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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 2015
PAGE 3A
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Nerd Nite Lawrence to gather at new location
TRAVIS DIESING
@travis_diesing
"Be there and be square." That's the motto for Nerd Nite Lawrence, which will be held in a new location starting Wednesday, March 11 at 7:30 p.m.
The monthly social gathering that features three 20-minute lectures is moving to Maceli's on 10th and New Hampshire streets. This month's theme, "Smarty Party!" will focus on aspects of partying.
Presentations will cover noise-induced hearing loss with PhD student Aryn Kamerer, the history of St. Patrick's Day from Irishman Stephen Hassard and the art of brewing craft beer from Free State Brewery's Geoff Deman. Attendees pay $1 for entry and must be 21 years of age.
The move to Maceli's was prompted by the closing of Pachamamas, which hosted the Lawrence Nerd Nite since its founding in 2011. The new location will provide more space for the event's growing audiences.
Nerd Nite audiences have
hit Pachamamas' capacity of 150 people twice in the past, forcing people to be turned away. Graduate student and Nerd Nite co-boss Emily Fekete said about 40 people went to the first Nerd Nite compared to an average of 130 per month it sees now.
"... we're going to have food now. We're going to do like a little snack menu, so that'll be fun — and, you know, obviously drinks."
"We kind of toyed around with the idea of maybe having like a Nerd Nite salon, like in the style of like an old-school French 1700s salon where you could like mingle around and talk to people about nerdy things," Fekete said. "But I don't know if that will pan out or not. It was kind of an idea."
EMILY FEKETE
Nerd Nite co-boss
"We shouldn't ever have to turn anyone away, and we're going to have food now." Fekete said. "We're going to do like a little snack menu. So that'll be fun — and, you know, obviously drinks."
Travis Weller, one of the original founders of Nerd Nite Lawrence, said he hopes to see Nerd Nite continue to bring people together.
However, every once in a while, the Nerds try something different. Once per summer, they host Nerd Nite Shorts, a variation on the presentation model. Instead of three 20-minute presentations, they have 10 to 15 two-minute presentations.
Fekete said she and the board are also thinking of new possible formats for Nerd Nite at Maceli's.
The Nerd Nite format is generally consistent everywhere; Nerds can travel to other Nerd Nites in more than 80 cities around the world, pop in and feel right at home.
"My goal is for Nerd Nite to be a place where if you don't
know anybody, you can come and sit down at a group table with somebody, and the presentations give you something to chat about," Weller said.
Edited by Mitch Raznick
NICK UT/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Protestors rally in downtown Los Angeles against a police shooting of a homeless man Tuesday.
Homeless man dies a victim of three government mishaps
DAVID A. LIEB Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Mistakes and miscommunication by three governments on three continents over nearly 20 years led to a homeless man known as "Africa" being on Los Angeles' Skid Row, where he was shot by police after authorities say he became combative and appeared to reach for an officer's weapon.
The problems began in the late 1990s when French officials gave him a passport under what turned out to be a stolen name. He came to the U.S., robbed a bank and then was convicted and imprisoned under the same false name.
er anyone actually looked for him. He apparently was living the entire time on Skid Row, roughly 50 square blocks of liquor stores, warehouses, charitable missions and a few modest businesses. Los Angeles police Cmdr. Andrew Smith said the man had no previous arrests in Los Angeles.
U. S. immigration officials wanted to send him back to his native Cameroon, but that country never responded to requests to take him. So he was released from a halfway house last May, and U.S. probation officials lost track of him in November.
Authorities said the man tried to grab a rookie Los Angeles police officer's gun, prompting three other officers to shoot. Chief Charlie Beck said the officers had arrived to investigate a robbery report and the man refused to obey their commands and became combative.
It took three failed monthly check-ins for a warrant to be issued on a probation violation and it's unclear wheth-
The true name of the man, who was long known to authorities as Charley Saturin Robinet, remained a mystery Wednesday, three days after a violent death that was captured on a bystander's video and watched by millions.
Axei Cruau, France's consul general in Los Angeles, said the system for checking backgrounds was vastly different when the man duped French officials.
Using the false name, the man was believed to be a French citizen in 2000 when convicted of robbing a Wells Fargo branch in Los Angeles and pistol-whipping an employee in what he told authorities was an effort to pay for acting classes at the Beverly Hills Playhouse.
In 2013, as he was nearing his release from a federal prison in Rochester, Minn., French officials found the real Robinet in France, Cruau said. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement then determined the impostor actually was from Cameroon but said the African country ignored repeated requests for travel documents, hampering efforts to deport him.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that immigration authorities cannot detain people indefinitely just because no country will take them. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that the government would need a special reason to keep someone in custody after six months if deportation seemed unlikely in "the reasonably foreseeable fu-
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