-
Free teaching tools
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
Recent Minor Posts
- 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
- Forward on Climate Rally seeks to shift the national dialogue on anthropogenic climate change
- Quantifying the climate value of that 40-acre woodlot
-
What I am reading now
Category Archives: Public Policy
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
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.
Quantifying the climate value of that 40-acre woodlot
The New York Times “Tree Power“
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.
Dog license dataset opens up huge potential for understanding the dog-human mutualism
WNYC “NYC’s Top Dogs: Mapping Names & Breeds in the City” WNYC “Dogs of NYC” Data sets like these, even flawed by their incompleteness (only 20% of dogs in New York City are registered) are fascinating. The human relationship with dogs has … Continue reading
Production on marginal lands can meet only 25% of our biofuel mandates
Nature “Bioenergy: Biofuel production on the margins” & “Sustainable bioenergy production from marginal lands in the US Midwest” This is fascinating, and provides further evidence that even the smartest biofuel production methods are not going to be enough to mitigate our … Continue reading
NPR provides a quick overview of the human drive to reciprocate
National Public Radio Shots “Give And Take: How The Rule Of Reciprocation Binds Us” I appreciate the far-ranging nature of this piece, and how it applies a basic understanding of reciprocity to larger social phenomena. There is not much here … Continue reading
Does American faith in genetic determinism limit the achievement of our students?
National Public Radio Shots “Struggle For Smarts? How Eastern And Western Cultures Tackle Learning” This piece went in a direction that I just did not expect. There is so much focus on the role of rote learning versus problem solving … Continue reading
Chronicle of Higher Education feature explores the question of why more women do not succeed in science
The Chronicle of Higher Education ”More Gender Diversity Will Mean Better Science” The Chronicle of Higher Education ”Why STEM Fields Still Don’t Draw More Women” The Chronicle of Higher Education ”Is Biology Just Another Pink-Collar Profession?” The Chronicle of Higher Education “Does This … Continue reading
Want to know where the Presidential candidates stand on science? There’s a site for that!
Science Debate dot org “The Top American Science Questions: 2012“
Posted in A Minor Post, Astronomy, Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, Economic sustainability, Economics, Ecosystem Services, Food, Grants & Funding, Health & Medicine, Marine Ecosystems, Political Science, Public Policy, Resource Consumption, Science (General), Space Travel, Sustainable Agriculture, Sustainable Energy, Web
Leave a comment
Rogue iron fertilization? Things have gotten weird!
The New York Times “A Rogue Climate Experiment Outrages Scientists“
Rob Nixon on Rachel Carson’s prescience
The Chronicle of Higher Education “Rachel Carson’s Prescience“
Posted in 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
Tagged Rachel Carson, Rob Nixon, Silent Spring, The Chronicle of Higher Education
Leave a comment
Barry Commoner, pioneering scientist and environmentalist, is dead at 95
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 … Continue reading
Some conservatives actually see the public health and economic dilemmas posed by greenhouse gas emissions
All Things Considered “New Groups Make A Conservative Argument On Climate Change“
Climate and Clean Air Coalition unites air pollution concerns
Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived Climate Pollutants This is another example of how considering air pollution from the perspective of both climate change and human health might begin to inspire global action.
Rachel Carson still under attack for bringing her values to bear on her science
Slate “Rachel Carson Didn’t Kill Millions of Africans: How the 50-year-old campaign against Silent Spring still distorts environmental debates” There is a lot of interesting stuff here, including a fascinating view into how scientific findings get processed by the public (both … Continue reading
ESA 2012 Overall Impressions
What was the ‘big news’ at this year’s Ecological Society of America meeting? Given that this meeting is composed of so many different meetings running concurrently, this just might be an impossible question to answer fairly. But for me, this … Continue reading
Posted in A Major Post, Altruism, Biodiversity Loss, Conservation Biology, Cooperation, Ecological Modeling, Ecological Society of America, Ecology Education, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Group Selection, Marine Ecosystems, Multilevel Selection, Public Policy, Punishment, Resource Consumption, Social Capital, Sustainability, System Stability, Talks & Seminars, Teaching, Teaching Tools, The Evolution of Sustainable Use
Leave a comment
