Cafe Sci Orlando announcements for 2008-09
Chad MILLER
on Marble Ave., instead of in Stardust's small parking lot; details
are below. / It should be cooler inside, this time.
Contents:
- Introduction
- September 3 meeting
--- Topic & speaker *
--- Directions and Parking Instructions *
- Help us thrive
- "Tell Me a Story", Cal Tech commencement speech audio by Krulwich *
- New ical/webcal feed *
(asterisk = change since last announcement)
## Introduction ##
Café Scientifique is a worldwide grassroots effort to raise science
literacy by bringing science out of the lab and into the pub. It
started in England about ten years ago, modeled after the French /Café
Philosophique/, and has since spread to several dozen cities.
Meetings are free to attend, and we love questions.
A typical meeting runs about an hour. A scientific expert presents
some topic for about 20 to 30 minutes, we have a short break to
cogitate and order refreshments, and then we ask questions, discuss,
and generally have a good time.
## September café: On Water Pollution ##
For the month of September, we have a cafe meeting on Wednesday,
September 3rd, at 7pm.
Water pollution: what is causing it, what can be done about it, and
what clean-up strategies are economically and scientifically feasible.
Dr. Cherie Geiger is an Associate Professor and Associate Chair of
Chemistry at UCF, and past president of the Florida Academy of
Sciences. Among her areas of current research are new catalyst systems
for removing and destroying PCBs from painted surfaces, soils, and
sediments; catalysts for removing heavy metals from fresh-water and
marine soils and sediments; and synthesis of new screening aerosols
that don't harm the environment. She has won several awards in the
past two years including: The Federal laboratory Consortium
Commercialization Award, NASA Invention of the Year Award, Government
Commercialization of the Year Award, Induction into the Space Act Hall
of Fame, and Induction as one of the 2007 Intel Environmental
Laureates in the Tech Museum of Innovation.
### Directions ###
Our cafe is held at Stardust Video and Coffee, which is in the area
north of Colonial (SR50) and east of Mills Ave (17/92), but south of
Winter Park.
- *From Mills*, drive east on Virginia Dr, past Leu Gardens, following
the curves -- Virginia, Forest, Corrine. At a the traffic light for
Winter Park Road, turn left/north.
- *From Colonial*, drive north on Bennett Road, toward Baldwin Park.
At the traffic light for Corrine Dr, turn left/west and at the traffic
light for Winter Park Road, turn right/north.
From that intersection, Stardust is immediately on the left. 1842 E
Winter Park Rd, Orlando, FL. (407) 623-3393 Beware that some GPS
maps send you too far north, to W Winter Park Rd. Stardust is only 50
feet from Corrine Rd.
### Parking Instructions ###
The parking lot will probably be crowded, so please park on Marble
Ave, which is next to (north, away from Corrine) Stardust's modest
parking lot . [ http://bit.ly/117cja ]
You may see tables reading "Reserved for Café Scientifique", and that
means it's for you and me, not for some other special sub-group. C-S
doesn't have an exclusive monopoly on the venue, and the signs help
notify patrons of what we expect to do, not keep spaces for notional
V.I.P.s.
## Help us grow and thrive! ##
We need you to help us keep a healthy number of people attending and
stoking our dialectic fires. You can help us in two ways in the next
week: Print out a PDF flier and post it so that others can see it. [
http://bit.ly/cafesciorl-pdf-2008-09 ] Or, tell others about us. It
may be easiest to point them to Cafe Sci Orlando's web site,
cafesciorl.com .
Also, Chad loves folksonomies, and recommends using the tag
"cafesciorl" to refer to this Café Scientifique. It's already in use
to pull photos from Flickr on the cafe web site. Take a look at our
web site to see it in action. Use that tag on your own on the 'Net
when referring to us.
## "Tell Me a Story" speech ##
WNYC's radio show Radio Lab [ http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/ ]
has a sideband podcast, and a recent episode included the commencement
speech of Robert Krulwich at the California Institute of Technology
graduation. Krulwich extolled the virtues of using narrative to
convey ideas in science. Human brains love narrative, and in the
memetic marketplace, unless science uses this powerful vehicle, it
will continue to lag behind popular fictional stories.
The podcast episode is of course free. 27 minutes, MP3 [
http://bit.ly/2uMUch ] or via web browser [ http://bit.ly/1fYrMY ] .
## New ical/webcal feed ##
If you use a calendaring program on your computer or phone, you can
keep track of our schedule automatically with this easy-to-type webcal
feed: [ http://bit.ly/cafesciorl-cal ]