Posted 17 Mar 2014 / 0
The Chronicle of Higher Education “Animal Magnetism” I still think that we would be appalled and offended if we could literally read the inner emotional dialogue of a cat, but I have to agree with the main contention of Barash and Lipton: that animals have feelings and connections with each other — and sometimes with Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Belief, Consciousness, Data Limitation, Divergence, Emotion, Fluidity of Knowledge, Hypothesis Testing, Neuroscience
Posted 20 Feb 2014 / 0
Air Transport Action Group “Facts & Figures” I recognize that these statistics are being presented by an industry advocacy group, so they should be taken with some skepticism (I don’t have the time to fact-check them). But they are interesting, and damning enough of air transport (while also accenting our very strong dependence on this Read More
A Minor Post, Climate Change, Economic sustainability, Information Design, Pollution, Quantitative Analysis, Resource Consumption, Sustainability, Sustainable Transportation, Web
Posted 05 Feb 2014 / 0
The New York Times “The Sloth’s Busy Inner Life” This is a great story about how paradoxical behaviors can be understood through appreciating mutualisms. If you don’t understand the benefits of algae to sloths and sloths to algae, you can’t understand this behavior. But you also need to understand how sloths directly benefit moths and how Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Articles, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Closed Loop Systems, Coevolution, Community Ecology, Composting, Mutualism, Predation, Quantifying Costs and Benefits, Tropical Forest
Posted 05 Feb 2014 / 2
WNYC New Tech City “The World Would be a Better Place if We [DELETED] More” The title of this piece is a bit misleading, because on the cognitive side it is really unclear to me that forcing ourselves to memorize things would make our lives better (those who know me know that I am “anti-memorization”, Read More
A Minor Post, Cognitive Ability, Ecological Footprinting, Neuroscience, Quantitative Analysis, Radio & Podcasts, Sustainable Energy, Sustainable Web Design, Web Design
Posted 04 Feb 2014 / 0
TurnUp is an entrepreneurial material repurposing project supported by Pratt’s Design Incubator. If it works, it should save a lot of students some money, decrease the impact of consumption, and save a lot of materials from going to the landfill.
A Minor Post, Center for Sustainable Design Studies, Closed Loop Systems, Economic sustainability, Economics, Pratt Institute, Resource Consumption, Sustainability
Posted 02 Feb 2014 / 0
On Being “Reimagining the Cosmos” I always find myself stuck on the fence when it comes to the confrontation between physics and philosophy (and by extension religion). This episode effectively captures my ambivalence. On the one hand, I like that Brian Greene really sticks to his guns on the “sensation of free will”. If there Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Behavior, Belief, Consciousness, Emotion, Ethics, Evolutionary Psychology, Human Evolution, Human Uniqueness, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Physics, Psychological Adaptation, Psychology, Radio & Podcasts, Religion
Posted 30 Jan 2014 / 1
The Economist “The genetic contribution Neanderthal man made to modern humanity is clearer” Although this article makes a bigger deal than it should about the “human construct” of the species concept (evolutionists are already well aware of the gradations of isolation that lead to full species separation), it presents these new findings in valuable context. What Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Evolution, Extinction, Genetics, Homo species, Human Evolution, Human Uniqueness, Phylogenetics, Speciation
Posted 29 Jan 2014 / 0
Proceedings of the Royal Society B “High strength-of-ties and low mobility enable the evolution of third-party punishment“
A Minor Post, Altruism, Articles, Behavior, Evolutionary Modeling, Punishment, Reputation, Social Networks
Posted 29 Jan 2014 / 0
The information sharing issue is really interesting here: in some sense, the medical field has the most detailed organismal knowledge available for any species, and evolutionary biologists are generally not that aware of the depth of what is known about the functions of the human body. Although I think that evolutionists have a lot to Read More
A Minor Post, Cooperation, Evolutionary Modeling, Health & Medicine, Individual-based Models, Talks & Seminars
Posted 29 Jan 2014 / 0
What’s so cool about the work that Eric Sanderson is describing is that it really amounts to doing historical research using an ecological forensics approach. The idea of mapping out “probable areas” of different populations — including humans — using mapped data is pretty smart. It is amazing how humans have transformed Manhattan. Thanks to Read More
A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Architecture, Community Ecology, Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Ecosystem Ecology, Ecosystem Services, Geography, Geology, Habitat Destruction, History, Hydrology, Ponds & Lakes, Rivers & Streams, Sustainable Urban Design, Talks & Seminars, Temperate Forest, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Urban Ecology
