November 16th Nerd Nite: Bitcoins and Bird Bits
Happy unseasonably warm November, everyone! Our next Nerd Nite will indeed
be in NoHo at Union Station Banquets. We had a bit of a psychology trend
the past two months, but we’re shaking things up this month with a talk on
Bitcoin accompanied by a talk on bizarre animal genitalia. Both are sure to
make for some fun Thanksgiving conversation starters!
Please let us know if you’re coming by RSVP’ing on facebook.
Event Details
Monday, November 16th, 7:00PM
Union Station Banquets
125A Pleasant Street, Northampton (On the bike path)
$5, 21+
*From Stone Money to Cypherpunks: What does the Island of Yap have to do
with Bitcoin?*
Rai stones on the Island of Yap and crypto-currencies like Bitcoin
are two very different implementations of the shared illusion we call
“money.” Gavin will talk about where value comes from, and why sailing
canoes across the ocean worked as the basis for a monetary system.
Gavin Andresen was the lead maintainer of the Bitcoin open source software
project after it’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, disappeared. He is currently
a software developer at the MIT Digital Currency Initiative, and still
serves as the Chief Scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation. He began his
career working on 3D graphics software at Silicon Graphics Computer
Systems, and has founded or worked at several startups. Gavin lives and
works in Amherst.
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*Why are there so many freaky genitalia, and why do we care?*
Patricia Brennan will discuss the incredibly diversity and complexity of
genitalia, using some examples from her own research to try to answer the
question of why there are so many strange genital morphologies. She will
also talk about why anyone would be crazy enough to study such a weird
thing, and why such studies matter to scientific progress.
Dr. Patricia Brennan is a visiting lecturer at Mount Holyoke in the
Department of Biological Sciences. She is an expert on genital evolution
and topics related to sex and sexual selection. She obtained her PhD from
Cornell University in Neurobiology and Behavior, and did post-doctoral work
at Yale University and University of Sheffield in the UK. Her work has been
featured in multiple documentaries and textbooks, and has received lots of
press coverage.
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