Today there was an interesting feature on the Leonard Lopate show highlighting former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castañeda and his new book Manana forever? Mexico and the Mexicans. The central thesis of the book is that Mexicans are a very individualist people, and that the failure of Mexican culture to foster collective action explains much Read More
Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Radio & Podcasts, SociologyAs I have indicated on my Interests page, I am very much interested in the process of Concept Mapping. I have been using a wonderful concept-mapping tool, the Visual Understanding Environment (VUE), to create concept maps for my teaching, research, and presentations. I just stepped up my concept mapping with a new computer set up Read More
Concept Mapping, Information DesignJean Ho Chu just produced a short movie that shows the features of the Easy Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma learning tool:
Easy Iterated Prisoner's DilemmaThere’s a nice article in a recent edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled “The Economics of Unhappiness“. In this article John Quiggan gives an overview of two recent books that focus on explaining our incessant need to increase our economic status well past the point of meeting our basic needs. Both books suggest Read More
Articles, Cooperation, Evolutionary Psychology, Happiness, Human Evolution, Psychological Adaptation, WebBill McKibben has a feature article in this month’s National Geographic entitled “Can China go green?“.The article discusses how the rapid growth of the Chinese economy presents both great environmental risks and great environmental opportunities. Although McKibben is a well-known environmental activist, he writes an informative, fair assessment of the ‘Chinese problem’. China is, arguably, Read More
Articles, Economics, Environmental Justice, Political Science, Population Pressure, Public Policy, Resource Consumption, Sustainability, Sustainable Energy