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Exercise your brain -- Quest lectures are back!
Whistler Public Library is proud to announce the Quest Lecture Series for 2009-2010! Our series this year will be an abbreviated one due to the fact that we’ll be otherwise engaged in February and March; however, we will still host evenings in November, December and January that are guaranteed to make you use your brain.
The first lecture will feature Ryan Derby-Talbot, Mathematics Tutor from Quest. In “The Shape of the Universe?,” Dr. Derby-Talbot will use mathematical ideas from topology (the study of spaces) to speculate on what possible shapes the universe could be. No mathematical background is required; in fact, many pictures (and very few numbers) will be used to take you on a tour of these possible shapes, highlighting some of the rather curious alternatives. This event will take place at 7:00 pm this Monday, November 30.
December’s lecture is entitled “Rigorous Mortis: The Posthumous Life of V.I. Lenin.” What is the connection between the embalmed body of Lenin and the totalitarian power of Stalin? This lecture explores the relationship between the 1922 Communist Party and Lenin: not just his philosophy and political legacy, but his actual dead body! Join Kiersten Burge-Hendrix, Rhetoric Programme Coordinator at Quest for this intriguing topic. The date is Wednesday, December 16 and the time is 7:00 pm.
On Tuesday, January 12 at 7:00 pm, we’ll shift to the environmental arena with Nobi Suzuki, a Quest Life Sciences Tutor. In recent years, we have all become increasingly aware of global climate change, but our understanding of regional climactic variation is quite limited. The patterns of snowpack in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon and Washington have been the subject of a long-term study, providing information on the potential implications of regional climate variations. In “Potential Effects of Regional Climate Variation on Aquatic and Terrestrial Ecosystems,” Dr. Suzuki will discuss potential effects on amphibians and salmon, as well as aquatic and forest habitats.
Quest University is a private, secular, not-for-profit university, located in the Garibaldi Highlands of Squamish. Quest welcomed its inaugural class in September 2007. To learn more about our three lecturers, visit the Quest University website at http://www.questu.ca and click on “Meet Our Faculty.” For further information about the WPL/Quest University Lecture Series, please contact Nadine White, Public Services Librarian at 604-935-8433 x8725 or nwhite@whistlerlibrary.ca.
Lauren Stara, Library Director