After a fairly long COVID hiatus, we brought Nerd Nite Oki back, and with a bang!
This year (2022), June 10th and once again in collaboration with our incredible hosts, Esparza’s Tacos and Coffee. Even more awesome; in recognition of Pride Month, we teamed up with the excellent members of the OIST LGBTQ+ Allies group to present this Nerd Nite as part of their 2022 Pride Month calendar and celebrations!!!
As part of our COVID considerations we now limiting the number of attendees to Nerd Nite Okinawa. The event was free, but registrations opened one week ahead of the event, via email. First come, first served! For future Nerd Nites, we are sticking with this format, except that registration moved to an automated online form.
The event was a great success! The crowd came out in style (i.e. they carpooled like good kids) and the house was full up!
Our speakers, Gear, Chris and Jann, did such an excellent job, opening our minds, challenging what we know. Gear’s talk covered how white, male scientists under the colonial heteropatriarchy both knowingly and unknowingly biased reporting of early scientific discoveries and distorted public understanding of the natural world, which is filled with queer behaviour in almost every group of animals.
Gear: “One of the few animals that don’t display same-sex sexual behaviour are bears. Ironically, there is no Bear Community in the bear community.” Pic Credit – Lucy Dickie
Chris fascinated us with the evolution of non-binary quantum information changing definitions and public understanding. Jann discussed explained that heteronomatively painted over “Finding Nemo” was a lost opportunity to teach us the actual, factual diversity of fish biology.
With so many thanks to Nerd Nite Okinawa: The 2022 Pride Reboot Speakers Pic Credit – Chris Campbell
Whew! So much awesomeness in one Night! Massive thanks to Jann, who agreed to speak at the last possible moment, for managing registrations and even helping folks to obtain lift sharing from OIST.
Please, remember to reach out to the LGBTQ+ Allies at OIST if you would like to collaborate with them, and do some inter-university, inter-organization events and meetups!!! You can contact them at most definitely not least, thank you from the bottom of the deepest oceans to the incredible Esparza’s Tacos and Coffee Staff and family, without whom Nerd Nite Okinawa would not have happened; Mark Esparza, for his endless kindness and who reminded us to not forget this, Meg Barnett , event’s organizer at Esparza’s who welcomed and supported us every step of the way, HIC (Hikaru Sunagawa), restaurant manager, help with everything technical (he is also the artist behind the beautiful Platycerium Exhibit) and finally Chef Wunna (Kyaw Wunna Tan) for the excellent menu!!!
Nerd Nerd Okinawa April 12th saw some great speakers!
Left to right; Dr. Mindy Otis, Dr. Karen Stirret and Dr. Guillaume Vares
Dr. Otis, who describes herself as a Travelling Professor, was up first. In spite of having flown back, that very day, from Boston and having had almost no sleep for the past two days, she gave a great talk on how concussions and various types of brain damage affect our thinking and processing. She used props to show how people with certain types of brain damage can struggle with their visual perception and she rocked a certain Brain Hat.
Where have I seen that look before?
Deeply nerdy conversation
Dr. Stirret, also a US citizen, gave us a fascinating talk on CrisprCas9 technologies and how gene editing can be used to target genetic diseases and be used to to enhance unusual or useful gene features of extremophile microbes, which is where her research and teaching specialties lie.
Yes Dr. Stirret, please bring back the dinosaurs.
Dr. Vares, originally from France, talked about radiation, not only his contribution to an emergency hotline after Fukushima and the Great Tsunami of 2011, but also his current work, targeting cancers with radiation therapy and high energy radiation beams. He ended the night on a powerful reminder, for why we must continue the search for knowledge:
Fear should not hold us back from trying to understand more.
Chaos at Fukushima and a world that is still dependent on Nuclear Power.
It was a packed house but we managed to spot some more nerdy and Okinawa themed fashions.
Couples who Nerd Nite together… are nerds.
Nerd Nite Okinawa is taking a break during the month of May, but the organisers are bringing it all back, new and improved, June 14th – Watch this Space!
