Nerd Nite Philly

Posts Tagged ‘weird science’

Hey Nerds! We’re at a bit of a milestone here in Philly– the 50th edition of nerd-based entertainment in the city of brotherly love! How awesome is that? We’re celebrating in two ways: first, on July 1 we’ll be presenting a series of talks in conjunction with the American Philosophical Society and, second, on July 9 we’ll be celebrating 5 YEARS in Philly with a party. We hope to see you at both!

So what’s up for July 1?

Bernard Brown, “Spermataphores, Orgies, and Chin Grinding”

Philly herper Bernard Brown will explore the hot cold-blooded sex lives of our local salamanders, including the spring ‘breeding aggregations’ of spotted salamanders, newt leg locks, and the seductive dance of the diminutive redback salamander.

About Bernard: Bernard Brown has been herping Philadelphia for over 10 years. He has written about natural history topics for Grid Magazine, is the Philadelphia County Coordinator for the Pennsylvania Amphibian and Reptile Survey (PARS), and co-hosts the Urban Wildlife podcast.

Jane Boyd, “Bears in the Backyard, Plants in the Attic: Collecting at the American Philosophical Society”

Before Philadelphia was chock-full of museums and libraries, there was a rectangular redbrick building next to Independence Hall where all the cool stuff went. During the late 1700s and early 1800s, people all over the country sent strange and interesting things to the “ingenious and curious men” at the American Philosophical Society. Find out about Thomas Jefferson’s live grizzly bears, Lewis and Clark’s pressed plant specimens, Charles Willson Peale’s mastodon skeleton, and other remarkable items that filled Philosophical Hall.

About Jane: Dr. Jane E. Boyd gets around town as an independent curator and museum consultant specializing in interdisciplinary exhibitions and projects, on topics ranging from natural history to Civil War medicine to chemistry sets. She has worked for the APS Museum and Library, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Chemical Heritage Foundation, the Mütter Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Wagner Free Institute of Science. More on her website at www.jane-e-boyd.com.

Steve Alt, “So You Think You Know Plants…”

…But you probably don’t, at least not about their origins. While certain founders were hard at work in the business of creating a country, other colonists were exploring the natural history of the New World. With thousands of new species to investigate and a substantial market in the import and export of exotic plants, there was a lot of green to be made in the greenhouse. This talk will explore the world of agriculture and horticulture in the 18th century.

About Steve: Steve Alt started farming in Plainsboro, NJ when he was just a wee lad. When the malls came to cover the strawberry and potato fields of NJ, Steve moved to botanical gardens and eventually trained in horticulture at the Morris Arboretum. He has a BA in history from the University of Pennsylvania, serves as a museum guide at the American Philosophical Society Museum, and has been in the landscaping and horticulture business in Chestnut Hill for 16 years.

What else can you expect? Lauren Duguid is going to show us all that you can play some pretty sweet music using a saw!

When: Wednesday, July 1

What time: Doors open at 4pm. Show starts at 7:30pm

How much: $5 cover gets you admission plus happy hour specials all night

Where: Frankford Hall, 1210 Frankford Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19125

Be there and be square!

Nerd Nite Philly

Are you fine folks ready for the final Nerd Nite of 2014? We sure hope so, since we have an extra special lineup planned. And you won’t be able to get another dose of nerdy action at Frankford Hall until February! We’ll be at Frankford Hall the first Wednesday of the month so mark your calendars now: February 4, March 4, April 1, you get the picture.

Now without further ado, the topics for the final 2014 Nerd Nite:

“From Picked to Pickled: True Tales of the Mütter Museum” by Anna Dhody

“Charles Dickens and the Haunting of Christmas” by Edward Pettit

For a time in the 19th Century, when readers bought the Christmas issue of a magazine, they did not expect to be regaled with tales of good will to all men and visions of sugar plumb fairies. Instead they expected it to contain a tale or two that would chill their very souls— a tale they would read aloud around their hearth on Christmas Eve with the wind whistling down their chimneys and the world outside still and silent.  Ghosts and spirits would rise from the pages and haunt their dreams.  And the man responsible for the Christmas Ghost Story tradition: Charles Dickens.

