Christopher X J. Jensen
Professor, Pratt Institute

Dumb radio ads provide smart insight into the diverse nature of human societies

Posted 15 Feb 2013 / 0

Do everyday people have any sense of their place in the world? Human beings live in incredibly complex societies undergirded by convoluted economies and overwhelmingly diverse cultures. Do we have a sense of how these societies came to be, or how they function and persist? For evolutionists, these are pretty vexing scientific questions: most researchers Read More

A Major Post, Behavior, Cooperation, Economic sustainability, Ethics, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Political Science, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Social Diversity

“Earth Hour” seeks to re-focus our attention on all the earth provides

Posted 11 Feb 2013 / 0

World Wildlife Fund Earth Hour Will an hour of darkness give us the time to contemplate both the importance of ecosystem services and how our voracious energy consumption threatens those services? It is certainly worth a try.

A Minor Post, Activism, Anthropogenic Change, Climate Change, Cooperation, Environmental Justice, Public Policy, Sustainable Energy

Seth Horowitz on our perception of sound

Posted 10 Feb 2013 / 0

WNYC The Leonard Lopate Show “ Please Explain: Hearing and Sound” Interesting that Horowitz discusses the same rationale for why the cell phone conversations of others are so much more annoying than other conversations, a topic I have discussed here.

A Minor Post, Music, Radio & Podcasts, Sound Perception

Forward on Climate Rally seeks to shift the national dialogue on anthropogenic climate change

Posted 10 Feb 2013 / 0

The Sierra Club / 350.org / Hip Hop Caucus — Forward on Climate Rally

A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Climate Change, Cooperation, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Political Science

Quantifying the climate value of that 40-acre woodlot

Posted 07 Feb 2013 / 0

The New York Times “Tree Power“

A Minor Post, Articles, Climate Change, Closed Loop Systems, Public Policy, Quantitative Analysis, Sustainability, Temperate Rainforest

Up-Goer Five text editor challenges you to make accessible explanations

Posted 31 Jan 2013 / 0

Scientific American blogs “Science in Ten-Hundred Words: The “Up-Goer 5″ Challenge” THE UP-GOER FIVE TEXT EDITOR Oh, and by the way the title of this post would not pass the up-goer five test! Thanks to one of my Pratt students, Tony Wylen, for showing me this site.

A Minor Post, Pratt Institute, Public Outreach, Teaching, Web

Green port policies yield big decreases in the ecological footprint of shipping

Posted 26 Jan 2013 / 0

National Geographic “California Ports Go Green” This is a nice infographic showing that changes in policy can have a big impact on the sustainability of commerce. It is amazing how much efficiency improvements can lower ecological impacts.

A Minor Post, Articles, Economics, Information Design, Public Policy, Sustainable Transportation

As the nature of university-level teaching changes, should we re-assess the credit hour?

Posted 26 Jan 2013 / 0

The Chronicle of Higher Education “The Curious Birth and Harmful Legacy of the Credit Hour” The Chronicle of Higher Education “In Defense of the Credit Hour“

A Minor Post, Articles, Higher Education

Dog license dataset opens up huge potential for understanding the dog-human mutualism

Posted 26 Jan 2013 / 0

WNYC “NYC’s Top Dogs: Mapping Names & Breeds in the City” WNYC “Dogs of NYC” Data sets like these, even flawed by their incompleteness (only 20% of dogs in New York City are registered) are fascinating. The human relationship with dogs has changed radically as we have urbanized as a species: I would suggest that the dominance Read More

A Minor Post, Canids, Coevolution, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Geography, Human Evolution, Human Uniqueness, Mutualism, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Web

Brief NYT article on empathy in children

Posted 25 Jan 2013 / 0

The New York Times “Understanding How Children Develop Empathy“

A Minor Post, Altruism, Articles, Empathy