Poster designed by Cindy Wang.
April’s Nerd Nite East Bay includes one of our funkier line-ups to date. First, Stuart Gripman will teach you about the fake fish concocted by the notable naturalist John James Audubon. Then, Kara Platoni will speak about some of the ways people are hacking their perception abilities. Finally, the Exploratorium’s Lori Lambertson will give a light-hearted look at some of the grim repercussions of global warming.
As usual, doors/bar/food are at 7. Grilled Cheese Guy will be slinging delicious sammies. Ann-Marie Benz and Will Johnson wil run the Nerd Nite Detention pre-show: Lego Love – show your nerdiness by creating fake fish, cyborgs, or anything else you can think of at our Legos table. All the toys, none of the children. We’ll also have Books Inc., who will have copies of Kara’s book for sale.
Oh. And fan (and boss) favorite Matthew “Herbie” Harman returns as a guest MC!
Herbie, Rick, DJ Ion the Prize, and the Oakland Public Library will (still) be the April Fools.
Be there and be square.
This event is 21+.
Monday 4/25/2016 Doors (+food,drink,"Detention" preshow) at 7 pm, talks start at 8 pm and end by 10:30 pm Club 21, 2111 Franklin St, Oakland (two blocks from the 19th St BART) Advance tickets are $8 (or less if you take advantage of our Early Nerd discounts) and are available until 3PM the day of the show or until they sell out. Your CC statement will denote these come from Drinkified Learning, LLC. Any door tickets will be $10 (cash or card). tickets fb
Audubon’s Phony Fish by Stuart Gripman
The story of how naturalist Constantine Rafinesque, a self-described “odd fish” was goaded by John James Audubon (yes, that Audubon) into publishing descriptions of fantastical and wholly fabricated fish.
Stuart Gripman writes very serious database books that have cartoon dogs on the covers. He consults and speaks throughout the Bay Area and spends weekends perfecting trombone lubricant. That last bit is a lie.
Perception Hacking for Cyborgs (That Means You) by Kara Platoni
Humanity has never been closer to machine than we are now — and it’s only about to get weirder as we increasingly bring technologies onto, and into, our bodies in our eternal quest to alter our perceptual experiences, give ourselves superpowers and (maybe) hack ourselves a sixth sense. From the bionic eye to the thought-controlled robotic limb; from augmented and virtual reality gadgets to biohacker implants, it’s time to consider what comes next in human evolution, and whether we can do it ourselves.
Kara is a science reporter who works the Nancy Drew beat, going anywhere there is a possibility of a weird adventure involving pirates, old clocks or (ideally) ghosts. For her book, We Have the Technology, she sofa-surfed through four countries and eight US states, visiting any lab, military base or biohacker basement that would let her get in on an experiment on the cutting edge of sensory science. She teaches narrative writing at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, is one of the hosts of the (temporarily-on-hiatus) Field Trip Podcast, and was a staff writer at the East Bay Express for many years, where her main interest was covering con artists.
We’re All Fucked: A Cool Look at the Warm Future by Lori Lambertson
Welcome to the Anthropocene, the proposed name for our current epoch, which is characterized by the impacts of human activities on earth’s geology and ecosystems. Come find out how we have fucked with the carbon cycle, which is changing our atmosphere and so much more.
Lori Lambertson likes to swear among friends, and is a teacher at San Francisco’s Exploratorium. She has been sharing her love of data and environmental science with Bay Area science teachers since before the word Anthropocene was first coined in 2000. When she isn’t teaching science or swearing, you can find her studying marine biology and wave dynamics from her surfboard.