Profs and Pints Metro Baltimore

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “The Emerging World Order,” on global shifts in power and what they portend, with John Rennie Short, geographer and professor emeritus of public policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and author of Geopolitics: Making Sense of a Changing World.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-emerging-world .]

We are witnessing a transformation in the geopolitical world order and, with it, renewed superpower rivalry and heightened security concerns in hotspots such as the Middle East and the South China Sea.

Why is all of this occurring? Who will gain advantage and who will lose out?

Get a big-picture understanding of recent geopolitical upheaval and what may be ahead with John Rennie Short, a scholar of national security issues who has written several acclaimed books on world trends and given several excellent Profs and Pints talks focused on geopolitical affairs.

He’ll walk us through the most important changes in the geopolitical world order since the end of the Cold War, focusing especially on 21st Century trends that appear likely to usher in increased instability. Among the developments he’ll cover: The emergence of China as a competing superpower. A more assertive Russia’s flexing of muscle against former Soviet republics. The slow but strengthening emergence of a shift in Europe’s focus from economic integration to geopolitical security, with Sweden and Finland’s entering NATO in response to rising fears of Russian aggression.

We’ll examine the implications of our own nation’s withdrawal from its commitment as a global leader and adoption of a more insular foreign policy focused on immediate economic interests.

We’ll contemplate potential future scenarios like the rise of a China-Russia alliance to rival the U.S., and we’ll tackle questions such as whether a more security-minded Europe will become an independent source of power. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 5 pm. The talk starts at 6:30.)

Image: A Risk board as photographed by Ben Stephenson (Creative Commons).

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “Robots as Ocean Explorers,” a look at what new technology is teaching us about the seas, with James Bellingham, professor of exploration robotics at Johns Hopkins University, executive director of its Institute for Assured Autonomy, and co-author of How Are Marine Robots Shaping Our Future?

[Doors open at 5. The talk starts at 6:30. The room is open seating. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-robots-ocean-explorers ]

The ocean is Earth’s last great frontier, still largely unexplored despite being vital to our climate, economy, and security.

Today, however, that’s changing, thanks to fleets of intelligent marine robots that map the seafloor, track shifting currents, monitor ecosystems, and operate where no human can survive.

Such robots are not just tools of discovery. They’re redefining our relationship with the planet.

Join James Bellingham, a pioneer in ocean robotics, for an in-depth look at how marine robots are transforming science, industry, and even the Navy. He’ll describe how ocean robots are expanding our understanding of the climate and planetary systems, illuminating the hidden dynamics that drive weather and sustain life on Earth, and playing an important role in our efforts to derive food and energy from the seas.

You’ll learn how the Navy has long been a quiet engine of ocean innovation, and how its investments in ocean research helped create the platforms and technologies that now underpin everything from climate studies to undersea infrastructure.

For more than 30 years, Dr. Bellingham has been a global leader in the development of small, high-performance autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), resulting in a class of systems that are now widely used within the military, industry, and science communities. He has been instrumental in innovations for ocean observing and has spent considerable time at sea, leading two dozen AUV expeditions in locations across the Antarctic, North Atlantic, Mediterranean, South Pacific, and Arctic.

His talk will tell the story of how, from the depths of our own oceans to the hidden seas of distant worlds, robots are helping us explore, protect, and perhaps even find company in the vast blue that surrounds us. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: The submersible robot ROV Hercules at work on the ocean floor (Mountains in the Sea Research Team; the IFE Crew; and NOAA/OAR/OER).

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “A Crash Course on Critical Thinking,” on ways to train your brain to better sort what’s true from what’s false, with Andrew Bridges, adjunct professor of philosophy at University of Maryland, Baltimore County and longtime teacher of courses on critical thinking and ethics.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-critical-thinking .]

Why do smart people believe ‘obviously’ wrong things? What makes one belief better than another?

Andy Bridges has spent more than a decade teaching college students the intellectual skills needed to deal with the fundamental tension between their inherent desire to firmly understand their world and the fuzzy, uncomfortably vague nature of the reality around them.

If you sometimes find your head spinning as you try to figure out what’s true in watching the news, scrolling through social media, or simply living your life, you’ll benefit from coming to the Perch in Federal Hill to let Professor Bridges help you hone your critical thinking skills. Even if you already think of yourself as a critical thinker, we all could benefit from a refresher course sometimes.

We’ll start with the idea that beliefs differ in quality and consider what makes some beliefs “better” than others. We’ll talk about beliefs based on evidence versus beliefs based on impulse, beliefs open to revision versus beliefs immune to it, precisely defined beliefs versus beliefs too vague to be tested. You’ll be invited to consider how you acquired the beliefs you hold today and what has made you change your mind about certain things.

From there we’ll venture into the thicket of language and consider how many public debates are actually fights over definitions and, for example, the meaning of terms such as “justice,” “terrorism,” “artificial intelligence,” “fake news,” and even “human.” You’ll learn how words are not magic containers of meaning but carry social, emotional, and ideological baggage, and how disagreements in the absence of shared definitions just turn into noise.

Finally, we’ll spend time discussing the cognitive traps we fall into—not because we’re dumb, but because we’re human. Confirmation bias, the Straw Man Fallacy, the False Dilemma, and the Appeal to Emotion all will make an appearance at the bar.

We may never have perfect beliefs, but there’s value in the pursuit of them by making a daily habit of trying to understand better, speak more clearly, listen more deeply, and remain open to change. The real value to this talk might be in what you’ll learn down the road. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Bar doors open at 5 pm. The talk starts at 6:30).

Image: Part of “The Thinker in The Gates of Hell” by François Auguste René Rodin (From a photo by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra / Wikimedia Commons).

Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “A Night at the Opera House,” on the classic design and mass construction of a performance space found throughout the world, with Laura Vasilyeva, associate professor of music history at Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Institute and author of Opera and the Built Environment.

[Doors open at 5. The talk starts at 6:30. The room is open seating. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/baltimore-opera-house ]

Even those who have never entered a classic Italian opera house, or teatro all’italiana, are likely to have some familiarity with its iconic look and feel. Its architectural form has been described as one of the most stable ever designed for musical performance, so successful that it was reproduced thousands of times in the 1800s alone and exists on five continents.

What is it about this building design that gives it such appeal and staying power?

Hear that question tackled by Laura Vasilyeva, a researcher of nineteenth-century Italian opera who has extensively studied the spaces where such performances are staged.

She’ll discuss the features that make the interior of opera houses—the auditoria where hundreds to thousands of audience members assemble—so memorable. We’ll look at the vast distance between their floor and decorated ceiling, the hundreds of boxes stacked around their perimeter, the darkness of their auditoria, and their rarefied atmospheres.

We’ll especially consider the red fabrics that line their walls and seats. Red initially became the color of choice for them because it was deemed best for imbuing female—and above all, white—faces with character and emotion. Its use took hold to such an extent that it is now almost unthinkable to decorate a theater in another color, to the point that even movie theaters tend to be red in honor of this model.

You’ll learn how these venues have attracted innovators who furthered their association with the deluxe and uncommon. Thomas Edison, for example, used the Teatro alla Scala in Milan to showcase networked electrical power for the first time in Europe, illuminating it with thousands of bulbs.

Professor Vasilyeva will make the case that the Italian opera house, as medium and environment, determined what it meant to listen, to watch, to feel. At the same time, even as their auditoria have felt like self-enclosed worlds, there has been no way to separate them from outside forces such as environmental catastrophes, geopolitics, and the rise and fall of empires. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID.)

Image: The auditorium and stage of the Palais Garnier in Paris. (Photo by Naoya Ikeda / Wikimedia Commons.)