Curiosity and culturomics
Posted 18 Jan 2014 / 0The Chronicle of Higher Education “Erez Aiden Contains Multitudes“
A Minor Post, Articles, Cultural EvolutionCNN tackles climate change by explaining public goods games!
Posted 15 Jan 2014 / 0I almost fell out of my seat when I found this video while searching for a concise source explaining why we don’t have an international climate change agreement. This short television piece is basically trying to explain the dynamics of climate change agreement as depicted by Milinski and colleagues (2008) in their PNAS paper “The collective-risk Read More
A Minor Post, Climate Change, Environmental Justice, Film, Television, & Video, Game Theory, Sustainability, WebMoney Talking about Janet Yellen and multilevel selection
Posted 10 Jan 2014 / 0WNYC Money Talking “Helping Ordinary Americans Focus Of Fed Under Janet Yellen” Should the economy serve the society as a whole, or only some individuals in that society? Wow is it refreshing to hear a radio segment ask that question!
A Minor Post, Cultural Evolution, Memetic Fitness, Multilevel Selection, Radio & PodcastsScientific American “Tiny Plants” article provides a primer on the inter-relationship between ecological and evolutionary change
Posted 07 Jan 2014 / 0I am always on the lookout for great popular science articles to assign to my students. What makes a popular science article great? Well, to start with it should address concepts that are core to my classes (admittedly, this definition of “greatness” is highly relative to what I decide is important to teach). Concept density Read More
A Major Post, Adaptation, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, Coevolution, Conservation Biology, Ecology, Experiments (General), Extinction, Habitat Destruction, Interactions, Macroevolution, Marine Ecosystems, MSCI-271, Ecology for Architects, Pollution, Resilience, Sustainability, TerrestrialCan you replicate the collective adaptive value of religion without god?
Posted 07 Jan 2014 / 0NPR Morning Edition “Sunday Assembly: A Church For The Godless Picks Up Steam” It is interesting to see people explicitly seeking out the benefits of religious community whilst trying to maintain their objective understanding of the material world. Conventional wisdom is that “god” is needed to make religions work, but perhaps just a collective intention Read More
A Minor Post, Belief, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Group Selection, Radio & Podcasts, ReligionCaterpillars weaponize nicotine
Posted 02 Jan 2014 / 0The Economist “Caterpillars that blow nicotine at their enemy” I love the combination of genetic manipulation and “arena of death” wolf-spider gauntlet that led to these findings.
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Articles, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Host-Pathogen Evolution, Interactions, Parasitism, Predation, Resistance Evolution in ParasitesTaking risks for the data
Posted 25 Oct 2013 / 0The cover story of November’s National Geographic is about the death of storm chaser Tim Samaras, who was killed along with two of his collaborators (including one of his sons) during a monster tornado outside Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Samaras is one of many “explorers” supported by National Geographic, an organization that seems to be the Read More
A Major Post, Articles, Genetics, Human Evolution, Human Nature, Human Uniqueness, Play, Risk & UncertaintyNew fossil finds provide unique insight into the variation found in “Man the Hunted”
Posted 25 Oct 2013 / 0The New York Times “Skull Fossil Suggests Simpler Human Lineage” It is interesting how terrible fossils are: generally, they represent only a part of one individual who was part of one population in one place at one point in time. Not the best data ever! So when some predator(s) on hominids dumps five carcasses in the Read More
A Minor Post, Data Limitation, Homo species, Human EvolutionWriting and record-keeping as important tools in the evolution of large-scale human cooperation
Posted 25 Oct 2013 / 0This View of Life “The Role Of Writing And Recordkeeping In The Cultural Evolution Of Human Cooperation” What is also so interesting about written language is that it is another means of defining a group: only those who are literate and can read the particular recorded language can fully benefit from the cooperation fostered by Read More
A Minor Post, Cooperation, Empathy, Group Selection, Multilevel Selection“Brainchildren” — another way to conceptualize our devotion to cultural fitness
Posted 25 Oct 2013 / 0The Chronicle of Higher Education “Bringing up brainchildren” This is such a fun and insightful essay on the relationship between our pursuits that yield — alternatively — genetic and memetic fitness. It effectively captures the wish of the intellectual producer to leave behind a legacy of ideas, to affect the cultural idea pool in some Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Cultural Evolution, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Memetic Fitness