When: Monday, February 22nd 7-9 PM
What: Restoring Coyote Valley
Where: Atlas Cafe, 3049 20th St @ Alabama St. in the Mission District
The Deets:
Coyote Valley, an area of unprotected open space located in south San Jose, is a critical wildlife linkage corridor connecting the Santa Cruz mountains and the Diablo range. This area has been slated twice for major development and is still unprotected. If major development were to occur in this lush and open valley, it would sever this priceless connection doing irreparable harm to species and cause possible extinctions. Coyote Valley is a biodiversity hotspot, home to over 170 species of bird and 24 species of mammal, including the fragile Santa Cruz mountain lion population.
In an effort to learn more about this area and to prove to officials its value and need for preservation, De Anza College faculty and students created a field research program called the Coyote Valley Landscape Institute. The project allowed students with little to no background in field science to go out, collect scientifically sound data and use it to implement change in their community. Please join us to view “Coyote Valley: Connecting People, Connecting Wildlife” a film that tells the story of why Coyote Valley is so important to wildlife and to the youth of the South Bay.
Video about Coyote Valley:
Coyote Valley: Connecting People, Connecting Wildlife from Coyote Valley Landscape Inst. on Vimeo.
In this irreverent and illuminating book, acclaimed writer and scientist Leonard Mlodinow shows us how randomness, change, and probability reveal a tremendous amount about our daily lives, and how we misunderstand the significance of everything from a casual conversation to a major financial setback. As a result, successes and failures in life are often attributed to clear and obvious cases, when in actuality they are more profoundly influenced by chance.
In Galileo’s Daughter, Dava Sobel tells the story of the famous scientist and his illegitimate daughter, Sister Maria Celeste. Sobel bases her book on 124 surviving letters to the scientist from the nun, whom Galileo described as “a woman of exquisite mind, singular goodness, and tenderly attached to me.”
Seth Shostak…you are my new hero. What an event on Monday night! There was an incredible blend of science and humanity represented, as we continue to search for an answer to the question: “Are We Alone?”
40 years of the scientific search has been fruitless so far, but that does not daunt the hopes of our crowd last night. Almost everyone believed life exists out there, though not everyone was convinced we’ll find something considering we’ve only been broadcasting for 200 years. In either case, the search remains important as this seems to poke at a fundamental curiosity most of us share.
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Down to a Science - Seth Shostak Part 1 [63:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Down to a Science - Seth Shostak Part 2 [48:27m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Local food has long ruled the roost here in the Bay Area. Slow Food Nation was started here, The Omnivore’s Dilemma was first posed here, and the farm to table dinners reign supreme. But the next evolution in local food is foraged food.
The idea of hunting for wild food of the land is crazy for someone like myself…I haven’t even adjusted to the farmers markets at this point. But when I ask Iso Rabins, founder of ForageSF, why eat wild…his first answer isn’t about climate change or connection to the land…it’s taste.
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You know the deal with Down to a Science, the cafes are meant to serve as a launching point for a conversation…at home, at work, on the MUNI….wherever.
SETI@Home is the posterchild for getting peeps involved in scientific research, at least while your screen saver is active. The project started back in 1999 to help explore the huge amount of data (requires teraflop/s of processing power)….the solution posed was a distributed computing concept. After a few attempts, SETI decided upon a background processing client that could be installed on a home computer.
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