State of the Blog
jgoldman | December 7, 2010King of all blogmemery Drugmonkey has started another one this week.
The rules for this blog meme are quite simple. Post the link and first sentence from the first blog entry for each month of the past year.
Seems easy enough. Instead of just choosing the first blog entry this month, however, I'm going rogue and just randomly choosing a blog entry from each month. I've been blogging The Thoughtful Animal for exactly a year, so I'll have something for each month (my one-year bloggiversary will be during Science Online).
Without further ado:
January: As promised, here is the beginning of a…
jgoldman | November 25, 2010
Ah, Thanksgiving. A day full of turkey, cranberries, pie, and, of course, SCIENCE! After you fill your stomach with gravy and stuffing, stuff your mind with all this great Thanksgiving science.
What's any good Thanksgiving feast without some turkey? Emily Anthes of Wonderland starts the meal off with an offering of thanks for the turkey's contribution to cancer research. But wait! That's not all the science of turkeyhood to be consumed. Feast your minds on my contribution at the Scientific American Guest Blog: the social-cognitive abilities of turkeys. And in case you're feeling particularly…
jgoldman | November 17, 2010You may have noticed that I've stopped doing linkfests. I decided that the time put in to their curation (i.e. the 'cost') outweighs the value of doing so (i.e. the 'benefit'). It also occurred to me that most of the things I would curate in my weekly linkfests were the same items I tweeted throughout the week, and many of the same items I share in Google Reader.
So, for those of you who enjoyed the linkfests or want to keep your eyes on interesting things to read on the web, I encourage you to follow me on twitter, or if you *just* want the links without the rest of the twitter shenanigans,…
jgoldman | November 16, 2010Thanks to everyone who participated in this year's Donors Choose Science Bloggers for Students campaign. Twenty-two readers from this humble blog donated a total of $524, affecting a total of 904 students! And that's not all, because HP is matching every dollar donated, so your $524 is actually worth $1048.
Keep your eyes on your email inboxes for the emails from Donors Choose with information on how to use the HP-matched vouchers to help even more students - don't ignore those emails, or those matching funds will go UNUSED!
Overall, the support from the science-blog-reading community has…
jgoldman | October 19, 2010Check out this awesome David Attenborough video:
So far the readers of this fair blog have managed to fully fund two Donors Choose science education requests. We can do better. Do you like the stuff that you read here? Do you like David Attenborough? Consider donating to this project.
Mr. T teaches at a "high poverty" high school in Los Angeles. He writes:
I teach Biology and freshman science in an inner city/urban public school where over 50% of students qualify for free and reduced-price lunches. Daily life is often a challenge for many students, so textbook learning due to lack of…
jgoldman | October 12, 2010Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week:
"Young children are little scientists. They instinctively stretch, prod, observe and categorise the world's offerings." Christian Jarrett at BPS Research Digest discusses how early children can be exposed to scientific ideas.
Dr. Shock asks, "Why does someone write a personal blog and not simply use the Internet for taking in media content?"
David Berreby at the Mind Matters blog discusses a fascinating observation: "After U.S. elections, Internet searches for porn are more frequent in states that voted for the winners." To the…
jgoldman | October 11, 2010...by DeLene Beeland, for the Raleigh News Observer and the Charlotte Observer (same interview, two papers).
jgoldman | October 10, 2010
Every year the science blogging community organizes the "Science Bloggers for Students challenge", a month-long competition between science blogs to see which raise do the most to help low-income science classrooms through the DonorsChoose.org website. Through Donors Choose, teachers can go and make requests for specific supplies or materials that they otherwise can't afford.
I look back on my elementary, middle, and high school science classes, and my most vivid (and fondest) memories were of the hands-on demos and experiments that we did in class, of the books that we were given to read (…
jgoldman | October 3, 2010
Science
Someone had to ask it. Why do squirrels masturbate? Obviously, it's a piece by Ed.
Sentiment-sensing software could aid in weeding hostile online comments. If this comes to pass, I imagine most of Physioprof's comments will be weeded out, sadly.
An important new study of mirror self-recognition in Japanese macaques, explained by Carl Zimmer. And BPS Research Digest weighs in on the validity of the mirror self-recognition test in the first place.
Lots of news this week about the discovery that the exoplanet Gliese 581g could be hospitable to life. Brian Romans explains the important…
jgoldman | September 30, 2010
Aaron Rowe and I are organizing a tweet-up for LA-area science writers/communicators. Many of us interact daily through our blogs or through twitter, but rarely in person - so this is a chance to meet up face to face. If you're interested, please click the link to this survey, which we'll use to put together an email/twitter list, as well as to determine availability for a weekend afternoon meet-up in the near future.
jgoldman | September 26, 2010
Science
The NY Times had an article on why we like spicy foods...a week after I had my piece in the Guardian making the same arguments. Coincidence? Probably.
"As the cost of DNA sequencing continues to plummet, I predict that these canine genetic/genomic studies will get much more common." Virginia Hughes reports on the world's first dog genomics program.
