Christopher X J. Jensen
Professor, Pratt Institute

EcoMotion studios celebrates Robert Paine’s Pisaster experiments

Posted 06 Oct 2015 / 0

Back at the Evolution 2014 meeting I encountered the great “Drift” animated short, which I still use in my evolution course. Well the producers of that short have formed ECOmotion Studios, and they have made a bunch more videos in honor of the Ecological Society of America‘s centennial. This one is a fun “spoken word” jam Read More

A Minor Post, Coevolution, Community Ecology, Competition, Ecological Society of America, Ecology Education, Film & Video, Film, Television, & Video, Intertidal Zones, Keystone Species, Methods, Predation, Science in Art & Design

Explaining the evolutionary explanation for handedness

Posted 13 Aug 2015 / 0

This is a wonderful little video that is absolutely packed with great ideas about how evolution works, how human evolution works, and how two different evolutionary pressures pushing in opposite directions reach equilibrium. It also makes wonderful use of infographic techniques, using color and quantity throughout the video to clearly convey numerical and conceptual ideas Read More

A Minor Post, Adaptation, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Educational Software and Apps, Evolutionary Modeling, Film, Television, & Video, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Evolution, MSCI-463, The Evolution of Cooperation, Quantifying Costs and Benefits, Social Norms

John Oliver holds first “balanced” climate debate on television

Posted 30 May 2014 / 0

Very nicely done! The monologue is great, but then the “performance” of the balanced climate change debate is really what drives home the point here. Don’t watch networks that present false “debates”.

A Minor Post, Belief, Climate Change, Film, Television, & Video, Political Science, Public Outreach, Public Policy, Risk & Uncertainty, Science (General), Sustainability

Sweet Fern Productions puts Alfred Russel Wallace to paper

Posted 26 Jan 2014 / 0

Sweet Fern Productions “The Animated Life of A.R. Wallace” I loved the Sweet Fern video on whale fall, but this is even more valuable as a historical account of Wallace’s life. I really like the way that this video depicts natural selection! Great way of showing differential survival as Wallace might have seen it!

A Minor Post, Biography, Evolution, Evolution Education, Film, Television, & Video, Geography, History, Natural Selection, Science as a career, Science in Art & Design, Speciation, Teaching Tools, The WmD Project, Tropical Forest

CNN tackles climate change by explaining public goods games!

Posted 15 Jan 2014 / 0

I 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, Web

Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno

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

Pratt Professor Ágnes Mócsy releases “Smashing Matters” short film

Posted 21 May 2013 / 0

A colleague of mine, Associate Professor Ágnes Mócsy, just released her first short film, smashing matters: Featuring a really broad array of eminent physics researchers, this film uses the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider as a case study for how funding basic science research leads to social progress. Although I am not predisposed to believing that all basic Read More

A Minor Post, Film, Television, & Video, Grants & Funding, Public Policy, Science in Art & Design

Gerald Carter produces an informative video on cooperation in vampire bats

Posted 21 Jun 2012 / 0

Also check out Gerry’s PetriDish site seeking funding for his project.

A Minor Post, Altruism, Cooperation, Film, Television, & Video, Public Outreach

PBS short profiles Pratt Institute

Posted 20 Jun 2012 / 0

Channel Thirteen “Treasures of New York: Pratt Institute” Obviously this a big promotional piece for Pratt, but it did make me appreciate the historical context of Pratt (some of which I was unaware). Seeing the school’s accessible and prosocial origins, I hope that we can move the school back into the same kind of public Read More

A Minor Post, Film, Television, & Video, Pratt Institute

HOME, a documentary about the impacted Biosphere

Posted 18 Sep 2011 / 0

I just watched the video Home, a production of Yann Arthus-Bertrand and his Good Planet Foundation. Composed solely of high-quality panoramic images intensified by a soaring new-age soundtrack, the film provides viewers with a fairly comprehensive overview of the earth’s ecosystems and the challenges to the future health of these ecosystems posed by human industry. Read More

Anthropogenic Change, Biodiversity Loss, Biomes, Bogs & Wetlands, Carrying Capacity, Climate Change, Ecology, Ecology Education, Economics, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Extinction, Film, Television, & Video, Food, Freshwater Ecosystems, Hunger, Mangrove Forests, Marine Ecosystems, Pollution, Population Pressure, Public Policy, Resource Consumption, Sustainability, System Stability, Taiga (Boreal Forest), Temperate Forest, Terrestrial, Tropical Forest, Tundra, Vegetarianism, Water Supply