September marks our twelfth installment of Nerd Nite East Bay (and our tenth at the New Parkway for those nerds celebrating the decimal calendar). We’re happy to have our friends from Oakland Public Library back again and will tease you with a bit of anniversary schwag. But, most importantly, we’ll have some excellent nerdy talks. We have NNSF alum Mark Rosin back. Last time, he used a few hundred inflated balloons and a fantastic bass amp to showoff resonance in a “rave for the blind”. This time, he’ll let you know why Venus is for lovers and why you’ll want to ski Pluto. Staci Dresher from the James Mintz group will give us the inside scoop on the world of private investigators. And Ryan Smith has been as busy as a beaver in preparing his sweet as sugar talk on the honeybee.
With DJ Citizen Zain and your hosts Rick and Rebecca. Be there and be square.
Monday 9/30 Doors at 7 pm, show at 8 The New Parkway, 474 24th St, Oakland (less than half-a-mile from the 19th St BART) $8 All Ages Tickets FB event g+ event
THE INTERGALACTIC TRAVEL BUREAU by Mark Rosin
Mars is for outdoorsy types. Jupiter is for the artistically inclined. Step right up to visit the World’s first Intergalactic Travel Bureau, and let us plan your vacation of a lifetime.
Mark Rosin is a physicist at UCLA, and the US director of Guerilla Science. We mix science with art, music and play.
TRENCHCOAT OPTIONAL: TRICKS OF A CORPORATE SLEUTH by Staci Dresher
This is not about finding cheating spouses or fake broken legs. Private investigators are trained to be creative when searching for facts in a highly privatized world. We get you to spill the beans during interviews without you even realizing it. We file creative public record requests to government agencies that can’t be traced back to our client. An investigation is like an onion, with new facts and leads discovered as each layer is pulled away. I’ll give you the insider’s scoop into this world. We’ll discuss the history of the private detective industry, from railroad robberies to corporate sleuthing, and what it takes to successfully interview a witness and vet a potential business partner.
Staci is a recovering litigator who jumped ship to become a private Jane in 2006. She studied international relations in college, politics in Bristol, England and traveled extensively throughout Latin America learning Spanish and volunteering before graduating from Hastings College of the Law and working as an Intellectual Property lawyer at two big law firms. Realizing that the fact-gathering aspect of the lawsuit was most exciting, she went from client to employee of the Mintz Group, where she’s partner and in-house counsel, managing anti-corruption, intellectual property and due-diligence investigations around the world.
SEX, WAX, AND POLLEN: THE HONEYBEE SUPER-ORGANISM by Ryan Smith
Ryan reprised this talk at Nerd Nite San Francisco. Video is above.
Bees are highly industrious dance fanatics who have a knack for mathematics and are obsessed with pleasing their queen. These goddesses of the garden have helped humans for thousands of years to make candles, get drunk, sweeten our lives, and most importantly: put food on our plates. But as global populations of honeybees are declining, we are scrambling to find out the roots of the imbalance. Let’s fly into the hive to understand the big story of this tiny bug and how we can keep the sweetness flowing.
Dr. Ryan Smith is a laser physicist, musician, and seasoned beekeeper. Now researching solar materials at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, he has also taught university courses, including “Physics for Future Presidents.” While his bee-keeping interests began in the Southeastern U.S., he is now an advocate on the sweet west coast.