It’s summertime, and the Meetups are breezy! Come on over to Black Rock for a super-casual hangout with fellow like-minded folks. There’s no formal speaker or or topic, just good conversation.
There’s no Skeptical Salon book for this month, because OUR HOSTS ARE MOVING!
Instead, we’re having one last hurrah at Skeptic Tower. Same bat time, same bat channel, bring your favorite snack or beverage to share. Come hang out with your favorite fans of science and critical thinking, and get one last photo off the balcony.
There may be boxes! Possibly a rogue dishwasher! There will be dogs! There will be merriment! There is definitely short notice, but we’re still gonna do the thing!
Illinois Science Council invites you to the second annual Chicago Science Festival — a celebration of the wow-inspiring, mind-expanding, human-benefitting awesomeness that is S.T.E.M (science, technology, engineering & math) research in the Chicago area. All events require tickets/registration, generally $10 in advance/$15 day of. All-Day passes give you access to all talks on Saturday, May 14 and are $30 in advance/$40 day of. (If all-day passes sell out, no individual tickets will be sold.) Advance ticket sales end at 6:00pm May 13, then get them at the door. Chicago Skeptics can get $10 off the all-day pass with the promo code SKEPTIC!
Here’s what the festival has in store for you:
Friday, May 13, 3:30-6pm
This opening event of the 2016 Chicago Science Festival will feature a series of talks in which speakers will discuss how cutting-edge research can help address some of the biggest intellectual and societal challenges, and what the University of Chicago is doing to support bold scientific risk-taking. UChicago faculty from psychology, neuroscience, and physics will present their breakthrough ideas, and Monika Bickert, Head of Facebook’s Global Policy, will discuss how collaborations with research universities is crucial for solving pressing social issues. Friday’s event is free but space is limited. Registration is required.
Saturday, May 14, 10:00am - 5:00pm
Saturday includes a full day of fascinating topics with engaging speakers and a free demo area. (Read the full listing with descriptions here.) You can purchase all-day passes giving you access to ALL talks and demos on May 14 or purchase tickets for individual speakers. (If all-day passes sell out, no individual tickets will be sold.) Advance ticket sales end at 6:00pm May 13, then get them at the door. Topics include:
Circadian Rhythms, Sleep, and Your Health - What? How? And When?
Martha Hotz Vitaterna (Northwestern U) 10 – 11:00am
Chicago’s Urban Wildlife – What you might encounter in your neighborhood
Liza Lehrer (Lincoln Park Zoo) 10-11:00am
Saving Monarchs and More – Trials, tribulations, and citizen science of tracking and saving species
Doug Turon (Nature Museum) 11am – 12noon
The How & Why of Tracking the Invisible, Elusive Neutrino - from the sun, distant galaxies and particle accelerators
Anne Schukraft (Fermilab) 11am – 12noon
Your Brain on Psychotropic Drugs
Richard J. Miller (Northwestern U) 12noon – 1:00pm
The End of Water As We Know It
Seth Darling (Argonne Lab) 1 – 2:00pm
Black Holes & Gravitational Waves – Why a massive galactic occurrence requires mind-blowingly precise detection
Shane Larson (Adler & Northwestern U) 1 – 2:00pm
Microscopy and the Mystery of Pablo Picasso’s Paints
Volker Rose (Argonne Lab) 2 – 3:00pm
Deep Ocean Research Adventure – Discovering life waaaay down under
Janet Voight (Field Museum) 2 – 3:00pm
Holding Science in Your Hands – 3D printing at the interface of art and research
Allan Drummond (UChicago) 3 – 4:00pm
The Science and Art of Risk Taking – Courage, Caution, and Free Will
Kayt Sukel (Author) & Moran Cerf (Northwestern U) 3 – 4:00pm
The Physics of “Game of Thrones”
Becky Thompson (American Physical Society) 4 – 5:00pm
Hands-on Demo stations (which are free) to include:
Get your tickets at http://chicagosciencefest.org/, and use the promo code SKEPTIC to get $10 off a Saturday all-day pass!
There are decades, millennia even, of speculation about human nature from both philosophy and religion, especially with regards to our unique cognitive abilities. We are at a point in time of our species development and science advancement that we can make some more enlightened hypotheses about how our unique cognition evolved. The info and the ideas and eventually the answers will come from archaeology, paleo-anthropology neuroscience, developmental and cognitive psychology.
Is it a coincidence that intensive observational hunting of large mammals and Cave Art occur at the same time 40,000 years ago? Why are depictions of humans not portrayed with the same skill as those of animals? From simple inscribed lines (70,000 ya) to detail of animal form, posture and behavior, Dr. William Zingrone will present a hypothesis about the development of human cognition through evolutionary means from the point of view of developmental psychology.
Dr. Zingrone is a Developmental Psychologist with passionate research interests in Consciousness and Cognitive Evolution. “My driving motivation is to dispel outdated religious based ideas about human nature that are ingrained in the folk beliefs of our modern culture. Father, devoted husband in his 61st year, hockey fan, information sponge, music lover, out to give religion the drubbing it deserves.“
As many skeptics know, rampant disinformation distorts the science on anthropogenic global warming, but did you know the disinformation campaign extends to the economics of climate change as well? What can economics really teach us about designing climate policy? Will mitigating cost us, or save us? A careful look at the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and other recent reports, along with a look at the consensus among economists, can help us separate science from fiction on the economics of climate change mitigation.
