Only, what? Like 37 days between NN #38 and Christmas? Well, you could worry about your Christmas shopping (or whatever occasion you celebrate around the Winter Solstice, up to and including the Solstice itself), or you could huddle close to some fellow nerds, and learn about things other people won’t even imagine… because they’ve never been to a Nerd Nite before!
Be there AND be square.
When: Wednesday, Nov 8, 2017 (show @ 8pm)
Where: The Needle Vinyl Tavern (10524 Jasper Avenue)
Tickets: on sale at YegLive.ca
$20 in advance
$10 peanut gallery tickets
[Must be 18 years or older]
Our line-up of talks includes:
How you get a Flesh Searing Relativistic Particle Cannon to Zap Cancer Cells
Chad Hay
Cancer sucks. There is a lot of fear and tragedy associated with this disease. This talk isn’t going there. Instead, we’ll explore External Beam Radiation Therapy, a very cool technology in the fight against cancer that is making it possible to view cancer as a chronic illness. Specifically, we’ll explore the moment when a patient is laying on the bed of a linear accelerator waiting for a beam of high-energy particles to destroy carefully targeted cancer cells in their body and what it takes to get this patient to that crucial point.
Chad Hay is a senior consultant with CancerControl Alberta. He has led a series of projects there focused on quality, efficiency and the patient experience. These include transitioning radiation therapy treatment delivery to a fully electronic process, implementing electronic prescriber ordering in a cancer centre, and optimizing the utilization models for Daycare chemotherapy delivery. The challenge has been getting brilliant clinicians to re-assess how they view their operations. The reward (beyond successful delivery) has been working with some amazing people and learning a tremendous amount from them, some of which I can now share with you.
Birds don’t give a Dam: Politics of wildlife conservation and developmental projects in the Himalayas
Titash Choudhury
Over the last decade, the Himalayas, has not only become a potential energy frontier to meet world’s surging energy demands, but an opportunity for those in the state seeking political and financial independence. Dams are celebrated and endorsed as a “clean” and “renewable” energy sources that ensure sustainable development, and politicians and major corporations are making promises of great economic benefits and job opportunities arising from these projects. However, rapid development, and the deficiencies of environmental and social impact assessment have provoked political and social debates in the region. Simultaneously, development in this biodiversity rich and geographically fragile region, has raised concerns among wildlife biologists, ecologists and experts resulting in ongoing interaction and negotiation between scientists or experts and the indigenous community. There are interesting parallels between resource politics in northern Alberta and the Himalayas on how different stakeholders such as developers, conservationists, government deploy narratives of change; articulate their respective claims over resources and the power relations within and between these different stakeholders.
Titash Choudhury recently completed her second Master’s degree in Environmental Anthropology from the University of Alberta. Her project was in the eastern Himalayas among the Monpa community. From working in the laboratory to doing fieldwork in one of the world’s largest stretch of mangrove forest, the Sunderbans Delta, she studied the human tiger conflict in the landscape. Currently Titash works with the City of Edmonton as a sustainable scholar to understand the perceptions of Edmontonians in regards to energy transition and the implication of the policies of the government on the community.
Learning to see culture: VR learning worlds in ethnographic film research
Michael MacDonald
The immediate response to my first short documentary film shot with a spherical VR camera was: “Whoa, I need to sit down, that made me feel sick.” Filming with a VR camera allows viewers with VR headsets to look around the video, no longer watching the screen from a distance, you are somehow located in an educational space. A VR pedagogical film is no longer passive, it creates a VR environment that students can explore. This is a new space for educational filmmakers, creating preplanned environments. For cultural studies researchers, it provides an opportunity to rethink how we make films and how we think about education. VR video has the potential to allow researchers to share fieldwork in radically new ways. And create an opportunity for students to experience activities and places, unlike anything previous fieldwork technology has allowed. Previous kinds of filmmaking, like Cinema Verite, worked to help the viewer feel like you were there. But VR learning worlds do it at an existential level that is nothing short of disconcerting.
