Date: Wednesday March 5, 2014
Time: 8pm
Location: High Noon Saloon (map)
How to Fly
Summary: After thousands of years of trying to strap on wings and getting burned, humans finally learned how to f**n fly!! Gary will tell you how you too can fly. He will give you the scoop on general aviation and what’s involved in getting a pilot’s license and show some crazy stuff we can now do with flying machines (oh, and he’ll explain why planes can’t really fall from the sky).
Presenter bio: Gary Lupyan is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at UW-Madison. When he isn’t flying, he’s figuring out how language changes the human brain, which is fun and all, but it’s not flying.
Biology’s BFFs – A Colorful Tour of Symbiotic Systems
Summary: Tonight you’ll learn why all the biology you learned in college was WRONG… okay, not wrong, but way less cool than it could have been. Take a tour of symbiotic systems and the history behind their research (hint: females and communists need not apply). We’ll go micro to macro, first meeting the tiny critters that “live” in all of our cells and then the craziest underwater creature of ’em all, the photosynthetic sea slug. Trust me, GMO corn ain’t got nothin’ on these guys.
Bio: Julie has worn so many hats in the last 5 years that she’s had to hire her own personal haberdasher. Farmer, teaching assistant, complexity theorist, agroecologist, marine biologist (or, bane of hermit crabs), narrative inquirer and game-based learning researcher – she can’t tell you everything about any of them, but boy does she have some stories. Now a course coordinator for a large intro bio course at the UW, Julie has happily put her master’s thesis to rest at the bottom of several empty bottles of champagne.
Fun, Fun, Fun: Adventures In Mind Control with the CIA
Summary: Are you a person of flexible moral fiber? Do you have a general disdain for the homeless or destitute? Does the idea of slipping LSD into the coffee of your coworkers sound like a fun kind of Tuesday? Then take my hand, friend, and let us journey into the magical, wonderful world of the CIA in the 1950s and 60s! Here we’ll learn of the incredibly real and incredibly terrifying goal our government once had (and still might!) of developing and perfecting mind control for use on enemy combatants and anybody else that potentially got in the way. Under the innocent names of Project MKUltra and Project Artichoke (among others), the government tested and researched the effects of drugs, sensory deprivation, hypnosis, and oh so much more on unsuspecting members of the public until the project was shut down in 1973. Buckle your seat belts, because things are gonna get weird.
Presenter bio: Nick Knittel was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and completed his undergraduate in Film & Video Production at Ohio University. He came to Wisconsin following the completion of his masters degree in Creative Writing from Fairfield University in 2011. His first book of short stories entitled Good Things was published in October 2012. He also spent a very long time trying to make this bio fun and witty and then just gave up.