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Recent Major Posts
- Pratt Institute holds 124th Commencement, special gallery show
- Rhett Bradbury’s Master’s Thesis explores how gaming can foster political leadership
- Envirolutions asks the Pratt community to identify where there is “room for improvement”
- My review of Railsback and Grimm’s “Agent-based and individual-based modeling” textbook published in Ecology
- Envirolutions club launches its “Room for Improvement” campaign
- Dumb radio ads provide smart insight into the diverse nature of human societies
- Is selective rejection of science really a problem?
- Pratt Envirolutions Students Bring Recycling Bins to Campus
- Concept mapping as a creative tool
- Governor Cuomo makes the connection between natural disasters and climate change, calls for building in resilience
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Recent Minor Posts
- Useful guides for writing good pseudocode
- The benefits of a maintaining a relatively small in-group
- Pratt Professor Ágnes Mócsy releases “Smashing Matters” short film
- NPR piece suggests that economics are pushing us towards nutrient recycling
- Just in case you missed it the first ten times: E.O. Wilson likes group selection, Jerry Coyne does not
- Allen MacNeill predicts resolution of Ev-Coop debates
- Martin Nowak to lecture on the compatibility of god and the evolutionary process
- Understanding kin selection and reciprocity when strategies are culturally propagated
- “Earth Hour” seeks to re-focus our attention on all the earth provides
- Seth Horowitz on our perception of sound
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What I am reading now
Author Archives: Chris Jensen
Useful guides for writing good pseudocode
I am slogging away at writing up a long-overdue individual-based modeling project that I presented eons ago at ESA 2009 and ESA 2010, and I am trying my best to present the model in complete form. This project is the … Continue reading
The benefits of a maintaining a relatively small in-group
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, … Continue reading
Pratt Professor Ágnes Mócsy releases “Smashing Matters” short film
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 … Continue reading
Pratt Institute holds 124th Commencement, special gallery show
Pratt celebrated its 124th commencement ceremony at Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall on Tuesday, May 14th, 2013. I always try to make it to graduation to honor the hard work of our graduating seniors. Although there are usually a few … Continue reading
Posted in A Major Post, Pratt Institute
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Rhett Bradbury’s Master’s Thesis explores how gaming can foster political leadership
Rhett Bradbury has been a crucial member of Envirolutions over the past two years. Our only graduate student member, Rhett started coming to club meetings during his first semester at Pratt. Rhett’s skills as a graphic designer have had a profound effect … Continue reading
Posted in A Major Post, Mentoring, Political Science
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NPR piece suggests that economics are pushing us towards nutrient recycling
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 … Continue reading
Envirolutions asks the Pratt community to identify where there is “room for improvement”
During this year’s Green Week celebration, Envirolutions club members brought their Room for Improvement campaign to the campus, asking members of the Pratt community to identify where the campus has the most “room to improve” in terms of sustainability. Two enticements incentivized participation: those … Continue reading
My review of Railsback and Grimm’s “Agent-based and individual-based modeling” textbook published in Ecology
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 … Continue reading
Just in case you missed it the first ten times: E.O. Wilson likes group selection, Jerry Coyne does not
Why Evolution is True “E. O. Wilson mistakenly touts group selection (again) as a key factor in human evolution“
Posted in A Minor Post, Cooperation, Evolution, Group Selection, Kin Selection, Reciprocity
Tagged Edward O. Wilson, Jerry Coyne
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Allen MacNeill predicts resolution of Ev-Coop debates
The Cornell Daily Sun “Darwin Days Lecture: “Can Cooperation Evolve by Natural Selection?”“
Posted in A Minor Post, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Group Selection, Kin Selection
Tagged Allen MacNeill
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Martin Nowak to lecture on the compatibility of god and the evolutionary process
College of the Holy Cross “Harvard Scientist to Lecture at Holy Cross on God and Evolution” It is amazing to hear someone like Nowak say “God uses evolution to unfold the living world around us”. This is radical stuff for … Continue reading
Understanding kin selection and reciprocity when strategies are culturally propagated
arXiv “Self-Organization Promotes the Evolution of Cooperation with Cultural Propagation“
Envirolutions club launches its “Room for Improvement” campaign
This week, students in Pratt’s Envirolutions club launched their newest campaign for on-campus sustainability. Called “Room for Improvement”, the campaign seeks to lower the environmental footprint of the school caused by resource consumption. The posters that advertise the campaign are themed … Continue reading
Dumb radio ads provide smart insight into the diverse nature of human societies
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 … Continue reading
“Earth Hour” seeks to re-focus our attention on all the earth provides
World Wildlife Fund Earth Hour Will an hour of darkness give us the time to contemplate both the importance of ecosystem services and how our voracious energy consumption threatens those services? It is certainly worth a try.
Seth Horowitz on our perception of sound
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.
Posted in A Minor Post, Music, Radio & Podcasts, Sound Perception
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Forward on Climate Rally seeks to shift the national dialogue on anthropogenic climate change
The Sierra Club / 350.org / Hip Hop Caucus — Forward on Climate Rally
Quantifying the climate value of that 40-acre woodlot
The New York Times “Tree Power“
Up-Goer Five text editor challenges you to make accessible explanations
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, … Continue reading
Posted in A Minor Post, Pratt Institute, Public Outreach, Teaching, Web
Tagged Tony Wylen
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Green port policies yield big decreases in the ecological footprint of shipping
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.
