Posted 24 Jul 2013 / 0
I pride myself on being a conceptual teacher: although you will likely learn a lot of interesting facts in my classes, the focus of my teaching is on ideas and concepts. I want my students to understand how things work and why things exist, and both of these pursuits are fundamentally conceptual in nature. Almost all of Read More
A Major Post, Assessment Methods, Concept Mapping, Conceptual Teaching Assessment Project, Cooperation, Course Readings, Evolution Education, Higher Education, MSCI-463, The Evolution of Cooperation, Teaching
Posted 23 Jul 2013 / 0
The Harvard Gazette “Learning through doing“
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Art & Design
Posted 21 Jul 2013 / 0
I have been preparing for next semester’s Evolution of Sex course by looking for new media that might help my students. I just spent a few enjoyable hours checking out Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno series, produced by the Sundance Channel. I have been aware of Rossellini’s rather interesting foray into the world of animal sex and reproduction for awhile Read More
A Major Post, Adaptation, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Biodiversity Loss, Ecology, Film, Television, & Video, Marine Ecosystems, MSCI-362, The Evolution of Sex, Parasitism, Predation
Posted 15 Jul 2013 / 0
Studio 360 “Isabella Rossellini’s Mammas”
A Minor Post, Radio & Podcasts, Sex and Reproduction
Posted 15 Jul 2013 / 0
The Quarterly Review of Biology “Homosexuality as a Consequence of Epigenetically Canalized Sexual Development” What makes this theory so compelling is how it addresses the “heritable but not at all clearly genetic” problem of explaining the very high prevalence of homosexuality in human populations. There have been other theories of homosexuality that invoke sexual antagonism, but Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Epigenetics, Human Evolution, Sex and Reproduction
Posted 15 Jul 2013 / 0
Wired “Sperm Trajectories” I like the way that color is used to denote time in these images, and how they show these four different trajectory types in multiple dimensions. Now if we can figure out the evolutionary significance of this diversity, we have a real story.
A Minor Post, Sex and Reproduction, Web
Posted 15 Jul 2013 / 0
Wired “Humanity’s Recent Evolution” Of course increased genetic diversity just makes evolution more possible… but there still still needs to be some viable selective force to do something with all this variation. One could argue that the amount of variation we now see ‘tolerated’ by nature suggests that humans have been released from many selective Read More
A Minor Post, Genetics, Human Evolution, Mismatch theory, Population Genetics, Web
Posted 29 May 2013 / 1
WNYC Micropolis “Hasidic Supermarkets and the Virtues of Insularity” Although I think that this is an interesting little feature, it mistakenly attributes the benefits of this trust to a lack of diversity. What allows this trust is a relatively small, highly-integrated society. If the larger city lacks anything, it is the level of social integration Read More
A Minor Post, Cooperation, Cultural Anthropology, Economics, Ethics, Radio & Podcasts, Reputation, Social Networks, Sociology
Posted 23 Mar 2013 / 0
PLos ONE “Evolution of Cooperation in Spatial Traveler’s Dilemma Game“
A Minor Post, Cooperation, Game Theory, Reciprocity, Spatially Explicit Modeling
Posted 16 Mar 2013 / 1
Why Evolution is True “E. O. Wilson mistakenly touts group selection (again) as a key factor in human evolution“
A Minor Post, Cooperation, Evolution, Group Selection, Kin Selection, Reciprocity
