Quantifying the climate value of that 40-acre woodlot
Posted 07 Feb 2013 / 0The New York Times “Tree Power“
A Minor Post, Articles, Climate Change, Closed Loop Systems, Public Policy, Quantitative Analysis, Sustainability, Temperate RainforestUp-Goer Five text editor challenges you to make accessible explanations
Posted 31 Jan 2013 / 0Scientific 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, WebGreen port policies yield big decreases in the ecological footprint of shipping
Posted 26 Jan 2013 / 0National 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 TransportationAs the nature of university-level teaching changes, should we re-assess the credit hour?
Posted 26 Jan 2013 / 0The 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 EducationDog license dataset opens up huge potential for understanding the dog-human mutualism
Posted 26 Jan 2013 / 0WNYC “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, WebBrief NYT article on empathy in children
Posted 25 Jan 2013 / 0The New York Times “Understanding How Children Develop Empathy“
A Minor Post, Altruism, Articles, EmpathyIs selective rejection of science really a problem?
Posted 18 Jan 2013 / 1In a recent short opinion piece (Scientific American “Creation, Evolution and Indisputable Facts“), Jacob Tanenbaum argues that selectively rejecting evolutionary biology is dangerous to the scientific culture of America. He rightly points out that our populace does not reject science as a whole, but instead picks and chooses what science to doubt and what science Read More
A Major Post, Adaptation, Altruism, Articles, Belief, Cooperation, Evolution, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Evolution, Human Uniqueness, Religion, System StabilityProduction on marginal lands can meet only 25% of our biofuel mandates
Posted 17 Jan 2013 / 0Nature “Bioenergy: Biofuel production on the margins” & “Sustainable bioenergy production from marginal lands in the US Midwest” This is fascinating, and provides further evidence that even the smartest biofuel production methods are not going to be enough to mitigate our energy demands. In order to really get off of fossil fuels, we need to find Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Climate Change, Grasslands, Public Policy, Quantitative Analysis, Sustainability, Sustainable Agriculture, Sustainable EnergyRoberts Publishing releases an iPad version of their majors Evolution textbook
Posted 12 Jan 2013 / 0iTunes “Evolution: Making Sense of Life” I don’t own an iPad so I won’t be playing with this anytime soon, but I am very curious about the impact of this first-of-its-kind majors Evolution textbook for tablet. I am not sure if this is the new big thing or the last dying try of the old-model Read More
A Minor Post, Educational Software and Apps, Evolution, Evolution Education, Teaching ToolsMontreal art installation rewards cooperative play with musical novelty
Posted 12 Jan 2013 / 1I really appreciate the combination of social play and music that went into this very simple but very rich piece of public art.
A Minor Post, Art & Design, Cooperation, Installation Art, Play, Public Art, Web