I am very proud to announce that new theme on this site — which has been “in development” for the past seven months — is now officially done. I am greatly indebted to Olivia Hu, former student and WordPress designer extraordinaire, for creating this theme for me. She has had it 99.9% done for about Read More
A Major Post, Web DesignThe first season of my new video series, The WmD Project, will be focused on the foundational questions of ecology and evolution. As such I have been doing a little bit of research into these “big questions”, in particular as they were conceived of by the twin muses of this project, Alfred Russel Wallace and Read More
A Major Post, Ecology, Evolution, The WmD ProjectSmithsonian Magazine “Creepy or Cool? Portraits Derived From the DNA in Hair and Gum Found in Public Places” I find a lot of art to be gimmicky. I know as a professor at an art and design school, that could get me into some trouble, so let me explain what I mean. “Gimmicky” art to Read More
A Major Post, Articles, Computer Science, Ethics, Genetics, Human Evolution, Risk & Uncertainty, Science in Art & Design, SociologyI just finished watching the 2013 documentary The Armstrong Lie. I do not get much time to watch movies — and my favorite genre of movie, documentaries — very much these days, but I used to be a big fan of pro cycling in the Armstrong era, so I knew that I had to check Read More
A Major Post, Altruism, Behavior, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Film & Video, Game Theory, Group Selection, Play, Punishment, Reciprocity, Reputation, Social NormsI am very pleased to announce that a paper that I worked on with collaborators Jun-Zhou He, Rui-Wu Wang, and Yao-Tang Li has been published in the open-access journal Scientific Reports. The paper, entitled “Asymmetric interaction paired with a super-rational strategy might resolve the tragedy of the commons without requiring recognition or negotiation“, considers how Read More
A Major Post, Altruism, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Coevolution, Cooperation, Game Theory, Multilevel Selection, My publications, Phenotypic PlasticityI am excited to announce that after eight full years of service to Pratt Institute, I have been awarded a sabbatical for the Fall of 2015. It is amazing that I have been teaching at Pratt for this long, but this “semester of rest” also feels long overdue. My plan is to use this semester Read More
A Major Post, Higher Education, Pratt InstituteMy review of the Encyclopedia of Theoretical Ecology was just published in the Quarterly Review of Biology. It is a short review so I only give a very brief synopsis of this book, which is pretty remarkable in its scope but also pretty inconsistent in its delivery. I am excited to have this on my Read More
A Major Post, Ecological Modeling, My publicationsFor years now I have been guiding my students through a variety of concept mapping activities. Almost every one of my classes involves at least one concept mapping assignment, and I now require that proposals for a variety of term papers and projects be presented in concept map form. I also created this guide to Read More
A Major Post, Concept Mapping, Information Design, Lesson Ideas, Teaching ToolsAs you can probably see, this new thematic presentation of my site is nearly finished. I have a lot of cleaning up to do, but my former student and generous web designer Olivia Hu has gotten the basic platform of this theme up to an amazing level. Thanks so much to Olivia for all her Read More
A Minor Post, Web Design