Michael B. MacDonald is a filmmaker, ethnomusicologist, and associate professor of music in the faculty of Fine Arts and Communications at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. His research focuses on youth and community studies, ethnographic film, and the critical pedagogy of music. He has published two books: “Playing for Change: Music Festivals as Community Learning and Development” and “Remix and Life Hack in Hip Hop: Towards a Critical Pedagogy of Music”, and is the director of FreireProject.org. Michael’s films are freely available at www.michaelbmacdonaldfilms.ca
It’s October, and that means a time to give thanks for nerds and to nerds, and probably to dress up as something we’re not at some point. Will your nerd bosses come in costume? Will there be a giant roasted turkey with all the fixins? Almost certainly no! But there will be three fantastic speakers the likes of which you have probably never seen drunk.
Be there AND be square.
When: Wednesday, Oct 11, 2017 (show @ 8pm)
Where: The Needle Vinyl Tavern (10524 Jasper Avenue)
Tickets: on sale NOW at YegLive.ca
$20 in advance
$10 peanut gallery tickets
[Must be 18 years or older]
Our line-up of talks includes:
Pineapples: The most interesting fruit in the world
Andrew Williams
Of all the fruit, pineapples have the most bizarre, fascinating, and shocking history and biology. For just a taste of how bizarre, can you name another fruit that can dissolve your fingerprints, was used as a status symbol at Victorian parties, and was grown in England in the 1700s under piles of manure? This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the weird world of pineapples. In my talk, I’ll take you on a journey around the world and through history, stopping off at royal palaces, wild jungles, and 70s TV sitcoms to break down the how the humble pineapple has influenced human culture over the years. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, your sex life may even be improved by the end of it. There’s only one way to find out!
Bio: I’m not a biologist. I’m not a historian (though I do have a history degree). I’m actually a marketing strategist and music producer by trade. But for the last 10 years or so, facts about pineapples seem to find their way to me. What started as a set of humorous facts that I’d tell at parties to get a laugh, slowly built up into a part time obsession. Over the years I’ve read books, done research, and amassed a horde of useless, but interesting, information about pineapples. My friends now send me pictures of pineapples wherever they come across them and whenever I’m given gifts, they are usually pineapple themed. It’s a fun life, and I want to share it with you.
Spider butts and spit glands: Adventures in working with Galleria mellonella silk
Mary Glasper
Have you heard about those plastic-eating worms in the news? I work with those! One summer, while working in an entomology lab, my supervisor asked, “Have you ever looked at Galleria silk? It’s really strong and they produce a TON of it.” Suddenly, a master’s thesis was born. Galleria mellonella, a.k.a. the greater wax moth, is a pest of beehives and is also a popular model organism for the study of medically significant mammalian pathogens. In this talk, I’ll share with you how to collect, process, and characterize this silk as a textile fibre. Could it be a viable alternative to spider silk? Come and find out! Spoiler: I don’t feed them plastic.
Bio: Mary Glasper has been a fan of our many-legged friends and of fibres for as long as she can remember, and has professional experience in both Entomology and Textile Science. She earned her BSc in Biological Sciences & Human Ecology from the University of Alberta, and is currently completing her MSc in Textile Science. It’s only natural that she would combine both of her interests by studying how bugs create fibres! When she’s not working on her thesis, Mary volunteers her time for student groups and outreach initiatives, is doing some kind of odd job on campus (lighting fabric on fire or feeding bugs), or is at home creating her latest embroidery project.
Cat pee, baby vomit & bottle bombs and other ways you can seriously screw up beer
Kirk Zembal & Shane Groendahl
We hope you didn’t come to learn how to home-brew your own beer. You’ll be sent down a very, very wrong path. Instead, we’re going to turn our brewing brains upside down and show you exactly—in more detail than you’d ever want—what happens when beer goes horribly wrong. And just think—every example we’ll give comes from somebody’s personal experience. Maybe it will dissuade you from signing up for brewing school to learn the particulars of adjectives like “goat-y”, “sewer-ish”, “nail polish”, “roadkill” or “blood-like”. Getting paid to drink beer isn’t always the best job in the world, we swear!
