HNY, Nerds.  2018 has been a wild ride and I hope you’ve all come out okay on the other side.  We’re gearing up for our fifth season, currently booking speakers for March and beyond, but I’d like to take a moment to recognize all the weird shit I learned at 2018 Nerd Nites:

  • E. coli were discovered in the mid 1880s by Theodore Escherich, who was trying to discover the cause of diarrhea in children.
  • The only surefire way to survive a horror movie is to not smoke cigarettes.
  • Crocodiles have a permanently erect penis.
  • Waveshapes determine timbre; how those waves hit our ears lets us know if we’re listening to a guitar, a piano, or a saxophone.
  • Bodybuilders benefit immensely from kegel exercises because they prevent prolapsing.
  • “Glen” is an English word for ‘glacially formed valley’. Proof Distillery almost got sued for naming their whiskey Glen Fargo, even though the Red River Valley is the biggest Glen in the world.
  • Stir your drinks that are spirit forward. Shake when you need to force lots of different flavors into the spirit itself.
  • Holograms. Snapchat. Pokémon Go. All are examples of mixed reality technology.
  • Albert Hoffman did his thesis on the structure of chitin. He also discovered LSD.
  • “Intelligence is a force that maximizes the future freedom action. “-Alex Wissner-Gross
  • Science has confirmed that people of different belief structures have stereotypes regarding other religions.
  • Science also confirmed that arts and crafts can increase your happiness.
  • The guy who wrote the environmental impact statement for FM Diversion won an award because he wrote it so quickly.
  • Penises are referred to as Dicks due to a man named Derrick, who was a very famous hangman in old timey London, when executions were public events and widely attended.  His name became slang for the erections his “clients” got due to asphyxiation- eventually “Derrick” was shortened to “Dick”.
  • Fish bladders and egg whites are often used to filter wines.
  • Vantablack works on a microscopic level by bouncing photons off multiple angles on the surface of an object, until almost all the photons are absorbed & only 0.05% are reflected back as visible light.

This list both cracks me up and makes me immensely proud- thank you to everyone that attended, spoke at, or otherwise supported FNN in 2018, and I can’t wait to do it all again this year.  See you at our 2019 kickoff on Wednesday, January 16th, at Fargo Billiards and Gastropub– details will be along soon.  Until then, y’all keep warm and stay classy.

Yours in Nerdery,

Hope, Karen, and Tracy

2019 NN Dates