Join us for Nerd Nite 3! We’re geeking out on the intersection of Science and Poetry, software so smart it knows what you’re saying better than you do, and the best rock band of all time — wait for it…. wait for it… The Osmonds?

Thursday, June 30th @8pm
Carly’s Bistro, 128 E Roosevelt just off the lightrail line  in Phoenix

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Presentation 1:

Dialogues between Science and Literature by Anna Marti-Subirana

Alice Fulton’s poetry stands as one of the most representative examples of intellectual exchange between contemporary experimental poetics and modern science — as represented by quantum physics, chaos theory and complexity theory. Alice Fulton constructs her poems as chaotic systems. Fractals, geometric patterns that repeat identically at various scales, are structural devices crucial to Fulton’s fractal poetics.

Fulton’s poetry of emergence uses paradigms of complexity theory and Darwinism, and examines individual and collective emotions and behavioral patterns from the perspective of emergence and emergent patterns. Emergent patterns — patterns that emerge in complex systems — and other paradigms of complexity theory allow Fulton to develop a poetics aimed
to engage the reader in a consciousness-raising act of poetry.

Anna Martí-Subirana was born and raised in Barcelona (Spain) where she got her PhD in Molecular Biology and Genetics. Upon her arrival in the USA, she conducted research in Genetics as a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University and The University of Iowa Medical School. Anna moved to Arizona in 1998 and has taught Biology ever since. Anna is currently completing the final requirements of the PhD program in American and English Literature at Arizona State University. Her area of study is American Contemporary Poetry.

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Presentation 2:

Rhetoristics: The Story, the Idea, and the Development of Audience Modeling Software by Peter J. Wegner

The Ancient Greeks knew it, the Romans knew it, and Politicians and Lawyers know it. Understanding how your language impacts an audience is ultimately powerful. Now, with audience modeling software, this understanding is taken to levels never dreamed of by Aristotle or Cicero. Peter J. Wegner will tell the story of the idea and development of his new software, Rhetoristics: Audience Modeling Software.

Peter J. Wegner is an adventurer, thinker, and inventor – his pursuits and dreams have taken him across the country, the globe, and the mind. He is a PhD Candidate in Rhetoric & Linguistics at Arizona State University, an instructor of business writing, and a 2011-12 winner of the Edson Entrepreneur Initiative for his new company, Mercury Innovative. He received his Bachelor of Science from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and a Masters from Northern Arizona University. His latest pursuit is to bring to reality and market his Rhetoristics Software.

Presentation 3:

You wanted it! You Got it! The Hottest Band in the Land! The Osmonds? by Serene Dominic

Serene Dominic, noted rock historian, musician and champion of under-appreciated rock bands (Join his 24/7 Club at bendirecords.com/24 and see how deep this appreciation goes) will make a case that in 1975 the hottest band in the land was not KISS but the Osmonds, five brothers from Provo, Utah who didn’t let things like pre-marital sex and drugs get in the way of their global conquest of shrieking little girls! And boys!

Album by album, Serene will make the case that not only did the Osmonds create the boy-band model that continues to be exploited to this day, but that they also single-handedly invented hair metal with their Crazy Horses album and set their own Book of Mormon to music 35 years before those South Park guys did.

 

Nerd Nite. Be There and Be Square.