Nerd Nite East Bay: Polyandrous Tamarins, Roller Coaster Design, Merritt College Protests

White Hills, Black Flats: Black Studies and the Struggle for Community Control of Merritt College

Disappointed with the failures of integration and the racist curricula and hiring practices of the 1960s, Black students took over the administration building at Oakland’s Merritt College on March 15, 1971 to protest the relocation of the campus from the city’s flatlands to the hills. Merritt holds significance for the Black Studies, Black Campus, and Black Power Movements as home to the first Black Studies Department and home of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Learn about Oakland history and education politics in the 1950s and 60s and how protesting students sought complete community control of Merritt College as an independent and reimagined “Huey P. Newton College” that would serve the needs of the adjacent community.

Speaker: Rasheed Shabazz

The Long Looping History of Roller Coaster Design

When the first Gravity Switchback Car drifted down the wooden slopes of Coney Island at a stunning six miles per hour, it began an American obsession with roller coasters that use speed and gravity for our entertainment. Hear how inventions like upstop wheels led to the Golden Age of roller coasters in the 1920s (including the Santa Cruz Giant Dipper), learn how California innovations like the corkscrew and modern inverted loop rescued and reinvigorated iconic amusements parks in the 1970s, and discover how today’s Megacoasters push fun from high speed physics to the not quite breaking point.

Speaker: Nicholas Laschkewitsch

Tamarin Females Make a (Helpful) Monkey Out Of Males

Female tamarin monkeys (probably) got tired of terrible Tinder dates and formed a unique cooperative polyandrous society where females are the undisputed alphas and multiple males are the primary caregivers. Discover how these primates broke the Bateman curve and the unorthodox theories of next generation inheritance that ensure male investment in the care of offspring. See how twinning, group augmentation and genetic chimeras led these tiny monkeys to have weird (and maybe better) sex, and learn about the rare human societies that do it the same way.

Speaker: Gustav “Tavi” Steinhardt, UC Berkeley