Posted 12 Apr 2020 / 0
The New York Times “What the Coronavirus Means for Climate Change“ This is a great overview of the promise and perils associated with post-coronavirus climate action. For me, the greatest potential for turning this terrible global health crisis into a catalyst for global climate action is to tie economic recovery efforts to sustainability. The “Green Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Climate Change, Public Policy
Posted 09 Apr 2020 / 0
I was fortunate to be a collaborator on a STEAMplant team that included Sirovich Family Resident Jeremy Pickard (@jeremy_pickard) and my Pratt colleague, anthropologist Jennifer Telesca. Jeremy’s STEAMplant project focused on the creation of a short “hike-play” which required the audience to take a walk in the woods before seeing the actual performance. This short video, created Read More
A Minor Post, Art & Design, Climate Change, Ecology, Public Art, STEAMplant, Temperate Forest
Posted 27 Sep 2019 / 0
The Outline “Why Jeffrey Epstein loved evolutionary psychology and why evolutionary psychologists loved him right back” This is a really great article that highlights how powerful evolutionary biologists align themselves with wealthy capitalists. In the case of Jeffrey Epstein, their interpretations of Darwinian theory provided intellectual cover for abusive behavior.
A Minor Post, Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, Human Evolution
Posted 05 May 2019 / 0
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons I am very excited to be a participant in the American Museum of Natural History‘s Network of Conservation Educators and Practitioners (NCEP) program’s 2019 Teaching and Learning Studio. This year’s theme is “Effective Teaching by Design”, which describes a lot of the scholarship that I have been doing over the years and Read More
A Minor Post, Conservation Biology, Ecology Education, Education, Evolution Education, Higher Education, Museum design, Museums & Zoos
Posted 16 Nov 2018 / 0
Society for the Study of Evolution Letter RE: Scientific Understanding of Sex and Gender It is really exciting when one’s professional society stands up for an important issue, and this issue is near and dear to both my teaching interests and my heart. The idea that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — an agency Read More
A Minor Post, Professional Societies, Public Policy, Science (General), Sex and Reproduction, Social Norms, Society for the Study of Evolution
Posted 25 Oct 2018 / 0
Back in 2011, I worked with a talented Pratt Digital Arts graduate student name Jean Ho Chu to create a flash-based game that allowed players to explore Robert Axelrod’s seminal iterated prisoner’s dilemma simulations. I think that our game was pretty valuable, mostly thanks to Jean’s many innovative graphic and interactive creations. But culture ratchets Read More
A Minor Post, Cooperation, Educational Software and Apps, Game Theory, Teaching Tools
Posted 25 Oct 2018 / 0
Scientific American “Geometry versus Gerrymandering” This is a really well-written article that explains why it hasn’t been easy for mathematicians to contribute to a definition of Gerrymandering… and how using an old mathematical approach to attack the problem could provide clear benchmarks for defining a Gerrymander. I love when math and science can be brought as Read More
A Minor Post, Computer Science, Ethics, Mathematics, Science (General), Social Science
Posted 22 Oct 2018 / 0
The New York Times “Microplastics Find Their Way Into Your Gut, a Pilot Study Finds” For those of us who have been aware of the quickly-emerging fields studying microplastic pollution, these results are far from surprising. I am in fact more surprised that this rather limited pilot study was the first of its kind. While Read More
A Minor Post, Environmental Justice, Health & Medicine, Pollution
Posted 22 Oct 2018 / 0
Scientific American “Beyond XX and XY: The Extraordinary Complexity of Sex Determination” I teach about sex and gender in a lot of my courses. For some courses, such as Evolution or The Evolution of Sex, these are basic concepts that need to be established in order to study reproductive behaviors. For other courses, such as Breeders, Propagators, & Read More
A Minor Post, Information Design, MSCI-362, The Evolution of Sex, Sex and Reproduction
Posted 27 Sep 2018 / 0
Science “Is ungulate migration culturally transmitted? Evidence of social learning from translocated animals” Wow, this is super cool. We often think of humans as exclusively cultural, but it is only the extent to which we rely on culture that makes us unique. That doesn’t mean that culture’s not crucial to the learning of other animals, whose Read More
A Minor Post, Conservation Biology, Cultural Evolution, Mammals
