool — No, Really” by Michael Epstein
The history of audio guides is rife with stories of Dutch hearing-impaired headset hijackers, teaching Tut to talk 3,300 years after his death, and brave experiments in isolation chambers. But the best in audio guide history is happening right now. Smartphones are unleashing increasingly vast, interactive, and narratively sophisticated projects. See, hear, touch, and taste the history and future of audio guides.
Michael is fascinated by the storytelling potential of mobile devices. At MIT he got his Master’s in Comparative Media Studies, specializing in prototypes of new literary forms on mobile devices. He now runs Untravel Media (www.untravelmedia.com), a software and production studio specializing in mobile narrative apps for museums, broadcast, and educational institutions.
—————–
“The Science of Magic” by Luigi Anzivino
From ancient conjurers to quick-handed con artists, to big-ticket Las Vegas illusionists, magicians throughout the ages have been expertly manipulating attention and perception to dazzle and delight us. Of course you know that the phenomena of cognitive and sensory illusions are responsible for the “magic” of a magic trick—so why does it still work? Luigi Anzivino will explain how magicians exploit our brains’ loopholes as their accomplices in effecting the impossible and what scientists can learn about the brain by studying the methods and techniques of magic.
In a previous life, Luigi earned a Ph.D. in neuroscience, researching the brain’s reward and attentional mechanisms. Currently, he designs hands-on, “playful and inventive explorations” at the Exploratorium, San Francisco’s museum of art, science and human perception. The infamous “magic bug” bit him when he started working at the Exploratorium and, in addition to compelling him to spend hours fiddling with cards in his spare time, it has provided him with an excuse to apply his hard-earned scientific knowledge to a subject he loves.
—————–
“Beyond Belief: How Memory Obscures the Truth” by Indre Viskontas
The Truth Is Out There. But how can we find it and what limits our ability to understand it? We are all still hunters-gatherers, though now of information instead of meat and berries (think of all those Tweets and RSS feeds). Yet the brain constrains how we process and use information to understand the world around us; it turns out that our personal experience trumps most other data. Dr. Indre Viskontas, cognitive neuroscientist and host of the TV show Miracle Detectives, draws upon her research and experiences investigating mysterious incidents across the country to highlight common traps in evaluating evidence for extraordinary claims.
Taking up space on her home office wall, Indre’s degree and award collection includes rare specimens from UCLA, the University of Toronto, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the OperaBuffs and others. She is a bachelor of science, a master of both music and arts, and a doctor of philosophy. She is best known for her role as “Scully” on Miracle Detectives, which airs on the Oprah Winfrey Network. Amongst neuroscientists, she is respected for her work on memory and creativity, having published more than 30 papers and chapters before turning into a TV personality. Classical musicians say they respect her creation of several roles in obscure contemporary operas and atonal experimental chamber music. Almost no one else does.
—————–
DJ Alpha Bravo will be at the decks of spinning vinyl, juggling LP sleeves and live-tweeting his set-list. Alpha Bravo is VP of left-field pop label, Radio Khartoum, and was one of the forces behind legendary SF pop-club nights, Anisette and Schokolade.
Wednesday, 4/20
Doors at 7:30, show at 8
Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell St @Van Ness
21+
$8
Facebook event
Combine: equal parts booze, brainpower, brilliant slide presentations, and intellectual banter. Add: a splash of irreverence and a couple ironic twists. Shake for 20 minutes. Serve in the coolest club in town. Discuss. And there you have it: Nerd Nite SF in a nutshell, um, highball glass! This month’s cocktails feature the revival of a spirit, pisco; the (arguably) oldest profession, metallurgy; and the controversial field of political psychology. Be there and be square!
————————
“Pisco: History in a Glass” by Gregory Dicum
Pisco, the white spirit distilled from grapes, has been made in Peru for 400 years, and found a ready audience in late-19th-century San Francisco among sophisticated tipplers at places like the Bank Exchange, a celebrated bar on the site of what is now the Transamerica Pyramid. There, bartender Duncan Nicol treated captains of industry and men of letters (like Twain and Kipling) to his famous Pisco Punch. In recent years, the versatile brandy has enjoyed a resurgence, fueled by the ascendance of Peruvian cuisine and the experimentation of innovative young mixologists. Some hail it as the next tequila, an exotic new artisanal spirit that will soon become a staple. Gregory Dicum, author of The Pisco Book, will give us a taste, literally and figuratively, of pisco’s journey through history.
TASTING: a complimentary pisco tasting will accompany Greg’s talk, and special pisco cocktails will be available for purchase at the bar, thanks to ClearGrape LLC!
Gregory Dicum is a writer and author based in San Francisco. He contributes regularly to the New York Times, The Economist, and other publications, and has written three other books: The Coffee Book: Anatomy of an Industry, Window Seat: Reading the Landscape from the Air, and Window Seat Europe. And because just that would be too easy, he’s also the co-founder of the internet startup, mondowindow.com
————————
“Postmodern Alchemy: Metallurgy from Damascus Steel to Atom Probes” by Richard Karnesky
Despite what you might have heard, the oldest profession is metallurgy. (Other old professions needed coinage, of course.) And although everything can be bought with gold, it can be taken with steel. Indian wootz was the first high-quality steel, and the West could neither replicate it nor make something better for 1,000 years. Rick will share his experiences breathing in coke dust, trying to re-make wootz, and creating new materials. These are developed, as always, with magic pixie dust, heating, and beating. But then they are ripped apart, atom by atom, to model their properties.
Richard Karnesky is a senior staff member of the Hydrogen and Metallurgical Science department of Sandia National Labs, where he studies things he can’t tell you about. As a kid, he played at the forge and anvil with his dad. As an adult, he spends too much money to learn blacksmithing. Always mixing things together and heating them up, he dabbles in molecular gastronomy and cervisial studies.
————————
“Political Psychology: Science Tackles the Age-old Question ‘What are they thinking?'” by David Cybulski
“Political science” sounds like an oxymoron, but the controversial field of political psychology gets inside your head and examines why you vote (because your neighbors do), why you like one candidate over another (look at that face…would he lie?), and why we give so much air-time to “experts” who tell us what to think (hint…it isn’t because they are right).
David Cybulski is a native Kentuckian who has been living in San Francisco since 2002. He has recently completed his Master’s thesis in Social Psychology at San Francisco State. David has focused on why people make the political choices they do, which is every bit as challenging as you might expect.
————————
DJ Alpha Bravo will be spinning records, tweeting his set-list, and trying to avoid wardrobe malfunctions. Alpha Bravo is VP of left-field pop label, Radio Khartoum, and was one of the forces behind legendary SF pop-club nights, Anisette and Schokolade.