Nerd Nite Philly

Posts Tagged ‘art’

Hey Nerds! September Nerd Nite is a little later this month, but no less awesome. We have a *jam-packed* evening ready for you and we’re doing it with the help of our friends at the Green Philly Blog and Clean Air Council. Our line up includes a little sustainability, some folksy music, and the inside scoop on the new beer that Yards Brewing Company has cooked up. So are you folks ready to welcome in the school year with some Nerd Nite?

“Recycle-full-cycle in Philadelphia” by Phil Bresee

Recycling has come a long way in Philadelphia during the past few years. The City’s new-ish recycling chief and self-proclaimed ‘garbage geek’ will chart progress, future challenges, and share some of his perspectives on managing solid waste in the City of Neighborhoods.

About Phil: As the recycling director for the City of Philadelphia, Phil Bresee guides and supports a number of solid waste and recycling program and planning initiatives, including the update to the city’s solid waste management plan, public outreach efforts, the recyclables processing contract, and the Philly Recycling Rewards incentives program. Bresee is also spearheading improvements to the City’s commercial recycling efforts. He came to Philadelphia in July 2012 from Broward County Florida, where he guided the county’s recycling programs including the county’s innovative project that studied the feasibility of using pulverized recycled glass for beach erosion control.

“A year behind bars and 5 more in the public sector” by Kristin Sullivan

Ostensibly “boring” information about how the City manages its use of electricity, natural gas, and steam will be presented. To Kristin, however it is anything but boring. The City uses over 3.5 Million MMBtus a year in just about 800 facilities. Kristin will dazzle you with dizzying facts and made up units of measure. We’ll bore into figures about the City’s work and our plan to manage that usage down and thus reduce its costs to taxpayers. Maybe you couldn’t care less about the difference between a kilowatt and a kilowatt-hour. Perhaps you think an MMBtu is just an extreme bra size. No matter. Kristin will pepper in some details about a 14,000 mile bicycle trip she took from Alaska to Argentina over the course of a year to get people to think a little bit more about their impact on the earth.

About Kristin: Kristin Sullivan is the Energy Manager for the City of Philadelphia. Her work in utility conservation and distributed energy generation straddles both the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability and Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities. Kristin began her career as an energy analyst with an international energy consulting firm and then as a development manager for Iberdrola Renewables, a large scale wind energy company. In 2004, she created EarthCycle.org, an environmental education and toured and lectured throughout North and South America on a bicycle trip from Fairbanks, Alaska to Ushuaia, Argentina. The 14,055 mile trip was supported by individual, environmental non-profit, and corporate sponsors, and took 355 days to complete. Kristin Sullivan graduated from Gettysburg College, Majoring in Environmental Studies and Biology, and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Natural Resources sector in Honduras from 1998 to 2000.

“The Art & Science of Landscape Architecture” by Eric Wahl

Long before the profession was named, Landscape Architecture played a significant role in our everyday lives. From agrarian and rural landscapes to private gardens, towns, and neighborhoods, people lived in, borrowed from, and captured views of their surroundings. The threads of Art and Science of these special places are woven through our history, which we should learn from, and indeed improve upon for a sustainable and healthy future. In this presentation, we’ll go from historical contributions to the landscape, to contemporary design patterns that evolved over time that all help to create the Landscape of Man.

About Eric: Eric holds a Bachelor of Science in Landscape Architecture from Temple University, and is a registered Landscape Architect in Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. He is a member of the American Society of Landscape Architects, and was recently appointed President of the Delaware Board of Landscape Architecture. Eric is also the current Vice-President of the Delaware Native Plant Society, and an adjunct professor on Sustainable Sites and Landscaping at Delaware Technical & Community College in Georgetown, Delaware. Eric strives for a balance between the built and the natural environments. With an eye towards ecological awareness, his designs lean toward sustainability and foster an ecological stewardship.

Between lectures and to entertain you wonderful nerds is Midwestern Exposure. A Philadelphia based roots rock trio consisting of Cam Clark, Jeff Goldman and Forrest Wright, Midwestern Exposure combines Blues, Folk and Rock into a great original sound.

But, wait! There’s more! As a prelude to this special evening, we will have Franklin Winslow, former research microbiologist and current Director of Quality Assurance at Yards Brewing Company, talk about a new German Pale Ale recently brewed up, applying the Reinheitsgebot to Burton-on-Trent.

Greetings nerds!

Be prepared for another informative Nerd Nite next Wednesday, June 12, a night promising to be better than your typical summer school– happy hour priced beer and big German pretzels are involved!

