Posted 29 Aug 2011 / 0
A downed tree in East River Park in Manhattan’s East Village after Hurricane Irene. Photo and caption text by David Shankbone. The east coast of the United States woke up this Monday morning to begin cleanup following the passing of Hurricane Irene. In preparation for the hurricane, over half a million New York and New Read More
Belief, Climate Change, Ethics, Political Science, Prediction, Sociology, Stochasticity
Posted 20 Aug 2011 / 0
Scientific American “Long Live the Web“
A Minor Post, Articles, Computer Science
Posted 20 Aug 2011 / 2
One of the ways that I keep up with my field these days (inasmuch as that is even possible given the pace of innovation and activity) is by using Google Alerts. For those of you who are not familiar with the service, it allows you to receive updates via e-mail every time that a new Read More
Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Ethics, Human Evolution, Memetic Fitness, Political Science, Punishment, Reciprocity, Sociology, Web
Posted 19 Aug 2011 / 2
Researchers who study cooperation cannot agree on the role that punishment plays in maintaining the widespread social cooperation observed in nature and human societies. As is true in any scientific discipline, the social experiences of scientists studying cooperation influence their hypotheses. And looking at the societies that we live in, it is easy to see Read More
Altruism, Articles, Cooperation, Game Theory, Punishment
Posted 11 Aug 2011 / 0
If there is a theme running through my diverse interests, it is stability. For those who understand how ecological systems and evolutionary processes work, this should be entirely unsurprising: the living systems that persist today are those that are stable at multiple levels. The interactions between populations in a community must be stable, individual organisms Read More
Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Economics, Ethics, Human Evolution, Memetic Fitness, Reciprocity
Posted 03 Aug 2011 / 0
I just checked out a lecture given by Martin Nowak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that was recently posted on the MIT videos site. The video was recently posted on the MIT site, but it is not entirely clear when it actually happened. I suspect it is the same lecture listed here. Nowak recently Read More
Altruism, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Evolutionary Modeling, Game Theory, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Kin Selection, Mathematics, Multilevel Selection, Psychological Adaptation, Radio & Podcasts, Reciprocity, Talks & Seminars, Web
Posted 02 Aug 2011 / 2
I have a bit of an obsession with why people push limits in particular sports. Although I am far from a big limit-pusher myself, I do enjoy the more dangerous forms of skateboarding, bicycling, and snowboarding. Of late I have taken up rock climbing, although I have only once made it out of the gym. Read More
Articles, Cultural Evolution, Film, Television, & Video, Happiness, Memetic Fitness, Play, Psychological Adaptation
