Jason Goldman
jgoldman
Posts by this author
April 26, 2010
Today for Monday Pets, we're going to go old school and talk about vision.
Vision is arguably our most (intentionally) utilized sensory system, so its pretty important to figure out how it works. And it's what David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel set out to investigate starting in the late 1950s.…
April 25, 2010
For when you have those late night pre-data-collection-week science crazies.
Yafyufa (English: The Prettiest), by Eyal Golan.
April 24, 2010
Earlier this week we talked about how to use whale snot for science.
I especially enjoyed blog bff Scicurious's take on the study:
Budgetary requirement: $5000 for series of expensive remote control helicopters.
Source: Toys R Us.
Justification: Need something that can fly close to a whale and…
April 23, 2010
It's amazing how much you can learn about an animal's mind by a simply watching it.
Video 1: Gratuitous video of octopuses never hurt anyone. Maybe this will sate the Pharyngulites.
In the late 1980s, a researcher named Jennifer A. Mather wondered about octopuses' use of spatial memory. This…
April 23, 2010
Figure 1: Research Sausage indeed. (Source)
Bloggy News:
Research Blogging now supports Polish-language posts! Polish is the sixth language supported by the site, following Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, German, and English. We encourage new bloggers to register. If you blog about peer reviewed…
April 22, 2010
Happy Earth Day, everyone!
In honor of the day, here's a modified re-post of piece I wrote recently for LAist.
Figure 1: Photo by poloroid-girl via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr.
The great philosopher Kermit the Frog once said, "It's not that easy being green." Maybe he was on to something.
You…
April 21, 2010
Animals dream, too!
It's definitely not a seizure, and it's definitely not random motor actions. Those actions are totally coordinated. Poor dog must have been dreaming about a dog fight or something.
April 21, 2010
Figure 1: Humpback whale
The question is: what do you use to study the health of whales in the wild?
The answer is: not what you'd think.
Unlike smaller sea mammals like seals or sea lions, it is very hard to obtain blood samples from whales without first killing them.
Meet Karina Acevedo-…
April 21, 2010
This seems to have become unofficial volcano week, here at ScienceBlogs. If you haven't been following the coverage of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption at Erik Klemetti's Eruptions blog, you should consider doing so. Also, Dr. Isis has a post on how the eruption has fouled up all nuclear imaging…
April 20, 2010
As Psychology and Neuroscience Editor for ResearchBlogging.org, each week I choose 3-4 of the best posts from around the blogosphere in those categories. Here are my picks for this week:
This week, we've got an selection of posts exploring the increasingly complex and sometimes unsettling roles…
April 19, 2010
First, this dude is hilarious:
Then, get this, once the baby gets to be about, say, baby-sized, it has to come out. At this point, it's WAY bigger than the orifice that lets it out. It's as though someone built an airplane inside of a hangar, and then when they were done, looked around and noticed…
April 19, 2010
Dog owners have a way - sometimes within DAYS of first becoming dog owners - of becoming EXPERTS on animal behavior. It blows my mind. These are people who observe their animals displaying interesting or curious behaviors and make up things like "dogs like being put in tiny cages, actually, because…
April 18, 2010
Didn't mean to put post two CSN(Y) jams in a row, but apparently this has been a CSN weekend.
Video of Helplessly Hoping from their 2000 tour:
And Ohio, from the Deja Vu album:
Finally, Graham Nash and David Crosby performing Guinnevere on BBC in 1970:
April 18, 2010
What is science? Fundamentally, science is a process of hypothesis-testing. Scientists observe phenomena, propose hypotheses to explain or account for some observed phenomenon, and design experiments to test those hypotheses. Then those or other scientists attempt to replicate the findings. In…
April 17, 2010
A recent paper from the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy came across my desktop yesterday called e-Reading and e-Responding: New Tools for the Next Generation of Readers.
In it, Lotta C. Larson describes her observation of 10 fifth-grade students who were given access to an e-reader…
April 16, 2010
Music for Brainvoyaging: Crosby, Stills, and Nash - Daylight Again.
Filmed live in 1982 at L.A.'s Universal Amphitheater
April 16, 2010
Figure 1: The Borg isn't so bad, after all.
Blog News:
What a fantastic first week in the Borg ScienceBlogs. Welcome, again, to all the new readers.
Did you miss my Psychology and Neuroscience Editor's Selections at ResearchBlogging.org? Here you go again.
You can see what I'm writing on LAist by…
April 15, 2010
Do animals create art? So far, this seems a uniquely human ability.
But do animals have a sense of the aesthetically pleasing? What about the ability to judge and critique art? Can an animal decide if a given work of art is beautiful or ugly? What is beauty in the first place? All good questions.…
April 14, 2010
I have a new Scibling! I only got to retain the title of newest blog here for about 24 hours, because yesterday Alex Wild's blog, Myrmecos, was assimilated into the Borg.
You might remember Alex as the first photographer featured last year at the Photo Synthesis blog. He is ScienceBlogs' new…
April 14, 2010
Rarely does country music make me wish youtube had an auto-repeat function.
"Need You Now" by Lady Antebellum. Live at the 2009 Country Music Awards.
April 13, 2010
What are the cognitive and neural systems that allow us to build buildings, play checkers, do multivariate statistics, receive DVDs by mail, follow Dr. Isis's pesto recipe, or navigate the tangled LA freeways?
You may ask: what can studying children and non-human animals tell us about the…
April 13, 2010
Any artists out there?
As my Photoshop skills leave something to be desired, I am opening up a contest for any reader who would like to send me ideas for banners, as well as a square logo, for the Thoughtful Animal.
Details:The banner image must be 756 pixels wide by 93 pixels high.
The logo…
April 13, 2010
As Psychology and Neuroscience Editor for ResearchBlogging.org, each week I choose 3-4 of the best posts from around the blogosphere in those categories. Here are my picks for this week:
Why might spite have evolved? Upon first glance it may not seem a particularly useful survival strategy. But Tom…
April 12, 2010
The party isn't over yet! Here's another helping of Monday Pets. Enjoy!
Wild Dog crawled into the Cave and laid his head on the Woman's lap... And the Woman said, "His name is not Wild Dog any more, but the First Friend."
--Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling.
Archaeological evidence indicates that…
April 12, 2010
The party continues! Today you get a double-dose of Monday Pets. Here's one from the archives. Later today, you can expect a new one.
I often write about animals that the average person does not interact with all that much on a day-to-day basis. Today, I introduce something I like to call "Monday…
April 12, 2010
Welcome to the new home for The Thoughtful Animal!
Welcome especially to new readers! To the old readers, I hope you'll enjoy the new place. Nothing big will change; but now I've got better technical support, a family of Sciblings (go check out their blogs!), a more powerful interface, and…