Posted 16 Oct 2015 / 0
Conservation Magazine “Pandas offer ‘protective umbrella’ to other animals” In my ecology courses we talk a lot about the different rationales for conservation, and students invariably laugh at the concept of charismatic megafauna. It is kind of weird — and very typically human — that we reserve particular conservation attention for those big animals that Read More
A Minor Post, Conservation Biology, Habitat Destruction, MSCI-270, Ecology, MSCI-271, Ecology for Architects, Terrestrial, Web
Posted 16 Oct 2015 / 0
Source: Scientific American Scientific American Graphic Science “Bigger Cities Aren’t Always Greener, Data Show” I do not love the headline here, because it suggests that size rather than density is the issue at hand. It is pretty clear what this data show: building low density cities is not sustainable. The issue here is that we Read More
A Minor Post, MSCI-271, Ecology for Architects, Pollution, Population Pressure, Public Policy, Resource Consumption, Sustainability, Sustainable Urban Design, Urban Planning, Web
Posted 16 Oct 2015 / 1
Evonomics “Jeff Bezos got Darwinism all Wrong!” This is an interesting analysis of the Bezos way of doing business, which represents an oft-lauded bastardization of Darwinian theory. What I like about Wilson’s brief analysis is that he focuses back on the unit of selection that matters for a business: the corporation. Unless you naively believe Read More
A Minor Post, Behavior, Cultural Evolution, Group Selection, Human Nature, Social Diversity, System Stability, Web
Posted 16 Oct 2015 / 0
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “Receipt of reward leads to altered estimation of effort” This is an interesting study because it suggests that we can make rational but distorted assessments of their own efforts based on what reward they bring. What’s interesting is that we tend to belittle our own efforts when they Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Behavior, Cognitive Ability, Consciousness, Psychology
Posted 15 Oct 2015 / 0
W.W. Norton Company, the publisher of Carl Bergstrom and Lee Alan Dugatkin’s Evolution textbook, have released a demo version of a new learning tool called InQuizitive. This activity leads students through a series of questions designed to test their understanding of phylogenies as well as the rather bizarre and counter-intuitive jargon of phylogenetics. I played Read More
A Minor Post, Educational Software and Apps, Educational Technology, Evolution Education, Teaching Tools
Posted 13 Oct 2015 / 0
National Public Radio Morning Edition “How Riots May Help Us Understand School Shooters” This is a great example of how understanding our cultural evolution, and how we have evolved to live culturally, could allow us to solve a social problem. We need to figure out a way to break the cultural continuum from one mass Read More
A Minor Post, Behavior, Cultural Evolution, Psychology, Radio & Podcasts, Social Networks
Posted 12 Oct 2015 / 4
If you look at who I am as an academic, you would think that I should be among the most ardent supporters of Open Access publishing. After all, the proliferation of open access would solve a lot of problems for me. As a scientist who teaches at a school of art, design, and architecture, access Read More
A Major Post, Economic sustainability, Economics, Ethics, Grants & Funding, Higher Education, Periodicals, Public Policy, Publication, Science as a career, Social Media
Posted 07 Oct 2015 / 0
NPR Morning Edition “New Dietary Guidelines Will Not Include Sustainability Goal” Man, this is a bummer. If our dietary guidelines are simply aimed at maximizing our bodily health but not the long-term health of our civilization and the planet upon which we depend, what’s the point of these guidelines? I love how the meat industry Read More
A Minor Post, Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, Food, Freshwater Ecosystems, Habitat Destruction, Habitat Fragmentation, Marine Ecosystems, Pollution, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Sustainability, Sustainable Agriculture, Terrestrial, Vegetarianism
Posted 07 Oct 2015 / 0
NPR Morning Edition “Are Big Cities Still A Primary Engine For Scientific Innovation?” The geography that is explored in this short piece is interesting to me: proximity used to be a pre-requisite for exchanging ideas, which led to creative centers for particular industries. Now that access to information is largely decoupled from geographical location, the need Read More
A Minor Post, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cultural Evolution, Economics, Radio & Podcasts, Sociology
Posted 06 Oct 2015 / 0
Here’s the last of four ECOmotion Studios animated shorts celebrating the Ecological Society of America’s centennial. This one’s a bit thin in my humble opinion. It captures the essentials of Huffaker’s really odd experiments (I am always struck by what extents Huffaker had to go to stabilize predator and prey populations), but mostly uses the narrative Read More
A Minor Post, Ecological Society of America, Ecology Education, Film & Video, Film, Television, & Video, Predation, Science in Art & Design, System Stability