Kirk Zembal & Shane Groendahl met over beers some years ago—or they assume they did because they can’t really remember. (It was probably an Edmonton Beer Geeks Anonymous—a group Shane started—event). Together with a few other beer geeks they started Blindman Brewing out of Lacombe. They’ve drank some of the best beer in the world together and some of the absolute worst. They prefer the former.
We’re back for another fun-filled season of interesting discussions, strange and fascinating topics and a community of fabulous Edmontonians who like combining education with potent potables! We’re working on some great new programming this season we’re going to be trying out, and we’ll be welcoming a new Nerd Boss into the fold. You won’t want to miss this season opener — it’ll be a doozy!
Be there AND be square.
When: Wednesday, Sept 6, 2017 (show @ 8pm)
Where: The Needle Vinyl Tavern (10524 Jasper Avenue)
Tickets: on sale Aug 21 at 11am at YegLive.ca
$20 in advance
$10 peanut gallery tickets
[Must be 18 years or older]
Our line-up of talks includes:
What Can Stem Cells Do For You? Like, Actually Do
Alison Müller
Generalization about scientific discovery happens in the media regularly; however, in this era of stem cell science, the hyperbolizing of its potential in medicine coupled with its potential ethical implications has brought stem cell technology to forefront of popular science. This talk will explore the realistic possibilities of stem cell technology (which are still completely awesome!) as well as clarify the ethics around their use. Don’t worry, it’s much more exciting that it may initially appear, because SCIENCE!
Alison Müller, MSc, is a PhD Candidate in the Physiology Department at the University of Alberta. Her work with stem cells in patients with heart disease made her realize how little people actually knew about stem cells. As a result, she aims to educate others and has presented panels at the Edmonton and Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expos on science fiction inspired science fact with a focus on novel medical technologies. She also volunteers her time doing STEM outreach with kids with the national non-profit Let’s Talk Science where she can share her love of science with everyone! She was awarded the Alberta Graduate Citizenship Award for her community engagement.
Wormfood: Death Positivity vs Our Fear of Death
Dylan Richards
You are going to die. You, all of the people you love, the person sitting next to you right now, will all one day be food for worms. Death and everything about it terrifies most of us. But have you ever asked yourself why? When did our fear of the end of life, the common unifier of us all, become so ingrained? Is our fear of the Grim Reaper something we’ve always had, or something we learned along the way? Come with us as we take a look at what death and dying really means around the world, some common misconceptions about the end of our life, and how we can maybe learn to greet Death as an old friend.
Storyteller, activist, sex educator, and Death Positivity advocate, Dylan Richards brings his passion for helping people discover what makes them shine to classrooms, boardrooms, and gatherings around North America. Dylan loves to bring his stories and experience to every topic he tackles, from sexuality to spirituality to spaghetti (well, cooking in general but then it wouldn’t be as poetic).
Decolonizing Science & Technology
Kim TallBear
Indigenous peoples are usually at the receiving end of the scientific gaze. Settler states such as the US and Canada govern through science and technology that grows in part from social and political ideas of Indigenous peoples as populations on the verge of extinction. Assimilation has been pushed on those who remain. My work challenges colonial biomedical and technology interventions aimed at Indigenous populations. I study Indigenous resistance to such research, including genetics research, and I promote Indigenous efforts to govern and transform science and technology in ways that benefit our peoples rather than do us harm.
Kim TallBear is Associate Professor of Native Studies and the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience and Environment at the University of Alberta. In a previous professional life she was an environmental planner and policy specialist for US federal agencies and tribal governments. She also produces the sexy storytelling show, Tipi Confessions, which will make its Needle Vinyl Tavern premier on October 30.