Edward G Pettit is a Philadelphia writer, professor, book reviewer, film presenter, public lecturer  and all around literary provocateur.  He is known as the Philly Poe Guy, but also recently served as the Charles Dickens Ambassador for the Free Library of Philadelphia’s yearlong Bicentenary celebration of the author’s birth in 2012 and wrote the Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion’s 2013 murder mystery play, Twisted, in which he played Dickens.  Pettit will be reading one of Dickens’s Christmas books, The Cricket on the Hearth at the Maxwell Mansion on December 13.

And Christina Love presents “Join the DarkSide: Dark Matter Matters”

Dark matter makes up over 80% of all the matter in the universe. We don’t know what it is. We can indirectly see dark matter by the gravity that it produces, but we have yet to directly detect it. There are three ways that researchers are currently looking for dark matter: particle detectors, particle accelerators, and excess particles.

Bio: Christina Love received her PhD from Temple University where her work focused on the direct detection of dark matter with the DarkSide Collaboration and she completed her postdoctoral work at the Transportation Security Laboratory working on the detection of explosives for aviation security. She is currently an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Physics at Drexel University where she works on education and outreach. For example, she is the founder of Start Talking Science, an event where researchers present non technical posters to the general public.

And a special holiday treat for everyone: Nerd Nite veteran Ben Leach will be mixing up our usual entertainment segment with a special Price Is Right style contest featuring the 1984 Sears Wish Book! It’s going to be incredible retro fun!

The logistics:

Wednesday, December 3
Doors open at 4pm. Show starts at 7:30pm
$5 cover gets you admission plus happy hour specials all night
Frankford Hall, 1210 Frankford Ave.
Philadelphia, PA 19125

Yo Nerds!

Are you ready for the October edition of Nerd Nite Philly? 
We have a little something for everyone ranging from the history of beer to the science of being scared 
and a wild card with a talk about conjoined twins by an expert from the Mutter Museum. But there’s more! 
Friend of Nerd Nite, David Darwin, will be once again performing his One Man Sideshow act for 
our entertainment.

Without further ado, the discussions at hand:

"Beer, Brats, and Bavaria: A History of Oktoberfest" by John Ceccatti

The first Oktoberfest was celebrated in 1810 to honor the marriage of the Bavarian Crown Prince. The early
festivities included a horse race and a display of local agricultural products. Munich brewers joined the
event later in the 19th century, although the malty amber lager they served likely emerged much earlier 
in response to the Reinheitsgebot, the 16th-century Bavarian brewing law that prohibited brewing during 
the warm summer months. To comply, Bavarians brewed a stronger beer in March – Märzen in German – that was 
stored in cool caves and would be drinkable all the way to October. As this year’s Oktoberfest draws to 
a close, it seemed like an opportune moment to explore the connection between beer and history in Bavaria. 
 
About John: John Ceccatti, a lecturer in the history of science at the University of Pennsylvania, studies 
the history of the German brewing industry. Although he has visited Oktoberfest in the past, he would rather 
enjoy German gemütlichkeit in Munich’s famed englischer Garten or at the Andechs monastery in the 
Bavarian countryside.


Tom Knabe will talk about The Science of Fear: Why Haunted Houses Scare Us

Millions of people attend haunted attractions every year for the thrill of being scared. But what causes 
us to be fearfully startled? Tom Knabe, Creative Director for Fright Factory haunted attraction in 
South Philadelphia, has been in the industry for 9+ years and will go over many of the classic and modern 
scenarios haunted attractions use to maximize fear levels.


"Conjoined Twins: Together Forever?" by Marcy Engleman

They say twins are close, but conjoined twins take that to the extreme. Monsters, freaks of nature, 
abominations: all things people have thought about conjoined, or “Siamese” twins. How do conjoined twins 
happen? This talk will highlight these amazing people throughout history, their origins, lives, and for 
some, separation.

About Marcy: Marcy Engleman is the Museum Educator at the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of 
Philadelphia. She is proudly a committee member of the Museum Educators Roundtable. Marcy graduated from Penn 
State University with a BS in Wildlife and Fisheries Science and at home, she maintains her own personal zoo 
of reptiles and a bird. Marcy is the mother of twin girls.

Plus Entertainment by David Darwin!

