Events

STS Costume Contest 2023

Events

This year, the STS program ran its first-ever Halloween costume contest. Dressing up for Halloween is a perfect chance for students to show off some creativity and possibly even highlight some connections between science/technology and society! Some of our faculty dressed up, too – we had a pirate, a fancy lumberjack, Introverty the 8th Dwarf, and Goth Judy Jetson.

We had a number of really excellent entries in the contest, and we’re happy to share the winners below (except for one person, Jace Williams, who received an honorable mention but who has not given permission to use his image – if that changes, the post will be updated accordingly).

We have plans for another costume contest next Halloween, so start thinking about costume ideas for 2024!

A young woman in a Renaissance-style lace-front dress with tall boots and a headpiece. Most notably, she is also wearing wide black-and-red wings.
First place: Pari Bailey, as a Renaissance fairy.
Person on stilts wearing long patched jeans, a ragged brown jacket and plaid shirt, and a bucket hat. They are also wearing a rope and hook belt and a chain hanging from their neck, with makeup as if their face is stitched together.
Second place: Gaven Williams, as a creepy scarecrow (on stilts!).
Headshot of a student wearing a Grubby mascot head but with the teeth modified to be very pointy and too many.
Third place: Jaxxen Cheney, as Nightmare Grubby.
Young man posing in the forest with Renaissance-style clothing - a lace-up shirt, a cape, and leather wristbands.
Honorable Mention: Caleb Noe
Young man wearing a steampunk-style outfit featuring a black coat with tails, a chain wallet, and goggles around his neck.
Honorable Mention: Will Eby

High-Tech Spirits and Ghost Tours

Events, history, horror

By Laura Kremmel

The 2020 film Host (dir. Rob Savage) was recently crowned the scariest horror movie according to a scientific study that measured the heart rates of 250 viewers watching 40 different films. As someone who watches a lot of horror and is usually not affected by it, I had to turn on all the lights in my house after watching it alone on a tablet. Why is it so scary? It’s all in the technology.

Host (2020)

The film is about a séance held by five friends and a medium, all in different locations and connected to each other not only through the medium leading them or their shared concentration but also through Zoom, a program we’ve all come to rely on to make us feel connected to each other. As the trailer asks, what if it connects us with something else?

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Ada Lovelace: Victorian Computer Programmer

Events

On Tuesday, October 19, from 6-7 pm (Mountain time), Erica Haugtvedt (Assistant Professor of Humanities) and Duana Abata (Professor of Mechanical Engineering) will present as part of the STEAM Café series. This free presentation will take place at Hay Camp Brewing Company in downtown Rapid City (601 Kansas City St.) and will also be available to watch via livestream on Zoom. The talk will also be posted to the SD Mines YouTube channel and the SD Mines Facebook page after the event.

Long before today’s pervasive digital computers, the first computer programmer was arguably Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron). An exceptional mathematician, she captured the essence of Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, which was conceptualized by Babbage but was not constructed in his lifetime. In 1843, she wrote an algorithm to accompany Babbage’s Engine. Her contribution to calculate Bernoulli numbers with the Analytical Engine has since been successfully translated, with minor changes, to the C++ programming language. Dr. Erica Haugtvedt and Dr. Duane Abata will discuss how this extraordinary Victorian woman achieved her insights through translating between languages, people, disciplines, and between the imaginary and the real.

Watercolor portrait of Ada Lovelace. She is standing with her body turned away from the viewer but with her face turned toward us.
Watercolor portrait of Ada Lovelace by Alfred Edward Chalon (ca. 1838)

Guest Presentation: Ritualizing Robots by Dr. Qin Zhu

Events, Guest Speakers

We are happy to welcome Dr. Qin Zhu of the Colorado School of Mines as a guest speaker this week! On Tuesday, March 30th, from 7-8 pm (Mountain time), he will address ethical issues that arise from humans interacting with robots. He will draw on both Confucian ethics and research from human-robot interaction studies. For more, see the poster below! (Zoom link)