The Dynamics of Social Extinction (and other things to ponder for fun on a weekend...)

While catching up with some blog reading as I sit here nursing my cold/sore throat this Saturday morning, I found a variety of interesting articles, some highly relevant to our conversations here in Reconciliation Ecology - so let me share a couple of these with you.

First, via The Tangled Bank, the latest edition of which is @ Neurotopia, I'd like you to read this thought-provoking piece on The Dynamics of Social Extinction. Its a nice summary of a symposium talk at the recent AAAS meeting (held not too far from us in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago) by one of my postdoc mentors, Dr. Charles Redman, director of the Global Institute of Sustainability at ASU. I would like us to dwell upon some provocative questions raised in this article (both by the author and by Dr. Redman) about sustainability and resilience of societies. You've heard me bring up the idea of resilience in class several times, and Dr. Redman is part of the Resilience Alliance, which promotes interdisciplinary thinking and research in this important area. I hope we will sink our teeth into the topic some more over the coming weeks, and you may consider it as part of the background perspectives for our collective class project.

Next (also via Tangled Bank), if you want a depressing story (and who doesn't love a depressing story on a sunny California Saturday, right?), check out this follow-up to what was apparently an Earth-Day inspired attempt to recycle tires (yes, them rubber circles covering the limbs of your vehicles) into coral reefs (yep, the very same biodiverse habitat of poor lost Nemo!). I had never heard of this spectacular eco-engineering effort before, and it makes me wonder - how many ways can we come up with to foul up this planet, even when we try to save it?!

Finally, since the subject of religion seems to keep coming up in some of our class discussions, and you may actually read this on a Sunday, I should share this from the always soft-spoken Pharyngula!

Happy reading...

[P.S.: In case you haven't looked on Blackboard yet, I uploaded a paper for Monday's class, and some other reading material)