In the Washington Post, Michael Dirda recently listed 22 books that he re-reads. I also have a weirdly catholic list of books that I like to re-visit regularly. Of course, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is on my list. Legendary Dracula actor, Christopher Lee (1922-2015), who played Saruman in the films reportedly re-read them every […]
Tag Archives: ecology
Pandemic Pedagogy Chronicles Part 1: What is Exponential Growth Bias?
By the time the York University leadership cancelled in-person classes on Friday March 13, 2020 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, I already knew that in-person April exams would inevitably be cancelled, along with in-person Summer Semester courses: the novel virus SARS-CoV-2 was entering its exponential growth phase by the time the pandemic was […]
My Margaret Atwood Nomination for A Bold Vision Conference, Charlottetown 2014
It's 150 years since the Charlottetown Conference of 1864. But, what if the Fathers of Confederation had been the Mothers of Confederation, instead? This is the very cool idea behind the A Bold Vision Conference planned for September 2014 on Prince Edward Island. A summer and autumn of celebration is being planned, including this conference, aimed at […]
I'm aiming to break my class out of the cycle of "memorizing & forgetting"
I haven't taught BIOL 4090.40, Plant Ecology for nearly 10 years. It's been shifted from Fall to Winter term, meaning the entire lab. component needed changing because of the different season, and now we're on Moodle, and we have #SoMe (social media), so it was time for a mega-overhaul. AND, it's week 2 of the winter term, […]
