Nerd Nite Chicago

Take a break from putting the finishing touches on your latest Halloween get-up, the very best you’ve ever done (and that’s saying something — yeah, we’ve been watching you all these Halloweens…)

We’re all going to be at the California Clipper on Thursday, October 21st, from 8:30. By ‘we’ I hope I mean ‘you, too, buster’ because the talks we have lined up are ridicu-good. And it would be a damned shame if you missed them.

“An incomplete talk on Gödel’s Incompletedness Theorem”
by L. Lanford
All Russell and Whitehead wanted was an arithmetical system that was both complete and consistent. But dear dorky 25-year-old Kurt Gödel explained to the math world why you can’t always have what you want, and I’m here to explain why to you. [“I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member”. ~Groucho Marx]

“The Neurological Basis of Personality in Your Gut, Brain, and Heart; OR
One More Way You Are What You Eat; OR
The Polyvagal system, Your Gut, and the Hungry Heart; OR
How Humans Interact Peacefully While in Aroused States (“and I use the term aroused broadly” ), AND
How That Is Linked to Heart Rate and the Craniofacial Nerves”
by D. C. Tessman.
Some people pass out from the vagal stimulation of eating soft, bulky things, like a slice of bread. Clare not only knows why, she also finds it fascinating. You will, too.

“The More You Know”
by B. Jayatilaka
A talk on pivotal moments in humanity’s grasp of the nature of the universe which went totally right for all the wrong reasons. Dr. Jayatilaka is not the kind of doctor who can fix broken bones, he’s the other kind. The science kind.

Be there and Be Square.

It’s official, Nerds of Chicago: We have a home at the Chicago Clipper (“Home of the Purple Martin”) every 3rd Thursday of the month. That makes our next Nerd Nite August 19th (so soon!).

Here’s the lineup (possibly one more talk in the offing):
“Battle of the Millennia : Renaissance Faire vs. Renaissance” by Katie Chenoweth

From Katie: “Whenever I tell people I’m attending a conference for Renaissance scholars, I know without asking what image is forming in their head: puffy shirts, pointy hats, massive cleavage—maybe even a Hobbit or two. They think I’m going to a Renaissance Faire. The Ren Faire is the bête noire of academics who study the Renaissance, threatening to undermine our seriousness at every turn. That’s probably why I resisted going until this July, when I headed toward the Wisconsin border, determined to find out once and for all what draws non-academics by the thousands to play Renaissance for a day.

“So, what does the Renaissance Faire—with its fairies, wenches, and WWF-style jousting matches—actually have in common with the Renaissance? Are playtrons this century’s neo-Latinists? You’ll have to wait for Nerd Nite to find out what that last question even means.”

Katie Chenoweth is a very serious Renaissance scholar, and currently a faculty member at the University of Chicago. She will not be wearing a puffy shirt (but that doesn’t mean you can’t).

“US High Speed Rail: The New Interstate Expressway?” by Maurice Ball

From Maurice: “Since the 1950’s, passenger railroad in the US has been a joke, taking a back seat to the airplane and America’s #1 love, the automobile. Now with the cost of fossil fuels threatening, on a daily basis, to hold the average American citizen hostage for future years to come, the modern concept of passenger railroad is being given second look…………in the form of High Speed Rail. What does this mean to the average American citizen? And do they even care? Giving up their cars is not an overnight relinquishment. But with the help of the federal government, high speed rail could become the next great ‘Interstate Expressway’.”

Maurice Ball, a transplant from Houston, Texas, is a Mechanical Engineer, having obtained his Bachelor’s Degree from Prairie View A&M University in Texas, and Master’s Degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Maurice currently works at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, IL and is a member of the Midwest High Speed Rail Association, based in Chicago, IL.

And our concluding talk of the evening:
“Joggling: The Future of Running” by Perry Romanowski

From Perry: “Running is an excellent way to maintain health and weight.
Unfortunately, it can be incredibly dull. Joggling, or juggling while
running, represents the future of running. No longer do your hands
need to idly pump away while your legs do all the work. Joggling
engages your brain and make running an exercise for thinkers. This
talk will introduce you to the world of joggling, it’s history and a
demonstration on how to do it.”

Perry Romanowski is a world-class joggler who has been running while
juggling since 1996. His now very tired, as you might imagine. Along the
way, he has completed numerous joggling races including 30 marathons,
and currently holds the world record for the fastest 50 miles run while
juggling. Additionally, he has joggled over 630 consecutive days and is a
member of the United States Running Streak Association. Ever since the
accident, however, he does it without the flaming chainsaws.

Can’t wait to see you at the Clipper! We just found out they have grape soda on the gun. This is stoke-worthy.

Nerdily yours,
-Jason St. John

Nerd Nite Chicago lives!

Fellow nerds, nerd-fans, and adherents of nerdery,

We’re just so proud to be here.

We’re also proud to be opening Thursday, June 3rd, 8pm at the California Clipper, just south of beautiful, vast Humboldt Park.

We’ve got three talks from Boston nerd nite veterans who just so happen to also be the organizing committee bringing Nerd Nite to Chicago:

Parasitic Birds, Shakers, and World-Ending Nerdery: Nerd Nite comes to Chicago

“Parasitic Birds, Sex, Lies, and Dinosaurs” – Chris Balakrishnan

From Chris: When people hear that I study birds, they are often intrigued by the adventures, trials, and tribulations that occur while conducting field research in exotic places. Before long, however, they get to the questions they are REALLY curious about… 1) What on earth is a parasitic bird? (no, it doesn’t suck your blood) 2) What do you think about the idea that birds are dinosaurs? and the big one… 3) How do birds have sex? I will use these questions as themes around which to discuss the evolution of birds, and more generally, the process of evolution.

After spending all of his life in the Northeast, Chris has been transplanted to corn-filled Central Illinois. Chris is an evolutionary biologist/ornithologist. He is constantly surprised by how many people know what an ornithologist is and by how many people are deathly afraid of birds. It’s all Alfred Hitchcock’s fault. Or maybe it’s because birds are dinosaurs. Chris is nothing if not dedicated, and because of his dedication to drinking at the Midway Café in Boston, nerdnite was born.

“Shake it Like a Polaroid Picture, Millenarian Style” – Rebecca Anderson

In the surprisingly frequent event that the Shakers get mentioned at a party, someone usually says, “Weren’t they celibate?  No wonder they died out; what did they think would happen?”  And I have say, “Are you really asking me?  Because I have an answer.  And it involves the Industrial Revolution” — a real conversation-ender.

But the truth is that for the first 50 years, people joined this utopian movement in droves — in order to dance and sing together.  I’ll try to make the case that giving up everything they owned and living as brother as sister with former spouses and children was worth it.

Rebecca is 20 pages away from a Masters in Divinity at the University of Chicago.  But those might be the 20 pages that keep it from happening.

“Science Will (not actually) Kill Us All: The Large Hadron Collider, the Rest of the Universe, and You.” – Jason St. John

Jason St. John is a graduate student in mad science at the Large Hadron Collider. Besides generating the same bawdy typographical error over and over, the LHC is built to generate never-before-seen particle physics events. Jason will show a few of the ones already seen, and address the pressing issue raised by a prominent former nuclear safety officer who lives in Hawaii: that we will all die because of some frivolous, 14 billion dollar multinational lark. Along the way, he might maybe mention a few things about what a particle collider really does, and why you would want such a thing.