We hope to see you at our upcoming Chicago Nerd Nite! Please join us at the Bottom Lounge on November 19th for our next round of tipsy, nerdy goodness!

Wednesday, November 19th, 7PM

Bottom Lounge, upstairs

We have a great combo lined up: a veteran, a first timer, and our first visiting Nerd Niter from Madison, Wisconsin!

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First up, Ben from Madison will be presenting the Life of Bees, with a twist:

Using the beloved and timeless characters of Sex in the City as our guide, we will explore the beautiful evolutionary journey from single egg-laying sawflies to honey bee orgies. But it’s not all sex and nectar drinking in our honeycomb city, and just as Samantha had her breast cancer (SPOILER!), so too must the honey bee deal with her Colony Collapse Disorder. It’s a story of sex, drugs, deception, exploding males, and zombies. Just like any other episode of Sex and the City, only with three times the shoes.

Ben is the Assistant Director of Education for the UW Materials Research Science and Engineering Center. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in entomology from the UW-Madison, Ben worked on a nine-month research project focusing on native bee pollination in Wisconsin’s apple orchards. Yes, he has been stung in the face. No, it was not a pleasant experience.

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Next up, welcome Nerd Nite audience member turned Nerd Nite presenter, Bardia Noohi, who will be presenting An Eye on the Politics of Envy.

Stinkeye. Mal de ojo. Disti. عين الحسود. Buri nazar. Malocchio. The belief in the envious gaze — the evil eye — is nearly ubiquitous in older cultures. The details of the proscribed cures, symptoms, and protections are varied, but the underlying idea that being an object of envy puts one in danger is a common thread. Bardia will explore why this particular superstition is so pervasive through the anthropological lens of the purpose of envy in a culture.

Bardia Noohi is the guy at your game night who has memorized the instruction book.

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And finally, veteran Chicago NN presenter Laura Lanford returns with more about how we all fool ourselves with Rainbow Ruses and Russian Dolls

She’s getting a distinct vibe, something about, numbers, and spectacles, and barley…. She’s feeling community, a common interest, a science-y vibe…. Does this mean anything to you?

Join Laura for a discussion of the cognitive biases and mental heuristics that make us all susceptible to the techniques used by psychics, con artists, mentalists, and fortune tellers.

Laura has presented at Nerd Nite before and is generally a fan of things nerdy and beer themed.