Posted 28 Jun 2013 / 0
NPR Planet Money “Economists Have A One-Page Solution To Climate Change” I love this piece because it effectively captures the importance of an across-the-board carbon solution. The carbon tax would be relatively easy to enforce, could be used to wean ourselves from carbon-based fuels in a calculated and deliberate manner, and would hurt only those Read More
A Minor Post, Climate Change, Economics, Political Science, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Resource Consumption, Sustainability, Sustainable Energy
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 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
Posted 10 Apr 2013 / 0
NPR All Things Considered “Cities Turn Sewage Into ‘Black Gold’ For Local Farms” This is a really interesting piece because it suggests that the costs associated with properly disposing of human waste are beginning to incentivize municipalities to repurpose this waste as fertilizer. As this feature indicates, landfilling and (even worse) incineration have been in Read More
A Minor Post, Closed Loop Systems, Economic sustainability, Pollution, Radio & Podcasts, Sustainability, Sustainable Agriculture
Posted 22 Mar 2013 / 2
I am excited by the recent publication of my review of Agent-based and individual-based modeling: a practical introduction in the January issue of Ecology. The review, entitled “Individual-based modeling for the masses“, lauds this valuable textbook designed to support individual-based modeling courses. I expect the combination of this text and the very valuable NetLogo modeling Read More
A Major Post, Ecological Modeling, Individual-based Models, My publications, Spatially Explicit Modeling
Posted 15 Feb 2013 / 0
Do everyday people have any sense of their place in the world? Human beings live in incredibly complex societies undergirded by convoluted economies and overwhelmingly diverse cultures. Do we have a sense of how these societies came to be, or how they function and persist? For evolutionists, these are pretty vexing scientific questions: most researchers Read More
A Major Post, Behavior, Cooperation, Economic sustainability, Ethics, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Political Science, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Social Diversity
Posted 10 Feb 2013 / 0
WNYC The Leonard Lopate Show “ Please Explain: Hearing and Sound” Interesting that Horowitz discusses the same rationale for why the cell phone conversations of others are so much more annoying than other conversations, a topic I have discussed here.
A Minor Post, Music, Radio & Podcasts, Sound Perception
Posted 07 Feb 2013 / 0
The New York Times “Tree Power“
A Minor Post, Articles, Climate Change, Closed Loop Systems, Public Policy, Quantitative Analysis, Sustainability, Temperate Rainforest
Posted 31 Jan 2013 / 0
Scientific American blogs “Science in Ten-Hundred Words: The “Up-Goer 5″ Challenge” THE UP-GOER FIVE TEXT EDITOR Oh, and by the way the title of this post would not pass the up-goer five test! Thanks to one of my Pratt students, Tony Wylen, for showing me this site.
A Minor Post, Pratt Institute, Public Outreach, Teaching, Web
Posted 26 Jan 2013 / 0
National Geographic “California Ports Go Green” This is a nice infographic showing that changes in policy can have a big impact on the sustainability of commerce. It is amazing how much efficiency improvements can lower ecological impacts.
A Minor Post, Articles, Economics, Information Design, Public Policy, Sustainable Transportation
