Christopher X J. Jensen
Associate Professor, Pratt Institute

If Only Game Designers Were Scientists

Posted 24 Jul 2011 / 1

Today’s New York Times Magazine featured an article entitled “Where Do Dwarf-Eating Carp Come From?”. The article describes the quirky aspirations of Tarn Adams, the programmer behind the underground computer game called Dwarf Fortress. Like other simulation-based games, Dwarf Fortress allows players to engineer a society (in this case made of dwarves) that faces adversity Read More

Computing, Ecological Modeling, Evolutionary Modeling, Individual-based Models, Modeling (General), Spatially Explicit Modeling, System Stability

Understanding Rupert Murdoch from an Evolutionary Perspective

Posted 19 Jul 2011 / 0

If you have been following the news at all this summer, you are undoubtedly aware of the recent phone hacking scandal at The News of the World, a tabloid newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch’s [1, 2, 3] global media empire, News Corporation. For those of you who missed it, here is what happened: reporters from Read More

Cultural Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, Memetic Fitness, Multilevel Selection

Epigenetics on Leonard Lopate

Posted 11 Jul 2011 / 0

If you read my blog regularly you know that issue of how genes and environment interact to produce traits is a topic near and dear to my heart. Generally the media misrepresent this subject as “nature versus nurture”, and even many scientists fail to properly explain modern scientific understanding in this area. When I learned Read More

Development, Epigenetics, Gene by Environment Interactions, Genetics, Radio & Podcasts

Aquaculture on Leonard Lopate

Posted 11 Jul 2011 / 0

Today The Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC featured a segment called “The Future of Fish” with Bryan Walsh  of Time Magazine. Walsh recently published a cover story in Time about the worldwide rise of aquaculture, the practice of raising domesticated fish for human consumption. There was a lot of valuable information covered in the segment, Read More

Animal Domestication, Ecology, Ecosystem Services, Mangrove Forests, Radio & Podcasts