Posted 10 Dec 2016 / 0
One of the activities that I regularly have my students complete in my Evolution course is called “Future Evolution“. The activity sends students on what most evolutionary biologists consider a fool’s errand: to try to predict the future evolution of some particular trait in some particular species. Making such predictions is really difficult for these basic reasons: Read More
A Major Post, Adaptation, Animal Domestication, Anthropogenic Change, Coevolution, Cultural Evolution, Evolution, Evolution Education, Human Evolution, Lesson Ideas, MSCI-260, Evolution, Prediction, Resistance Evolution in Parasites
Posted 08 Dec 2016 / 0
The Juliana Curran Design Center, where Interior Design, Industrial Design, and Communications Design critiques take place For the past three academic years, Pratt has instituted a new feature of its academic calendar: Studio Days, four days sandwiched between the penultimate instructional week and finals week, are dedicated solely to critiques, surveys, and final reviews in the studio majors. The Read More
A Major Post, Critiques, Reviews, & Surveys, Higher Education, Sustainability, Teaching
Posted 05 Dec 2016 / 0
Image of a Ford F-150 “rolling coal” courtesy of Salvatore Arnone via Wikimedia Commons. In a recent meeting of my Ecology course dedicated to sustainable policies, we were discussing why people don’t choose to adopt sustainable technologies. I think that the question was asked under the assumption that people want to be more sustainable, but face financial Read More
A Minor Post, Activism, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Behavior, Belief, Climate Change, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Economic sustainability, Economics, Environmental Justice, Memetic Fitness, Pollution, Public Policy, Punishment, Social Dilemmas, Social Diversity, Social Norms, Sustainability, Sustainable Energy, Sustainable Transportation, System Stability
Posted 01 Dec 2016 / 0
Here are a couple of videos from the Sustainability Summit Panel that I participated in last October. The first is Josh Fox’s talk following the screening of his movie How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change: The second is the panel discussion, which features Fox and my colleagues Read More
A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Climate Change, Envirolutions, Environmental Justice, Green Design, Marine Ecosystems, My publications, Pratt Institute, Public Outreach, Public Policy, Resilience, Sustainability, Sustainable Energy, Sustainable Pratt
Posted 18 Nov 2016 / 0
Last year, Pratt Professor Ágnes Mócsy started a new speaker series at Pratt called Art.Sci Affair. The series is designed to foster conversations about what Mócsy referred to as “scientists who dip into art” and “artists who dip into science”. This semester’s speaker was Julia Buntaine, an artist with a background and continuing interest in neuroscience. Buntaine Read More
A Major Post, Art & Design, Collaborative Art, Department of Mathematics & Science, Green Design, Industrial Design, Installation Art, Neuroscience, Public Art, Public Outreach, Resilience, Science (General), Science in Art & Design, Sculpture, Sustainability, Sustainable Agriculture, Sustainable Urban Design, Talks & Seminars
Posted 04 Nov 2016 / 0
The EPA’s AirNow site allows you to see real-time indices of air pollution in your area The section in Josh Fox’s How to Let Go of the World film about Chinese air pollution got me thinking about the air that I expose myself to in New York City. There are so many ways in which Read More
A Minor Post, Pollution, Public Outreach, Sustainability, Urban Planning
Posted 02 Nov 2016 / 0
I recently discovered this page on the NYC.gov Environmental Protection site. It’s pretty cool: if you are worried about NYC’s water supply, you can get up-to-date information on where our reservoirs stand. When I ask my students to cite sustainability issues, they often point to how water is wasted in NYC on things like spraying Read More
A Minor Post, Ecosystem Services, Green Design, Public Policy, Sustainable Urban Design, Urban Ecology, Water Supply, Web
Posted 01 Nov 2016 / 0
A student in one of my Evolution sections this semester sent me this fun little animated video: I thought that it was very clever how animation — a medium that already is inherently dedicated to playing with time scales — was used to give us a view of human development from (mostly) the point of view of rocks.
A Minor Post, Cultural Evolution, Film, Television, & Video, Geology, Human Evolution
Posted 31 Oct 2016 / 0
It’s that time of year again. Once again I send my students in my Ecology course out to estimate their ecological footprints, so to show that I am holding myself to a similar standard — and to make sure to keep myself ecologically self-aware — I always make sure to make my own footprint public. This should Read More
A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, Ecological Footprinting, Ecology Education, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Habitat Destruction, MSCI-270, Ecology, Pollution, Sustainability, Teaching Tools
Posted 31 Oct 2016 / 0
The New York Times “We Don’t Need a ‘War’ on Climate Change, We Need a Revolution” I am excited about this opinion piece by my friend and colleague Eric S. Godoy. He and his co-author Aaron Jaffe are absolutely right: as much as we might “fight” to “capture” the right metaphor for the “battle” against climate Read More
A Major Post, Activism, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Climate Change, Cooperation, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Evolutionary Psychology, Human Evolution, Mismatch theory, Philosophy, Public Outreach, Public Policy, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Social Dilemmas
