Christopher X J. Jensen
Professor, Pratt Institute

Rogue iron fertilization? Things have gotten weird!

Posted 24 Oct 2012 / 0

The New York Times “A Rogue Climate Experiment Outrages Scientists“

A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Citizen Science, Climate Change, Community Ecology, Ecology, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Food, Marine Ecosystems, Polar Marine, Public Policy, Sustainability

New PNAS special issue explores the developmental effects of early social environment

Posted 17 Oct 2012 / 0

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “Biological Embedding of Early Social Adversity: From Fruit Flies to Kindergartners Sackler Colloquium“

A Minor Post, Articles, Behavior, Development, Gene by Environment Interactions, Phenotypic Plasticity, Psychology, Sociology

Rob Nixon on Rachel Carson’s prescience

Posted 14 Oct 2012 / 0

The Chronicle of Higher Education “Rachel Carson’s Prescience“

A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Biography, Climate Change, Conservation Biology, Ecology, Economics, Environmental Justice, Habitat Destruction, Marine Ecosystems, Political Science, Pollution, Public Policy

David Sloan Wilson on Ayn Rand and the delusion of a world without tradeoffs

Posted 10 Oct 2012 / 0

The Huffington Post “Ayn Rand and Modern Politics” What I really appreciate about this post is its very simple brand of analysis. It asks a simple question and employs a clear methodology to objectively understand a phenomenon (in this case, the appeal of Ayn Rand to conservatives). Talk about a job of social construction: the Read More

A Minor Post, Behavior, Belief, Carrying Capacity, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Economics, Ethics, Game Theory, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Religion, Social Norms, System Stability, Web

Can neuroeconomics help economics become a real science?

Posted 06 Oct 2012 / 0

The Chronicle of Higher Education “The Marketplace in Your Brain” I think that this article suggests that much of economics is not much of a science. Faced with new information, mainstream economics has failed to update its models of how the world works. Doing so would make economics akin to physics or medicine or evolutionary Read More

A Minor Post, Belief, Economics, Emotion, Evolutionary Psychology, Game Theory, Neuroscience, Psychological Adaptation, Psychology, Religion, Social Networks, Social Norms

Barry Commoner, pioneering scientist and environmentalist, is dead at 95

Posted 03 Oct 2012 / 0

Barry Commoner was an exceptional scientist and human being. Below are some nice tributes to him: The New York Times “Scientist, Candidate and Planet Earth’s Lifeguard” The New York Times “Barry Commoner’s Uncommon Life” The Los Angeles Times “Barry Commoner dies at 95; pillar of environmental movement” The Boston Globe “Barry Commoner, 95; founder of Read More

A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Biodiversity Loss, Biography, Climate Change, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Obituary, Pollution, Public Policy, Sustainability, Sustainable Energy

Enforcing norms may be for personal gain, not to maintain social order (at least amongst Santa Barbara undergraduates)

Posted 28 Sep 2012 / 2

PLoS ONE “What Are Punishment and Reputation for?” Once again, a valuable and ingenious experiment over-reaches on the meaning of its finding, and the over-reach bleeds into the popular media. This is a really valuable experiment in that it asks about the scale at which social norms are enforced. It is significant that participants in Read More

A Minor Post, Articles, Behavior, Cooperation, Ethics, Evolutionary Psychology, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Multilevel Selection, Psychological Adaptation, Punishment, Reciprocity, Reputation, Social Networks, Social Norms

Can playing games make the world a better place?

Posted 27 Sep 2012 / 1

One of the very talented students I work with in the Envirolutions club, Rhett Bradbury, pointed me towards the work of Jane McGonigal, a game designer and evangelist for the idea that games can save the world. For Rhett, her work is important to his Master’s thesis in graphic design, as he is considering how to move Read More

A Major Post, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Development, Emotion, Evolutionary Psychology, Happiness, Health & Medicine, Human Evolution, Mismatch theory, Phenotypic Plasticity, Play, Psychological Adaptation, Psychology, Radio & Podcasts, Social Networks, Subsistence, Web

Some conservatives actually see the public health and economic dilemmas posed by greenhouse gas emissions

Posted 26 Sep 2012 / 0

All Things Considered “New Groups Make A Conservative Argument On Climate Change“

A Minor Post, Climate Change, Economics, Political Science, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts

Lack of complete transparency presents an obstacle but not a block to cooperation

Posted 20 Sep 2012 / 0

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “Evolution of cooperation and skew under imperfect information“

A Minor Post, Articles, Cooperation, Evolutionary Modeling, Political Science, Social Networks