Jason Goldman
jgoldman
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The 24th installment of the Carnival of Evolution is up at NeuroDojo, and this month features an extra helping of brain!
As usual, I submitted a few pieces. With respect to evolution more generally, you can find my piece on oral sex in fruit bats:
Speaking of scandals, a paper on oral sex in fruit…
Here are my ResearchBlogging Editor's Selections for this week:
I was away at the annual conference of the Association for Psychological Science this week. Luckily, others were able to supply the sci-blogosphere with plenty of psychology and neuroscience blogging.
There's a saying that clothes don…
It should not come as a surprise to the regular reader of this blog that a lot can be learned about animal cognition by simply observing animal behavior. But can observing animal behavior lead the observer to make inferences about brain anatomy? Can observing animal behavior tell us something about…
Two songs by Israeli singer Maya Avraham.
Lama (Why?) ××× - official music video
Tirkedi (Dance) תרק××
Zen recently wrote mentioned this study on his blog, so I thought it was time to dredge it out of the archives. Also, I've just returned from APS (see my daily recaps here here and here), and I am TIRED.
Domestic animals and their wild counterparts can be different in big ways; there can be…
I am exhausted. Today was a very long conference filled day followed by a very long baseball game at Fenway Park. My labmate, who is a bit of a baseball freak, in a moment of sheer brilliance, bought us STANDING ROOM ONLY tickets for the game. And so we stood. For >3 hours. My feet hurt. At…
At some point today, I got a whole mess of new twitter followers who (I hope) are coming to check out the blog. Here are a few links to some of the best and most popular posts, to give a sense of the things I like to write about.
Here is a quick introduction.
Here are a few of the most popular…
Another awesome day of psychologically scientific hilarity and awesomeness.
The day started for me with a session entitled "Teaching Applied Cognitive Science," given by Roberta L. Klatzky. Fascinating to learn some of the ways that cognitive science gets applied in the real world (some things…
Today was the first full day of APS in Boston. Well, sort of. The main APS program began this evening, but starting last night and continuing through the rest of today was the pre-conference APS-STP (Society for the Teaching of Psychology) Teaching Institute, which I attended, and during which I…
The fantastic blog 3 Quarks Daily has opened up nominations for its second annual prize in science blogging. This year, the contest will be judged by the great Richard Dawkins, and there will be three winners.
Posts can be nominated by bloggers or readers, and if any of you wanted to nominate one…
Some kids more readily recognize Ronald McDonald than the President of the United States of America. Sad, right?
Check out this exchange, from the 2004 movie Super Size Me:
Morgan Spurlock: [to kids] I'm gonna show you some pictures and I want you to tell me who they are.
Children: OK.
Morgan…
I have a confession to make. I would wear a pair of jeans any day over something more formal. I just find it more comfortable, and I maintain that you can look just as good in the right pair of jeans as in a pair of, for example, black slacks. As a result, I often try to justify the wearing of…
So who is going to be at APS this week in Boston?
I'll be there for both the pre-conference teaching institute as well as the main conference.
Find me presenting a poster during the teaching institute:
Teaching Institute Poster Session - Board: TI-054
Location: Back Bay Ballroom
Date/Time:…
The perspective that whales, dolphins, and other such marine mammals should be afforded "human rights" has surfaced again.
I thought I'd revisit a post I wrote about this several months ago, from the archives, when this first hit the news after the AAAS conference in San Diego. So here's a modified…
Want to get experience working with marine mammals? The Dolphin Research Center, in Grassy Key, Florida, is looking for interns for the Fall semester, and the deadline to apply is next week!
The DRC is home to a pod of Atlantic bottlenose dolphins (you might recognize A.J. from my banner image,…
Found this in my inbox the other day. Looks like a cool workshop and a really rich dataset. And the great part is if they accept your application, it is all entirely funded!
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is sponsoring a three-day advanced studies seminar on the use of the…
More science, more blogging, more fantastic. Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections this week:
Angry people might play video games to release pent up energy and aggression...But researchers find that it doesn't really help. Neoacademic explains why.
Blue bananas and pink elephants.…
Four sea lions nicknamed Matti, Pablo, Apolo and Taite were recently found underweight and malnourished on beaches in Orange County. This morning, they were released back into the wild before a cheering crowd at Crescent Bay in Laguna Beach. This was possible due the incredible work of the…
Lately, a paper to be published in the June edition of the American Naturalist has been getting some attention. The findings that are getting reported out of this paper didn't make sense to me, but I wondered if this was an issue with accuracy in reporting. So I went and found the paper. Turns out…
Figure 1: So what did everyone think of the Fringe season finale last night? I'll tell you what I thought: J.J. Abrams can bite me. (image source)
Okay, so maybe part of the reason I am so annoyed is because I'm kind of obsessed with Anna Torv's character, and I'm pissed about that twist at the end…
[Below is a longer, less edited version of an article I wrote for my department newsletter this month.]
Is science blogging something that belongs to Science or to Journalism? Clearly more and more scientists are communicating online. In a time when mainstream media are obliterating their science…
A song for Mom's birthday.
The best gift (by my own calculation) I ever gave my mother was a custom mousepad with an MRI image of my brain on it. I don't think that this youtube video comes close, but one can only give so many MRI mousepads before it becomes a little redundant.
Regular readers of this blog know that while I think studying animal cognition, behavior, and communication is (sometimes) fun and (always) interesting, the real importance - the why should I care about this - is because by understanding animals, we can attempt to learn more about ourselves.
I've…
Two songs by Venezuelan singer Carlos Baute:
First, Te Regalo:
Second, Colgando En Tus Manos, with Spanish singer Marta Sanchez
Fascinating Psychology and Neuroscience blogging as always this week. After several weeks behind me as Psych and Neuro Editor, I can confirm that is indeed really, really hard to just pick a few posts each week. But pick them I must...here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week…
This past weekend, I was searching around the interwebz looking for something interesting to write about for Monday Pets. Lately, Monday Pets has been somewhat cat- and dog-heavy, so I was looking for something a bit different. I asked on twitter if there were any requests or recommendations.…
Before we get into the regular bloggy shenanigans this week, I would like to share some personal news. Those of you who have been regular readers have certainly read about my family's dog, Argo. Those of you who have been reading since the initial incarnation of this blog at wordpress may remember…
No, I suppose you can never truly trust a killer whale.
(h/t Dr. Isis)
And for those who are unfamiliar, here's the original (not the original music video, since I can't find one):
Today Was A Fairytale, by Taylor Swift
Figure 1: From the good folks at Fake Science, something particularly relevant for me, these last few weeks.
Here's a round-up for this week. Since I missed doing it last week, I'll include a few extra things that I would have included last week.
Did you catch my Research Blogging Editor's…