The logistics:
Wednesday, October 1
Doors open at 4pm. Show starts at 7:30pm
$5 cover gets you happy hour specials all night plus admission to this fantastic night
Frankford Hall, 1210 Frankford Ave.
Philadelphia, PA 19125

Be there and be square!

Love,
The Nerd Nite Philly Squad

Hey-Yo Nerds!

“The Dead Alive: The Victorian Fear of Premature Burial” by Megan Rosenbloom

Librarian Megan Rosenbloom, director of Death Salon, takes you on an exploration of the Victorian obsession with premature burial based on books from the era, and how those hilariously lurid books inspired the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Megan will delve into some of the purported tales of live burial, the entrepreneurs who made safety coffins, the societies formed to protect against this primal fear, and how this fear trickles down into our modern culture.

Bio: Megan Rosenbloom is a medical librarian at the University of Southern California, where she manages the medical rare book collection. Megan is the director of Death Salon, an event that brings together intellectuals, artists, and death professionals to share their work in the culture of mortality and mourning. Death Salon New York will be held at Morbid Anatomy Museum in October 2015. Megan is currently traveling and doing research for her first book in medical library special collections.

“Alcohol Induced Science” by Cole Smith

“Eat Bugs, What?” By Isa Betancourt

A year ago the United Nations stated that we ought to be munching and crunching on more 6 legged critters. Say what? For many people, the FDA limit of 4 insect larvae per 1lb of frozen berries adds more than enough bugs to their diet. We’ll explore why we should increase the number of bugs in our diet. Let’s flip that around… Why aren’t we eating bugs? About 2 billion people on the planet eat bugs normally and our primate relatives chow down bugs. So what happened to us?

Yo nerds!

Wednesday, May 14th is our next Nerd Nite, and this time around we’ve got what is probably the most diverse lineup we have ever had. See for yourself!:

Jennifer Vess, “Presidential Hair: Collect Them All!”

The Academy of Natural Sciences has a unique collection in the archives that includes locks of hair from the first twelve Presidents of the United States.  Why?  For centuries locks of hair played a role in remembrance and mourning, and eventually science.  The talk will (hopefully) take everyone beyond the ‘ew’ factor felt by most people today concerning human hair no longer attached to a human head and get into the weird and wonderful world of souvenirs, Victorian memorials and microscopes.

Bio: Jennifer Vess is the Brooke Dolan Archivist at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.  She has spent the last ten years in the world of museums moving from museum education to collections care and exhibition development.

Simon Joseph, “Bear Flags and Bad Puns”

From the man who brought you the the History of and behind the Flag(s) of Germany comes a new ill-advised venture into the world of Vexillology. In this talk, Simon Joseph will travel the world looking at interesting flags that you probably have never heard of. Well… at least travel Europe and North America. And maybe some boring flags. And maybe some that you have heard of. At the very least, there’ll be bears involved… somehow.

Bio: Simon M. “the Cannibal” Joseph has never invaded a country for profit or personal gain, and definitely did not start the Russo-Japanese War. A merry-maker and gregarious fellow, he’s wasted many bar napkins explaining what mixed-member proportional representation is, showing how to draw the flag of the UK, and creating terrible coats of arms (with blazon!) for unsuspecting victims.

Chris Cummins, “The Secret World of Spider-Man”

Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can…which apparently sometimes involves using a giant robot to fight monsters and utilizing his super powers to help a Yeti who loves to steal ice cream return home. Confused? You aren’t the only one! In this speech, Chris Cummins will talk about some of Spider-Man’s weirdest adventures in comic books and on television. He will also take a look at some of the strangest Spidey merchandise you’ve never seen before.

Bio: Chris Cummins is a writer and comic book historian whose work regularly appears on Den of Geek US, Geekadelphia, and Topless Robot. He’s also the creator of the websites Hibernation Sickness and What’s Dave Kendall Wearing? and the host of the upcoming Sci-Fi Explosion event at PhilaMOCA. Most importantly, he’s also one of the Nerd Nite Philly co-bosses. Whee!

Plus music by Sidewalk Atlas!

Wednesday, May 14.

Doors open at 4pm. Show starts at 7:30pm. $5.

Frankford Hall

1210 Frankford Ave.

Philadelphia, PA 19125

215-634-3338