Miss the show? Check out a recap of the night from the Girls of Geek!
EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT:
This show is now a DOUBLE FEATURE with local comedy game show Uncalled Four. Get a discount on BOTH shows when you buy your tickets online ahead of time!
Friday, June 26, Nerd Nite Denver celebrates our first birthday! We’ve put it on a Friday so you can get wastey-faced on a socially acceptable weekday. Isn’t that thoughtful?!
June’s show will take a crack at truly understanding Schrödinger, horned dinosaurs reveal their secrets, and financial concepts shed light on the economics of exercise. Plus, a special treat! Renowned nerd rock band H2Awesome will show up to ROCK. YOUR. FACE. OFF.
Grab your tickets ASAP!
- When: Friday, June 26 – doors at 6:30pm, show at 7:00pm
- Where: The Oriental Theater
- Tickets: $5 online, $8 at the door – 18+
Full Lineup:
The Life [or not] and Times of Schrödinger’s Cat
by Andrew Novick
A little physics discussion for people wondering about Erwin Schrödinger and why he didn’t know if his cat was alive or not – or did he? We’ll also take a look at an art installation featuring Schrödinger’s feisty feline. For a creature with a questionable existence, that damn cat is everywhere!
Speaker creds: Andrew Novick, Nerd Nite alumnus, is a Denver native and a prolific provocateur of wackiness in town. Whether as a performer of music and/or PowerPoint presentations or running themed events (PeepsBQ, Andrew Novick’s X-Treme Pancake Breakfast, Japanese Medical Punk Dance Party and Surgery Dinner), he tries to keep himself (and others!) busy. He is also an electrical engineer (measuring atomic clocks!) and an avid collector. Andrew has been called the “world’s most recreational photographer” – snapping photos to fit into the countless themes of his visual vernacular. Past art shows include (but are not limited to): Candy, Cuts and Bruises (~2000) and Super-Relative (with Samuel Schimek, 2010) and his recent shows include Japan Popsplosion! (2104) and Unstill Life (2014), both of which showed digital prints on canvas of quickly curated shots of brightly-colored subjects. Andrew’s latest collection is FOOD FACE. Above all else, Andrew strives to feature things all around us that are fun and interesting and usually provoke conversation and new ideas. Oh! And he is also co-teaching a college class about FUN!
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What big horns you have: A discussion of horny…er…horned dinosaurs
by Cyrus Green
Ceratopsians are a group of dinosaurs defined by their large cranial horns and decorated frills. Most people know of triceratops (some of us even have one as a tattoo!), but there are so many more! To date there are over 25 species of ceratopsians. Though these magnificent animals lived for only 20 million years (a short time geologically), and lived in a very small area (known only from North America), they were able to diversify extensively. We will discuss the many different species, how they are related, what we know about them, and the many questions still surrounding their evolution, biology and ecology. Who doesn’t love dinosaurs?!
Speaker creds: Cyrus Green was an English major in a former life until a class on dinosaurs his senior year of undergrad changed everything. After graduation he went right back to school and received his second Bachelors in Earth Science. He has been volunteering with the Denver Museum of Nature & Science since 2006 and has logged countless hours in the field and lab working with dinosaurs. He has also worked with the State of Colorado and the National Park Service preparing paleontological surveys. In August he will begin a new adventure as a graduate student at Ft. Hays University in Kansas.
Running the numbers: The economics of exercise
by Aaron Roppolo
With the plethora of fitness books, blogs, and podcasts available today, one would assume that attaining your fitness goals is a highly complicated endeavor. Nonsense. By utilizing simple personal finance concepts – credit cards, reward points, piggy banks – this presentation will lead the audience through thought exercises aimed at making complicated exercise science concepts (eg: oxygen debt, neuromuscular adaptations, periodization) easily relatable.
Speaker creds: Aaron is passionate about progress – personal, professional, physical – but above all societal. He feels that being healthy is a revolutionary act that, beyond expanding enjoyment of your life, has economic and environmental impacts.
He earned a master’s degree in Exercise Science from UCF, but for him fitness is a passion not a way of life. He is also engaged in investing, craft cocktails, emerging and disruptive technologies, local food, and science fiction literature. Aaron is currently working on in a social entrepreneurship project – keep an eye out for a movement aimed at raising awareness of and conversation around sexual violence.
Take a moment to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for up-to-the-minute updates and fun facts, and be the first to know event details by signing up for our email list (in the bar to the right).
Want to be a Nerd Nite speaker? Do you know someone who should be? Let us know!
