Jason Goldman
jgoldman
Posts by this author
June 18, 2010
Figure 1: Another gem from the good folks at Fake Science.
Here is this week's round-up of particularly awesome reading material:
Reflections on the Gulf Oil Spill. Want to know why BP (and, well, the entire gulf coast cleanup effort) is doing it wrong? Christie Wilcox has an awesome post. This is…
June 18, 2010
Once upon a Thursday night, blog bff Scicurious asked a particular blogger named Jason if he had access to a paper titled, Contraceptive efficacy of polyester-induced azoospermia in normal men. "I certainly hope so," he said. And so he logged in to his university's library proxy website, and…
June 17, 2010
This video has been winding its way through the interwebs. It's pretty neat, but is it truly a case of tortoise altruism? Who knows. We don't know anything about those specific turtles or that specific situation. We don't know if they're kin, we don't know if they're trained, if they're pets or…
June 17, 2010
I'm interested in finding out what are peoples' music listening habits while working on various sciencey things. After a small survey and discussion on twitter, I thought I'd bring it to the blogosphere, as people seem to generally have opinions on the matter.
This is going to be far from…
June 16, 2010
Another awesome music video from OK Go. The song is called "End Love". Their last video for "This Too Shall Pass" featured a Rube-Goldberg machine; this one messes with your time perception.
"The fastest we go is 172,800x, compressing 24 hours of real time into a blazing 1/2 second. The slowest is…
June 16, 2010
Dogs are particularly good at tasks that involve communicating or cooperating with humans, which has led some researchers to speculate that they are really good at solving social tasks, more generally. For example, dogs can figure out where a human's attention is, are really good at picking up on…
June 15, 2010
Here are my Research Blogging Editor's Selections for this week.
To start things off, two of ResearchBlogging's Editors did a joint blogcast this week. Listen to Travis and I discuss the relative benefits of using self-report data. Check out Travis's take on our conversation, and mine.
The Lies…
June 14, 2010
If you're a regular reader of Peter and Travis's blog, Obesity Panacea, you may have heard one of their semi-regular blogcasts. Well, since Peter is traveling the world (read about it here), Travis asked me to join him for a blogcast. While discussing topics that we could discuss, a sent a few…
June 14, 2010
I've decided I want to cover some recent research on social cognition in domesticated dogs. But first, we need some background. So here's a repost from the old blog.
Today I want to tell you about one of my most favorite studies, ever, of animals. Are you ready? It's a FIFTY YEAR LONG longitudinal…
June 13, 2010
As graduate students, we all invariably, at one point or another, mentor or oversee an undergraduate research assistant who is doing research in our labs either on a volunteer basis or for credit. Occasionally in the summer, they get paid to do it, if the lab has an active grant with funding for…
June 13, 2010
Evolutionary Psychology suffers from a PR problem, which can be mostly blamed on ignorant (even if well-intentioned) members of the population who don't know what they're talking about.
Evolutionary psychology attempts to describe the evolution of the mind and of behavior and, well, everyone has a…
June 11, 2010
The editors at 3 Quarks Daily have made their decisions and somehow chose ME as one of their nine finalists.
I've got some very stiff competition - no surprise of course, as these are some of the best science writers on the web, and some of the very people I try to emulate! Thanks to everyone who…
June 11, 2010
Bonobo Week continues! I'm donating whatever proceeds I receive from my blogging shenanigans for the entire month of June to help the bonobos at Lola Ya Bonobo.
Imagine that you're wandering in the desert and you come across two magic lamps. One lamp grants three wishes. It's your standard sort of…
June 10, 2010
The official song of the World Cup, Waka Waka (This Time For Africa), by Shakira.
Totally awesome song. But also, animals playing soccer!
(h/t @avflox)
June 10, 2010
I knew the time would eventually come that I'd have to institute a comment policy.
Here it is. A copy can also be found on the CONTACT page.
The Comment Policy:
I don't like to moderate my comments so don't make me. I have better things to do.
