When you see those Back to School displays coming out, do you get hit with nostalgia? Excitement? Dread? No matter what you’re feeling, September’s Nerd Nite is the answer to your emotions!! Miss going to school? Great News! Nerd Nite is the perfect place to learn something new! Hate the start of the school year? Great News! Nerd Nite has the fun, laughs, and drinks of a summer weekend stuffed into a couple hours on a Thursday night! Join us on Thursday, September 11 at LIVE (102 S First St.) at 7pm (doors at 6:30) for JUST what you need!
Wait a minute! Is That Water on Mars? Nine celebrated announcements of water on Mars were made from 1975 to 2020. Why so many? Well…the first four were actually not water. What were they? What about the rest? Jennifer German is here to let us know!
Jennifer is a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador to Michigan, mother of two, software engineering, medical school educated, hopeless space geek.
We turn from space to medicine with Felix Foucher and DKA: A Bad Acid Trip. Has anyone ever told you that you’re too sweet? Well, what happens when they mean that literally? Tonight, let’s talk about one of the potential complications of diabetes and uncontrolled high blood sugars – diabetic ketoacidosis.
Felix is a former “lab rat” and current nurse, with a passion for patient education. In addition to his medical interests, he also has strong feelings about the Oxford comma, and he has a group of friends online who bond over nerdy things and grammar.
Finally, Natalia Knoblock will assure us that No, the young people today are not ruining the English language. Language change is not a sign of decay but a natural and essential part of how languages function. Throughout history, words and usages once condemned as “incorrect,” “stupid,” or “vulgar”— such as mob, ain’t, or even telephone — became accepted or even standard. New slang, borrowings, and innovations allow speakers to express ideas more effectively and vividly. Far from “ruining” language, this evolution demonstrates its vitality and adaptability. So, use this wonderful communicative tool unapologetically: you inherited it from previous generations already “ruined.”
Natalia is a professor at Saginaw Valley State University and has been researching and publishing on the issues of linguistic prejudice, language of conflict, verbal aggression etc. She is an editor of two scholarly volumes: Language of Conflict: Discourses of the Ukrainian Crisis with Bloomsbury and The Grammar of Hate: Morphosyntactic Features of Hateful, Aggressive, and Dehumanizing Discourse with Cambridge University Press. As a Fulbright scholar, Natalia taught a course on linguistic human rights at the National University of Columbia, and has served as a co-editor of the Journal of Language and Discrimination.