The details:

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

doors at 7:00, show at 7:30 sharp

Frankford Hall at Frankford and Girard

$5 cover gets you a night of nerdy fun, plus food and drink specials

Importantly, our line up of distinguished speakers and their prepared talks:

Bibotorium: Dreamboats for Nightmares by Camp Little Hope

Camp Little Hope directs a project called Bibotorium in an abandoned swimming pool as part of the Hidden City Philadelphia Festival. Bibotorium is an educational saloon and public think-tank for imagining the future of water in Philadelphia. Through conversation and complimentary beverage service, Camp Little Hope designs and builds boats to illustrate future water environments.

Bio: Camp Little Hope is an international research collective that works in proprioceptive museum installations, free algorithmic restaurants, sustainable impossibilities, alternative institutional forms, speculative sciences, and matching jumpsuits. www.camplittlehope.com

Analytical Improv: Patterns and Intuition by Matt Akana

Professional nerd Matt Akana explains an analytical approach to improv comedy that involves pattern recognition and developing a sense of play.  He explains how to push through the initial obstacles to truly enjoy being in the moment, with no safety net, in front of others.  He will demonstrate how to fail with momentum!

Bio: Matthew Akana is a San Francisco-born, Philadelphia-residing improv comedy performer, game designer, and molecular biologist.  During the day he does high throughput pharmaceutical assay development and by night he performs live with ZaoGao at the Philly Improv Theater and with the N Crowd.

The Weird World of Archie Comics by Chris Cummins

Throughout the 1970s, strange things were afoot in the seemingly peaceful town of Riverdale. In an effort to make their books more competitive with their edgier rivals at DC and Marvel, Archie Comics started focusing on telling grittier tales in some of their titles that involved such story elements as murderous crooks, high school scandals and even Satanic teddy bears. As you can probably guess, they were amazing. Around the same time, Archie artist Al Hartley convinced his bosses to allow him to create religious versions of Archie books to be sold at Christian bookstores. These oddities are a head-scratching bunch that come complete with Betty Cooper trying to convert her heathen pals and a cameo appearance by Jesus as a surfer dude. Subsequent decades have seen such head-scratching developments in the Archieverse as Jughead travelling through time with one of Archie’s female descendents from the 29th century, as well as a monthly title that gave the staff of Riverdale High super powers. This talk will present a look at the oddest moments from Archie’s storied history, offering up a compelling glimpse at how easily the middle of the road can swerve into Weirdsville.

Bio: Chris Cummins is a Philadelphia-based writer who regularly contributes to Geekadelphia and Topless Robot. He also runs the blogs Hibernation Sickness, What’s Dave Kendall Wearing? and Songs of 1992, and co-hosts a monthly quizzo night at The Dive. When not writing about pop culture, he can usually be found obsessing over everything from Star Wars figures to forgotten shoegaze bands. You can follow him on Twitter at @bionicbigfoot.

Music by Los Festingos!

A Festingo: One whom expands the musical universe through creative, humorous, and often outrageous feats of harmonious excellence.

Be there and be square!

Nerd Nite Philly Crew

Dear Nerds,

The next Philly Nerd Nite is part of the Philadelphia Science Festival, a city-wide celebration of science.  We are thrilled to be a part of it, and we’re even more thrilled to offer you a scholarly ode to 2012 apocalypse mania.   Should you like, you may buy tickets online, but we will also be selling them at the door as always.

Note that Nerd Nite is on a Thursday this month and that the talks will start at 8:00 instead of 7:30.  Right before Nerd Nite will be “Meet and Geek“.  Admission to that gets you admission to Nerd Nite.  So many nerdly possibilities . . .

The haps:

Philly Science Festival Nerd Nite

Thursday, April 26th

Doors at 7:30 / Show at 8:00

Frankford Hall / $5 cover

We have three great talks and two performances by the West Philadelphia Orchestra lined up for you:

“The End is Not Nigh: Fact and Fantasy in the Maya 2012 Phenomenon” by Simon Martin

We’ve all heard that the world is going to end in a fiery cataclysm, or that a galactic alignment is going to herald a new world order, or perhaps that they’ll be a rain of pink elephants come 21st, or 23rd, December 2012. Moreover, whatever it is that’s going to happen, the Ancient Maya predicted it because their calendar comes to shattering conclusion on that date. We can dismiss the ideas of self-declared experts of this “ends of days”–even though they can be fun to listen to–but the science questions in this are: How did we get to this?  What did the Ancient Maya actually believe? Using hieroglyphic texts–including some only recently unraveled–we can form a real picture of ancient Maya beliefs about time-reckoning and the cosmos, and the 2012 phenomenon they have inspired.

Bio: Simon Martin, Co-Curator of MAYA 2012: Lords of Time and Penn Museum American Section Associate Curator, is an expert on Maya writing and specializes in Classic Maya history and politics. His work has been featured in the New York Times, National Geographic Magazine, Science, and Archaeology Magazine. He appeared in the Nova television program “Cracking the Maya Code” in 2008 and has collaborated on shows for Discovery and the History Channel.