This blog is not a democracy; it's a benevolent…
June 10, 2010
That's right, kids, it's that time of month again. Ocean time.
This month's Carnival of the Blue is up at Blogfish.
Awesome posts, and I always encourage, a great way to find new blogs to read. This month particularly, there are some really interesting and important posts to read concerning the…
June 9, 2010
Bonobo Week continues! I'm donating whatever proceeds I receive from my blogging shenanigans for the entire month of June to help the bonobos at Lola Ya Bonobo.
Primate researchers used to think that only humans voluntarily share their own food with others. At the time, it was a reasonable…
June 8, 2010
Recent events have confused me, a little bit. In trying to figure this all out, I thought I'd pose a question to the readership:
Is it possible to ask an empirical question about the effects of a certain human-made product or activity, without implicitly condoning the existence of that product or…
June 8, 2010
Thanks for your votes, everyone!
One of the three posts of mine initially nominated for the 3 Quarks Daily Science Blogging Prize made it to the semi-finals! Somewhat unsurprisingly, it was the post on oral sex in fruitbats.
Check out the other semi-finalists, here.
And also congratulations to my…
June 8, 2010
Here are my ResearchBlogging Editor's Selections for this week:
Which conflicts consume couples the most? eHarmony Labs has some answers.
Neurocritic has some issues with a recent paper describing differences in brain activation in omnivores, vegetarians, and vegans. Is it really a case of…
June 7, 2010
Maryn McKenna, and her blog Superbug 2.0 has been downloaded (uploaded?) into the Borg.
As she says:
What you can expect to see on Superbug: antimicrobial resistance of course, and all the things we do to make it worse. (Anyone want to talk about chain drugstores giving antibiotics away for free?)…
June 7, 2010
A few weeks ago I emailed Vanessa Woods and asked her pretty please if I could review her book. After reading all of the bonobo and chimpanzee papers written by Vanessa and her husband Brian Hare (both now at Duke) over the years, as well as their research on domesticated dogs and silver foxes (…
June 6, 2010
Yesterday Dr. Isis informed the world that, unfortunately, Isis the Dog passed away. A sad day in the life of any pet owner, I imagine it is especially troubling for Little Isis.
Being the proprietor of the SB home for all things animal and thoughtful, I asked the goddess if I could construct a…
June 6, 2010
Yesterday afternoon, I watched the livestream of the "All Creatures Great and Smart" session of the World Science Festival in New York City. The session was absolutely fantastic, and featured Brian Hare, Vanessa Woods, Jeremy Niven, Patrick Hof and Klaus Zuberbühler.
The conversation challenged…
June 4, 2010
Figure 1: Great White Shark, Carcharodon carcharias.
I saw this clip on the news last night, but when I went to look for the video online, it hadn't been uploaded yet. How awesome to find it this morning, already blogged by my friends at LAist!
This video was caught at Will Rogers State Beach in…
June 4, 2010
The first iteration of this post engendered quite a bit of discussion. Some of it within the scope of what I initially wrote about; much of it not.
I closed the comments and un-published the post while I considered what to do about it. I've decided to go ahead and re-publish the post, stripped of…
June 3, 2010
Last month a pod of orcas was found off of Palos Verdes, near Los Angeles.
Well, they're back. Actually, it isn't clear if this is the same pod or not, but here's some more awesome footage of orcas found in the waters off of Dana Point, earlier this week.
Killer whales are not seen often in these…
June 2, 2010
For the Doctoral Candidates at the Keck School of Medicine, Class of 2010, Eric Schulze was asked by his colleagues to give the student commencement address. The theme of his talk was, "Things I Should Have Been Taught About Science."
(video below the fold)
June 2, 2010
Voting for the 3QD science blogging prize has opened. Eighty posts have made the initial nominations list, including 3 of my own:
The Thoughtful Animal: Does oral sex confer an evolutionary advantage? Evidence from bats
The Thoughtful Animal: Path Integration in the Desert Ant
The Thoughtful…