I’m reading John Cassidy’s remarkable book How Markets Fail (2009), which includes a brief aside on economist Kenneth Arrow‘s fundamental work on “‘social’ ordering” – the problem of “converting individual preferences over a set of [possibilities]…into a consistent ordering for society as a whole” (p. 62, in Cassidy’s paperback edition). To paraphrase Cassidy’s eloquent summary,…
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A writing exercise: manually mapping one draft onto another
Scott Armstrong & I just tried this writing exercise: Required materials include two different drafts of the same manuscript (here, let’s call one “early” and one “final”), several sheets of flip-chart paper, scissors, tape, and a handful of coloring markers. Make sure there are line numbers in the margins of both manuscripts, and print them…
Read MoreSyllabus: The Global Ocean (@globaloceanS16)
Another very brief shout – Embedded here is an abridged copy of the syllabus for this year’s version of The Global Ocean, the gateway module for Cardiff’s first-year students in Marine Geography. As with my second-year module (Marine & Coastal Resource Systems), you can dip into the readings we’ll be doing from week to week. And…
Read MoreSyllabus: Marine & Coastal Resource Systems (@marcoresys2016)
A very brief shout – Embedded here is an abridged copy of the syllabus for this year’s Marine & Coastal Resource Systems module, part of the core curriculum for Cardiff’s second-year students in Marine Geography. You can check out the readings we’ll be doing. Ambitious? You bet. But fun. Also, between now and May-ish (at…
Read MoreMalta’d (field notes and photos)
April took me to Malta with our second-year Marine Geography undergraduates. (I know it’s now July, and April was a while ago. I’m doing my best here.) While Roo Perkins led one crew on snorkeling surveys of biodiversity in a selection of bays around the island, Rhoda Ballinger & I led a second group on…
Read MoreThinking in (human–environmental) systems – a research triptych
Three papers were released into the wild this winter, making for exciting times at the Lab. Walking to and from the office the past few days, I’ve been thinking about where and how their themes overlap. Seems to me these three papers are connected by a process of argumentation: the work of sketching out the…
Read MoreWriting season (another Top Five list)
It’s been an autumn of writing. Maybe not enough in these blog pages – apologies, readers – but plenty of writing, all told: manuscripts for the long road to publication (or not); grant proposals; new content for the departmental Website. The variety of problem solving – broken introductions, unravelled middles, empty-handed conclusions, all capped under…
Read MoreJersey time (Channel Islands dispatch)
Back from a brilliant week on Jersey, in the Channel Islands, with the second-year Marine Geography students. After an island reconnoitre last Sunday, we spent Monday walking beaches; Tuesday in the Jersey Museum and Maritime Museum (with market-stall lunch at the Central Market in St Helier); Wednesday with officials from the States of Jersey Department…
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The Environmental Dynamics Lab (EDL) 