Thanks to everyone who came out to the show! Check out photos from the event on Facebook.
April 23, improv comes with life lessons; ancient cities spill their environmental secrets; and we find out if you could survive the apocalypse.
- When: Thursday, April 23 – doors at 6:30pm, show at 7:00pm
- Where: The Oriental Theater
- Tickets: $5 online, $8 at the door – 18+
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Full Lineup:
Please F*$k Up! How Improv Turns Mistakes Into Gifts
by Claire Slattery
Most of us feel that mistakes are failures to be avoided at all costs. But what if mistakes were actually powerful tools for accessing a deeper level of creativity and connection? What if our fear of being ‘wrong’, of seeming unprepared, was the barrier to our own creative potential? In her talk, Claire discusses how improv creates a uniquely supportive environment which allows mistakes to be spontaneous moments of vulnerability, connection, surprise, and discovery. Part scientific exploration, part humorous romp, Claire hopes you leave making more mistakes, feeling less afraid, and with one foot in the door of an improv class.
Speaker creds: Claire is passionate about sharing the joys and benefits of improvisation as an actor on stage and screen, and with companies, as a corporate improv consultant. Claire first discovered improv as a freshperson at Stanford University, where she received her B.A. in Drama and Communication. Since graduation, Claire has acted, improvised, and taught with San Francisco’s top theatre companies and improv troupes. She has also consulted with some of the country’s most innovative companies. Find her on Twitter at SlatteryClaire or online at claireslattery.com.
Hug a Tree So Civilization Doesn’t Collapse: An investigation of environmental abuse in the ancient world and how Mother Nature fought back
by Dylan Green
- “Climate change is our most urgent, number one priority right now.” -Bill Nye
- “The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” -Robert Swan
- “I’m going to kill you, your family, herds of livestock and maybe stab myself for good measure so that our crops don’t fail and the gods don’t murder us.” -Any number of Greeks, Mayans, or other people with hazardous environmental beliefs (probably)
As the Spanish were carving up the New World to serve their economic needs, the conquistadors heard a legend of a lost city in the jungles of the Yucatan. While it wasn’t a famed city of gold, it stood out as a myth until its discovery in 1848. People marveled at this one city–Tikal–that was abandoned long before Europeans devastated the American continents. Across the globe on the western coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) there lay another city, a victim of a similar ruinous end. Ephesus was a cultural epicenter of classical Greece and Rome for centuries, but after hundreds of years of comfortable habitation, the city was abandoned and left to turn into a tourist attraction. In his presentation, Dylan Green will attempt to explain how the people of both Tikal and Ephesus orchestrated their demise through environmental degradation, abuse, and offsetting the careful homeostasis of the natural world. Perhaps most importantly, Green will show how such actions can still be devastating to modern populations around the world.
Speaker creds: Dylan Green is a graduate student at the University of Colorado and a recent graduate from Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Missouri. Yes, it exists. Look it up. While currently studying anthropology, Green is a self-proclaimed student of history for life, constantly reimagining the lives of people long passed and thinking about the golden (pre-Pawn Stars) age of the History Channel. For some perspective, this is a guy who gets genuinely upset when you mention the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. In his spare time, Green enjoys reading, hiking, discussing/admiring all things Tolkien related, frequenting the Colorado bar scene with his graduate cohort, and attempting to exchange resumes for scraps of food on the 16th Street Mall. (Resumes available upon request. Will write papers for food/beer.)
Could You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse?
by Matthew Barrieau
We as a people must know how to defend ourselves in case of a zombie apocalypse! Zombies have become a major part of pop culture in the last few decades. From the beginning with George Romero’s and Lucio Fulci’s genre-setting zombies to Zack Snyder’s fast zombies, there are so many different kinds of undead that you need to know how to defend yourself against. Using information from several well-known guides and tips, we will discuss the various ways to ensure our survival from the undead.
Speaker creds: “My name is Matthew Barrieau and I am a Remote Programmer on contract for the Department of Homeland Security. I was born and raised in Greenville, SC and moved to Denver in September 2005. Shortly thereafter I joined the US Army as an Intelligence Analyst and have served at the US Army Space and Missile Defense in Colorado Springs, CO and the MNF-Iraq Joint Personnel Recovery Center in Baghdad. During my time with the military, I was a land navigation trainer and instructed service members on proper survival and evasion techniques in case of capture.”
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Take a moment to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for up-to-the-minute updates and fun facts, and be the first to know event details by signing up for our email list (in the bar to the right).
Want to be a Nerd Nite speaker? Or know someone who should be? Let us know!