The forces of cultural evolution push hard on political humor

I am taking my semester of rest… come Fall 2015

I 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

My review of the “Encyclopedia of Theoretical Ecology” published in QRB

My 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

Basic instructions for making effective concept maps using VUE

For 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

Today I am Associate Professor

Although my tenure and promotion was secured back in May, today is the day that I am officially a tenured Associate Professor. As today is also the first day of classes (although I do not teach until Wednesday), it is a little bit hard to stop, breathe, and appreciate this milestone. When one of my Read More

A modest presentation on Open Information Environments

Today I gave a brief presentation entitled “Information: Legalize It?” to some colleagues at Pratt Institute. As part of the day’s educational technology “gathering” taking place in the Faculty Technology Studios, I spoke about how I have instituted what I call the “Open Information Environment” in all of my courses. Check out my longer post Read More

Review of What We Made by Tom Finkelpearl

I study cooperation. I can say this honestly only with some caveats. I am very interested in what allows cooperation to evolve in biological systems, as cooperation seems to defy the Darwinian imperative to serve the needs of self-replication and yet is unexpectedly prevalent in nature. In particular I am interested in human cooperation, which Read More

When Facebook performs a manipulative experiment on its users, the results are interesting, the methods disturbing

Did you know that Facebook performs scientific research? If I told you that Facebook is constantly analyzing the activity of its users, that would probably not surprise you. But does Facebook go the next step by performing manipulative experiments on its users? A recent publication in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA Read More

Choosing a more sustainable web host

I am in the process of considering a shift in my web hosting service. I was spurred to consider a shift by Olivia Hu, a former student of mine who is also working on a new theme for this site. My current host is Bluehost. I chose their services four years ago when I first Read More

Do humans form genetically similar social groups independent of kinship?

Proponents of kin selection as the most parsimonious explanation of how cooperation evolves face a problem when it comes to humans: counter to the predictions of kin selection theory, humans aim a fair amount of altruism at non-kin. While we do not aim our helping behaviors solely at our relatives, we also do not randomly Read More