Christopher X J. Jensen
Associate Professor, Pratt Institute

Dumb radio ads provide smart insight into the diverse nature of human societies

Posted 15 Feb 2013 / 0

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 how they function and persist? For evolutionists, these are pretty vexing scientific questions: most researchers Read More

A Major Post, Behavior, Cooperation, Economic sustainability, Ethics, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Political Science, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Social Diversity

Governor Cuomo makes the connection between natural disasters and climate change, calls for building in resilience

Posted 01 Nov 2012 / 2

In an election season when global climate change has been a subject that neither Obama nor Romney seem interested in discussing (see reports by The New Yorker and The Huffington Post), along comes Hurricane Sandy. With the arrival of the second “100 year storm event” to hit the State of New York in as many Read More

A Major Post, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Belief, Climate Change, Cultural Evolution, Economic sustainability, Environmental Justice, Memetic Fitness, Political Science, Resilience, Reviews, Risk & Uncertainty, Sustainability, Sustainable Transportation, Web

Want to know where the Presidential candidates stand on science? There’s a site for that!

Posted 25 Oct 2012 / 0

Science Debate dot org “The Top American Science Questions: 2012“

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

National Geographic on the yartsa gunbu bubble

Posted 23 Aug 2012 / 0

National Geographic “Tibetan Gold” This story encapsulates a whole host of unsustainable human behaviors: First, we have people over-harvesting an ecological product in a manner that risks its collapse; Second, the over-harvesting is driven by a cultural superstition that has spread without any real basis in fact; and Third, the entire over-valuation of these parasite-infested-worms is Read More

A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Belief, Biodiversity Loss, Coevolution, Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Evolution, Ecology, Economic sustainability, Ecosystem Services, Memetic Fitness, Parasitism, Population Growth, Resource Consumption, Sustainable Harvesting, System Stability, Tundra

Preview of my ESA 2012 poster promoting the Evolution of Sustainable Use activity

Posted 31 Jul 2012 / 0

This year I am proud to be returning to the Ecological Society of America annual meeting in Portland, Oregon. I missed last year’s meeting and I am excited to be overwhelmed by all the amazing scholarship that is on display at these meetings. I generally present talks at meetings, but this year I decided to do Read More

A Major Post, Biodiversity Loss, Carrying Capacity, Conferences, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Ecological Modeling, Ecological Society of America, Ecology, Ecology Education, Economic sustainability, Economics, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Food, Group Selection, Marine Ecosystems, Population Growth, Population Pressure, Predation, Public Policy, Resource Consumption, Sustainability, System Stability, Teaching Tools, The Sustainable Use of Fisheries

Science Magazine outlines the big scientific issues at Rio+20

Posted 18 Jun 2012 / 0

Science “Science for Sustainable Development” The distinction between “Sustainable Development Goals” and the “Millenium Development Goals” is interesting: adding sustainability and thus environmental concerns to these goals necessitates more direct action on the part of developed nations. I am also intrigued by the idea that in order to truly make a go at technologically averting Read More

A Minor Post, Economic sustainability, Public Policy, Sustainability

Joseph E. Stiglitz discusses the economically destabilizing impact of rent-seeking

Posted 06 Jun 2012 / 0

WNYC The Leonard Lopate Show “Joseph Stiglitz Explains the Price of Inequality” As I have suggested before [1, 2], in order to stabilize our economy, we have to incentivize the generation of income from actual labor — not simply owning resources.

A Minor Post, Economic sustainability, Economics, Ethics, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts

Economic Whales and their Parasites

Posted 27 May 2012 / 0

Today’s New York Times Business section features an interesting article on the recent JPMorgan multi-billion loss. Entitled “The Hunch, the Pounce and the Kill: How Boaz Weinstein and Hedge Funds Outsmarted JPMorgan“, the article explains how a risk-prone hedge fund manager named Boaz Weinstein was able to exploit errors by JPMorgan and end up on Read More

Articles, Economic sustainability, Economics, Ethics, Parasitism, Public Policy, Social Capital, System Stability

Are the most lucrative components of the financial sector parasites on the larger economy?

Posted 21 May 2012 / 0

Marketplace “High-frequency trading: Bad for markets… and the soul?“

A Minor Post, Economic sustainability, Economics, Parasitism, Radio & Podcasts