About our speaker:
Emily Church is a long-time skeptic and PhD candidate in neuroscience who has suffered for years from an obsession with climate change economics and climate policy.
This month’s book will be Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens by Susan A. Clancy.
From amazon.com:
They are tiny. They are tall. They are gray. They are green. They survey our world with enormous glowing eyes. To conduct their shocking experiments, they creep in at night to carry humans off to their spaceships. Yet there is no evidence that they exist at all. So how could anyone believe he or she was abducted by aliens? Or want to believe it?
To answer these questions, psychologist Susan Clancy interviewed and evaluated “abductees”-old and young, male and female, religious and agnostic. She listened closely to their stories-how they struggled to explain something strange in their remembered experience, how abduction seemed plausible, and how, having suspected abduction, they began to recollect it, aided by suggestion and hypnosis.
Clancy argues that abductees are sane and intelligent people who have unwittingly created vivid false memories from a toxic mix of nightmares, culturally available texts (abduction reports began only after stories of extraterrestrials appeared in films and on TV), and a powerful drive for meaning that science is unable to satisfy. For them, otherworldly terror can become a transforming, even inspiring experience. “Being abducted,” writes Clancy, “may be a baptism in the new religion of this millennium.” This book is not only a subtle exploration of the workings of memory, but a sensitive inquiry into the nature of belief.
Want to vote for next month’s book? Want to change your votes from before? Do it here!
Want to make a suggestion to add to the list? Send it to us here.
Why? A lot of the top-ranked choices on our list right now are great, but loooong, so we’re looking for shorter selections that we can reasonably hope folks will have time to read over a few weeks. We’re all busy!
A short book for short notice! For March, we’ll be reading Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder by Lawrence Weschler. It looks like a fun read and there are many illustrations, with tons of notes at the back for those who love that sort of detail. Bring a snack or drinks to share!
from amazon.com:
“Pronged ants, horned humans, a landscape carved on a fruit pit-some of the displays in David Wilson’s Museum of Jurassic Technology are hoaxes. But which ones? As he guides readers through an intellectual hall of mirrors, Lawrence Weschler revisits the 16th-century “wonder cabinets” that were the first museums and compels readers to examine the imaginative origins of both art and science. Illustrations.”
Voting is now open for April’s book! Vote here.
Please note that Jennifer and Jeff now have two lovely pups, Adler and Tully! I think they’re quite charming, but they can be put away if folks are allergic or phobic. I also understand that the narwhal has been replaced. 🙂
Emotions are messy, disorganized and don’t help us make rational decisions. Right? Then why do we have them? Scientists have gone through great lengths to study emotions including electrical shocks to the face, torturing dogs, botox injections, conversations with cannibals, use of the postal service, and inappropriate use of a No.2 pencil. What are the findings of all this research? Presentation may even include an adorable picture of a baby gorilla taking a bath, but that is just to get an emotional reaction from the audience.
About our speaker: Michael Maloney is an emotional guy who has combined his work in mental health and clinical/behavioral health research to become a Research Study Counselor.
February’s presentation will be from Corina Schusheim:
“My talk will be an inquiry about whether the Robert Malthus Theory of Population Growth applies to today’s society. Does a high rate population growth cause poverty, or does poverty cause a high rate of population growth? Is there a relationship between a society’s level of prosperity and its population growth? I will present examples of neo-Malthusian themes in literature, and contemporary media. Then we will conclude with predictions from demographers and economists. A bibliography will be provided of source materials on this topic.”
Graphic novel time! We’ll be reading Epileptic, by David B. Lots of copies of this one at the Chicago Public Library!
Bring a snack to share and/or a beverage of your choice… we usually have a pretty good spread thanks to everyone bringing goodies.
(I just realized that our book-voting list has been closed since the end of November, so I’m going rogue on this month’s selection.)
From amazon.com:
“Hailed by The Comics Journal as one of Europe’s most important and innovative comics artists, David B. has created a masterpiece in Epileptic, his stunning and emotionally resonant autobiography about growing up with an epileptic brother. Epileptic gathers together and makes available in English for the first time all six volumes of the internationally acclaimed graphic work.
David B. was born Pierre-François Beauchard in a small town near Orléans, France. He spent an idyllic early childhood playing with the neighborhood kids and, along with his older brother, Jean-Christophe, ganging up on his little sister, Florence. But their lives changed abruptly when Jean-Christophe was struck with epilepsy at age eleven. In search of a cure, their parents dragged the family to acupuncturists and magnetic therapists, to mediums and macrobiotic communes. But every new cure ended in disappointment as Jean-Christophe, after brief periods of remission, would only get worse.
Angry at his brother for abandoning him and at all the quacks who offered them false hope, Pierre-François learned to cope by drawing fantastically elaborate battle scenes, creating images that provide a fascinating window into his interior life. An honest and horrifying portrait of the disease and of the pain and fear it sowed in the family, Epileptic is also a moving depiction of one family’s intricate history. Through flashbacks, we are introduced to the stories of Pierre-François’s grandparents and we relive his grandfathers’ experiences in both World Wars. We follow Pierre-François through his childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, all the while charting his complicated relationship with his brother and Jean-Christophe”s losing battle with epilepsy. Illustrated with beautiful and striking black-and-white images, Epileptic is as astonishing, intimate, and heartbreaking as the best literary memoir.”
Do you want to help choose our next book? Make your suggestions in the comments, or vote on our existing list o’ goodness here.