Nerd Nite No. 72: A Celebration of One Book One Philadelphia!
Our March Nerd Nite is part of One Book, One Philadelphia, a signature program of the Free Library of Philadelphia that promotes literacy, library usage, and citywide conversation by encouraging the Philadelphia area to come together through reading and discussing a single book. The 2017 featured selection is Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.”
Ian Sheffer will give us a talk on Medical Puzzles.
Say the words “medical” and “puzzle” and most people think of exotic diseases, odd symptoms, quirky travels, and the TV show House. Of course, these strange and unusual cases do occur, but the reality of day-to-day medical puzzles is much more complex–and far more interesting. I will discuss how activism, art, and politics helped science and medicine solve the puzzles of the AIDS epidemic and turn HIV from a death sentence into a manageable chronic disease. I will also discuss the many pieces of the puzzle that have to fit together for HIV treatment to be successful for patients living with the virus today.
Ian G. Sheffer, MD, MBe is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Drexel University College of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases & HIV Medicine. He earned undergraduate degrees in Philosophy and Biology at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, a Master’s degree in Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, and completed his medical training at Temple University School of Medicine and Temple University Hospital. He currently practices and teaches in Philadelphia at Hahnemann University Hospital, Partnership Comprehensive Care Practice, and the Dorothy Mann Center for Pediatric and Adolescent HIV at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children. When he’s not at the bedside, you’ll likely find Dr. Sheffer at the Bucks County Curling Club throwing rocks down sheets of ice.
Thomas Rush will give us a brief glimpse into Coordination and Computing.
Starting with the Byzantine General’s Problem, moving to the idea of consensus, and moving into Bitcoin and then Ethereum, I will discuss a series of four “problems” and their subsequent “solutions” which have come together over the last 50 years to bring us the programmable, immutable, shared public data store that we have today. I will end with an example of they types of software this new software platform enables.
Thomas Jay Rush owns his own Internet-based software company, Great Hill Corporation, founded in the dark days prior to the Internet. In 2012, Mr. Rush took an MFA in Creative Writing, Poetry from Rosemont College. Until late 2015, he taught writing and poetry at the Community College of Philadelphia. In late 2015, Mr. Rush encountered Ethereum. Since then he has been full-time, night and day, blockchain focused. His new firm, QuickBlock.io, aims to deliver blockchain data analytics at speed.
Graham Dobereiner will Catalyze us into action!
What is catalysis, and why study it? I’ll be describing the history of the field of catalysis, how it became the obsession of so many scientists, and go over what my research group is doing at Temple. Light jokes will be served.
Graham Dobereiner is an assistant professor of chemistry at Temple University. He’s been at Temple since 2014, where he runs a research group and teach classes. Before Temple he got his PhD at Yale (2011) and did a postdoc at MIT.
Our entertainment portion of the evening will be hosted by Kalela Williams, who will lead us through a bit of book talk & trivia.
Kalela Williams has been the director of One Book, One Philadelphia since 2012. In her spare time she enjoys creative writing, and her most recent work appears in Calyx: A Journal of Art & Literature by Women, and Drunken Boat. She is currently working on a novel.
The details:
Doors open at 4pm. Show at 7:30pm. We recommend you get there early to ensure getting a good seat!
$5
Wednesday, March 1st
Frankford Hall
1210 Frankford Avenue
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