HELIX & BAASICS PRESENT: Monster Happy Hour

Monsters are everywhere. They lurk in the shadows and stalk our imagination. They terrorize and fascinate us. But what, exactly, are they? Scholars differ on whether the word is derived from the Latin verb monstrare, "to show," or from monere, "to warn." Either way, as horror theorist John Halberstam writes, monsters are "meaning machines." They embody our preoccupations and anxieties, and they reflect our morals. This is as true of the "real world" humans and creatures we label monstrous - sharks, serial killers, and "freaks" - as it is of the classic monsters that reside in our fictions, the vampires, zombies, and bogeymen. Join us for a glass of wine and some great conversation about all things monster! Free drinks :)

6:00 - 6:45 pm:

Insatiable flies

Feed transgenic flies that, having had a group of neurons in their brain chronically inactivated, don't know when to stop.  

6:45 - 7:20 pm:

Presentations/performances by:

John Hafernik, PhD  - ZomBees Take Flight in the Dead of Night

John is the co-founder of ZomBee Watch, a citizen science project that has been featured by Scientific American, Discovery Channel, KQED, and many other media outlets.

George Pfau – Zombies, Identified

George's artwork deals with the notion of the human body as a permeable entity, in-flux with its surroundings. Stemming from his writing, drawing, and graduate thesis work at the California College of Arts, he locates these idea within the historical and pop-cultural framework of "zombies."

Georgeann Sack 

It turns our Georgeann is not just the Outreach Director for the Berkeley Science Review, but also likes to write and sing songs about monsters. 

Also including documentation of Joe DeRisi, PhD, and his malaria research team at UCSF/Howard Hughes Medical Institute

All evening:

Monsters in Your Mouth

Kiss a petri dish and come back later for an intimate look at the bacteria that live in your mouth.