Mar 12: Who Invented Beauty -- Madison Avenue or Charles Darwin ?

Saturday, March 12, 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm

Elisabeth Cornwell, Ph.D.

Executive Director of the U.S. branch
of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for
Reason and Science (RDFRS)

A public talk. Free. (Map) (Flyer)

Is beauty created by Madison Avenue ad men (and women), or is beauty a human universal as evolutionary psychologists argue? If it is a human universal — why? What are the adaptive advantages to clear skin, a shapely figure. Are there signals specific to what women want as opposed to what men want? Why do men and women differ in what they find attractive? What do they find similarly attractive? By looking at humans through the Darwinian lens of sexual selection, you will never look at another advertisement the same way again.

Dr. R. Elisabeth ‘Liz’ Cornwell, Ph.D., is the first Executive Director of the U.S. branch of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (RDFRS). She also has years of experience as a businesswoman, working in marketing and sales in the semiconductor industry in California. She decided, in her forties, to go back to university to do a doctorate in psychology, at the University of St Andrews, in Scotland. An evolutionary psychologist, her research has examined the underlying mechanisms of human mate selection, looking at such factors as hormones, pheromones, aging, asymmetry, and facial features. More recently she has been doing research at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, exploring the relationship of various psychological traits to religious belief, across the spectrum from strong theism to strong non-theism.

This talk will be at the National Science Foundation, Room 110, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA -- one block south of the Ballston-MU Metro stop. Enter NSF from the corner of 9th N & N Stuart Streets. www.nsf.gov/about/visit

Refreshments & Socializing until 3:45 pm

Everyone is welcome, members and non-members.
For more information: ncas@ncas.org www.ncas.org 301 587-3827

Feb 12 U.S. Science Education and Global Competitiveness

Saturday, Feb 12, 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm

Bruce A. Fuchs, Ph.D.
Director of the NIH Office of Science Education
A public talk. Free. (Map) (Flyer)
National Science Foundation, Room 110 
4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA 


In December of last year the results of the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) were released and, once again, U.S. students performed poorly in science and math compared to students from many other countries. We are going to look at some of the international student data and talk about what we can, and cannot, conclude from these types of studies. Some of the common questions addressed will be ...

• Are these results “real”? 
• Aren’t we comparing “all” our kids to a tiny elite in the nations that outperform us? 
• There can’t be anything to really worry about, right? 
• After all, if we are so dumb then why are we so rich? Oops!

Dr. Fuchs is responsible for monitoring a range of science education policy issues and providing advice to NIH leadership. He also directs the creation of a series of K-12 science education curriculum supplements that highlight the medical research findings of the NIH. The NIH Curriculum Supplement Series is designed to meet teacher’s educational goals as outlined in the National Science Education Standards and is available free to teachers across the nation. Teachers have requested the seventeen titles currently in the series more than 380,000 times. The office also actively creates innovative science and career education Web resources, such as the LifeWorks career exploration site, accessible to teachers and students across the nation. These resources are available at http://science.education.nih.gov

Refreshments & Socializing until 3:45 pm

Ballston Metro. Enter at corner of 9th N. & N. Stuart Streets.

Jan 22 & 26 Two Cosmology Authors at Politics & Prose

Two cosmology authors will be talking about their books at Politics and Prose this month:

Jan. 22: Richard Panek - The 4% Universe
http://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/richard-panek-4-universe

Jan. 26: Brian Greene - The Hidden Reality
http://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/brian-greene-hidden-reality

Jan 15 WASH DC: Fred Edwords Retrospective on the 2010 Museum of Natural History Human Origins Exhibit

Saturday, January 15th, 2:00 p.m. 
Chevy Chase Library, 5625 Connecticut Ave. N.W., Washington, DC
Speaker: Fred Edwords 
Topic: Human Origins: When Religion Makes Science Museums Nervous

As the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC opened its new David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins in March 2010, the science staff braced itself for a possible onslaught of criticism from religious conservatives. After all, the fossil evidence for human evolution has grown stunningly robust over the past few decades; so any honest presentation is bound to upset certain sensibilities. In a preemptive move anticipating such criticism, the Human Origins Initiative associated with the new exhibit launched the Broader Social Impacts Committee. Its purpose was to address the social implications, including those affecting religion. And on this committee were placed representatives of all the major world religions. Fred Edwords was invited to represent humanism and, in accepting, participated in a public panel discussion at the museum right after the exhibit opened.

In his talk for WASH MDC, Fred will tell of his adventures on the committee and give some of the historic background of creationist interference with American museum exhibits on evolution and the responses that have been necessary. Fred is a long-time defender of evolutionary science against the onslaughts of creationists. In 1980 he founded the Creation/Evolution journal to answer creationist arguments and went on the debate circuit. He served 15 years as executive director of the American Humanist Association, 12 years as editor of the Humanist magazine, and is now national director of the United Coalition of Reason. He continues his work with the Broader Social Impacts Committee at the museum.

Jan 8 Reporters: Fair, Balanced and Gullible?

Saturday, Jan 8, 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm

Bob Hirshon , Senior Project Director in
the Directorate for Education and Human
Resources Programs at the American
Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS) and Principal Investigator for
the NSF-supported Kinetic City project

A public talk. Free.
Refreshments & Socializing until 3:45

National Science Foundation, Room 110 
4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA (Map) (Flyer)

The job of a journalist is to investigate news stories to report the facts, as well as they can be discerned, to the public. As such, reporters should be our nation’s leading skeptics. Yet newspapers are rife with stories of clearly fraudulent claims, reported as matter of fact, no different than sports scores and weather reports. Bob Hirshon rips the lid off this sensational story, emerging from his years as a mole within the labyrinth of journalistic secret societies, revealing the dark secrets no one has ever dared tell — until now! 

Bob Hirshon is Senior Project Director in the Directorate for Education and Human Resources Programs at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He is Principal Investigator for the NSF-supported Kinetic City project for children, featuring the Codie Award winning, web-based Kinetic City After School program, Peabody Award-winning Kinetic City Super Crew radio show, and McGraw-Hill book series. Hirshon hosts Science Update, a daily radio feature now in its 23rd year on the air. He also created and oversees the Science NetLinks project for K-12 science teachers, with nearly 400,000 user sessions per month.