Author: Josh Witten

http://www.thefinchandpea.com

Fish cognition

My daughter really enjoys playing the iPad game Flick Fishing HD. Don’t worry folks. It’s all catch and release. Also, The Frogger can now identify about 30 different species of fish. We also use it for spelling practice:

Can you spell “barracuda”?

It also got me to wondering why different fish react differently to being caught on a line as this is a threat that is completely different from any natural predators. Are the fish aware they are in danger or just trying to get away from an annoyance? Is the behavior panic or some version of a standard predator avoidance? Or, is the fish evaluating the threat and then putting together the best strategy it can to counter the specific threat? That sounds pretty advanced, but we already know that some fish can use tools*.

*Depending on how you choose to define “tool”.

Unironically

You can probably identify the time and place of my birth to an accuracy of +/- 2 years and +/- 500 miles by the fact that I listened to the entirety of Hootie and the Blowfish‘s Cracked Rear View (a time unit known as 1 Hootie [Hty]) this evening while doing the dishes and loved it.

Speaking of which, I absolutely despise hipsters for making it almost mandatory that I qualify this by saying “unironically”. No way. Not doing it. Allow this to be official notice that this boy enjoys everything he enjoys genuinely and honestly, and without shame. Well, maybe with a little shame.

Killjoy

Periodically, the Laboratory of Molecular Biology hosts an art show for the researchers and employees. What you see here is the flyer for the art show, with some added commentary (circled in red).

Roll eyes – Return to lab.

You, operator of this supposedly pithy pen, are everything that is wrong with the way we do science.

Elvis

The problem with having a deep voice is that, whenever I say “Thank you very much”, I think people think I’m doing an Elvis impersonation – then I wonder, am I doing an Elvis impersonation?

On embarassment

This is my lunchbox. It is original and awesome. It gets a lot of attention at work – all positive.

Yet, even that positive attention occasionally makes me feel uncomfortable. Why would this be the case? Continue reading “On embarassment”