Posts Tagged ‘Oxytocin’

Nerd Nite Brighton #10: 20/3/14

Slide1“Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battlestation!”

Emperor Palpatine

Palpatine may as well have been talking about Nerd Nite Brighton because we are indeed armed and operational for our next evening on Thursday March 20th. Though we’re a bit more pleasant than the Sith.

This month:

 

1. The Amoral Molecule – Anil Seth

Anil K Seth is a bit of a Yoda-like legend. He is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex and Co-Director and Co-Founder of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, one of the leading research groups in this area internationally. Research in his group integrates consciousness science with computational and cognitive neuroscience, ultimately to connect the basic science of consciousness with new approaches to clinical diagnosis and intervention. He is Editor-in-Chief of Frontiers in Consciousness Research and has published more than 100 academic papers in a variety of fields. He is the Editor and Co-Author of ’30 Second Brain’ (Ivy Press, 2014) and contributes regularly to the New Scientist, The Guardian, and other print and broadcast media. Tonight he’ll be telling us about the cuddle drug and trust hormone oxytocin.

 

2.Practical privacy in an era of mass surveillance (or Who’s watching your ass?) – Chris Pinchen

Chris Pinchen is co-founder of the Chokepoint Project, a non-profit organisation that collects, analyses and reports on data relating to network neutrality and civil rights in the digital domain. He was a resident at the Lighthouse Studio in Brighton focusing on surveillance, censorship & privacy issues. Chris recently organised Brighton CryptoFestival, has been involved with CryptoParties in Berlin, Luxembourg and Brighton and contributed to the CryptoParty Handbook. He is a a member of the supporters council of the Open Rights Group and organises locally in Brighton.

Blog: cataspanglish, Twitter: @cataspanglish , PGP: 0x2C3196C5

 

3. Should the Death Star be a Listed Building? – Duncan Phillips 

Our Grand Moff Tarkin for tonight is Duncan Phillips. Despite being unable to speak fluent Latin or operate any type of TV recording device, Duncan has so far managed to stay alive long enough to become a Building Surveyor with expertise in Listed Buildings. His Nerd status is firmly proven by having become Chartered in two unrelated subjects and having established an Institute which now has 2000 members. In his spare time he is passionate about music, particularly early 1970’s Genesis, and is an endurance athlete currently doing 100 mile ultra-marathons and previously having done Double Iron Man triathlon, and other ridiculous stuff such as trying to swim the Channel, after having first run 87 miles from London. He is the only person ever to have completed the London to Brighton Veteran Car Race by running it, instead of driving. Duncan loves a good curry and Old Thumper ale from Ringwoods.His talk tonight will be about none other than the Death Star. The word ‘awesome’ was invented solely for the purpose of describing it. Buildings are Listed for a reason. Currently, English Heritage doesn’t recognise ‘being awesome’ as one of those reasons but perhaps one day it will. In the meantime, there are other criteria which need to be met and this presentation will assess whether the Death Star meets the standards required.

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Free cake, music, quizzing, etc as per usual.

Tickets £4 for regular nerds and £3 for NUS/65+ nerds – Tickets are on sale from here and we strongly advise buying in advance! We very sadly had to raise shields and turn people away last month 🙁

Remember to pop by our facebook page and follow us on twitter

Upstairs at the Caroline of Brunswick

See you there!