Martin Robbins on why personal drug detectors for parents is a bad idea. Plus a hilarious story involving cocaine, marmite, and airport security.
Why are California sea otters dying? A good article from the LA Times, to be read in…
jgoldman | September 21, 2010This week is Social Media Week in Los Angeles, as well as in Mexico City, Milan, Bogota, and Buenos Aires.
What does that mean, exactly?
Social Media Week is a multi-city global conference connecting people, content and conversations around emerging trends in social and mobile media. Dozens of free events hosted at locations all over the city will bring together CEO's, entrepreneurs, journalists, bloggers, brand managers, CMO's, social media strategists, artists, activists and the technology/media digerati. Across a wide range of topics, industries and causes and with nearly 70 events…
jgoldman | September 19, 2010
Another week, another new blog network. Go say hello to the bloggers at Wired Science. Five of the six should look familiar, if you've been around Scienceblogs for a while: Brian Switek, David Dobbs, Daniel Macarthur, Maryn McKenna, Rhett Allain and Brian Romans, joined Jonah Lehrer, who had already been there a few weeks.
Science
Melody Dye and I discussed psychology on the Bloggingheads Science Saturday program yesterday.
The second edition of the Carnal Carnival is up at Carin Bondar's place, and the theme is vomit!
Christie Wilcox tells us that, apparently, the most highly cited academic…
jgoldman | September 18, 2010
My Child's Play co-blogger Melody and I are the subjects of today's Bloggingheads.tv Science Saturday program. Watch us chat with eachother for about an hour on how we became scientists and science bloggers, our thoughts on the state of psychology as a field, peer review and the journal system, how the study of language learning and comparative cognition may not be so different, and a smattering of other thoughts.
jgoldman | September 17, 2010
The schwag shop has opened!
Imagine how awesome your desk would look with a Thoughtful Animal mug on it. Need a bag to lug your books around in? Why not use a Thoughtful Animal tote bag?
Right now I've got some coffee/tea mugs, travel mugs, beer mugs, and water bottles available, as well as a few bags, and some coasters. What else do you want? Clothing? Fridge magnets? Aprons? Can coolers? Let me know and I'll add them to the shop.
All profits I make from the schwag shop will go to an animal conservation foundation or charity to be determined. Once there is enough to send, I'll run a poll on…
jgoldman | September 12, 2010
There was A LOT of stuff this week. Was this week particularly good for blogging or am I just aware of more blogs and blog posts in recent weeks? Am I paying more attention because of the new networks? Am I just filtering less, and including more in the round-up? Anyway, lots of awesome.
Science
I've really been enjoying the Replicated Typo blog lately. I particularly liked a recent post on the social sensitivity hypothesis: "Given findings that certain genetic variants will make a person more sensitive to social contact and more reliant on social contact under stress, it proposes that…
jgoldman | September 5, 2010
Links, links, and more links. Lots of good stuff this week.
Science
Brains and Beauty: a three-movement concerto was written inspired by a poem written by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, and set to images culled from the research of Hanna Damasio.
How does beer become whiskey? At the Guardian Science blog, Andy Connelly describes this delicious transformation.
Fascinating musings on comparative medicine from our friends over at the Dog Zombie. What is a wallaby?
Blog bff Scicurious writes about PCR - a technique that shouldn't work, but does.
In the NY Times, Carl Zimmer has probably the…
jgoldman | September 2, 2010
The 27th edition of the Carnival of Evolution is being served up at 360 Degree Skeptic. Lots of great posts included as usual, including my two part series on social dynamics in hyena groups: Silver Spoon Hyenas? and Silver Spoon Hyenas: Maternal Social Status Affects Male Reproductive Success.
Also, Andrew has done an exceptional job in curating this month's CoE. If you're hosting a carnival soon, or ever plan to, this is a model to emulate. His commentary is just as riveting as the actual content!
And you do know about (and contribute to, and volunteer to host) all the other carnivals,…
jgoldman | September 1, 2010The universe is expanding, and so is the science blogosphere.
Directly on the heels of the announcement last week of the big daddy meta-aggregator to end all aggregators, scienceblogging.org, there are not-one-but-two new science blogging networks that have launched in the last forty-eight hours.
Before I get to the networks, my Scibling (once a scibling, always a scibling) Abel Pharmboy aka David Kroll has moved Terra Sig over to CENtral Science. Go say hello at his new digs.
Yesterday, The Guardian, a legacy media institution, launched a small but impressive science blogging network, that…
jgoldman | August 28, 2010Welcome to the weekly linkfest, August 28 edition.
Science
Brian Switek writes about one of the fastest mammals on earth, the pronghorn, and the complex ecology it lives in. Of Pronghorns and Predators. It's an interesting look into the predator-prey relationships between wolves, coyotes, and pronghorns.
Another great post from Brian, in which he tells us about the mystery of the missing brontosaurus head.
Yet another human falls prey to the illusion of attention. The guys at The Invisible Gorilla explain why there is just no safe way to text while driving.
The dog-human connection in…