Skeptically Speaking on Friday will be: Brain Games with Tom Stafford, who co-wrote Mind Hacks: Tips & Tricks for Using Your Brain. Friday evening. Details here!

Also, “Dr. Sarah Brosnan explains her study of game theory, and how humans compare to other primates when it comes to cooperative play.” Same show.

Don’t forget to download and listen to the Zebrafish and Dictionary Atheism conversation with PZ Myers. Here

Science Friday is going to cover a number of interesting topics this week a well. Will rising sea levels and melting sea ice change the way the Navy operates? and A retrospective analysis found that early flights had a one-in-nine chance of catastrophic failure, for instance (I had heard the failure rate estimate was pretty scary as it was.) Details.

Mental maps are interesting. I recently heard about reserch being done at the University of Minnesota in which it can be shown that rats develop a mental map of a maze, then later, when faced with moments of decision, pause in real space to run through alternative routes of the map in their heads. They have also been observed to dream the maps. We know that certain birds develop mental maps of their long distance migration routes, and these maps can be identified and differentiated in the neural tissue. Now, there is research showing that sharks have mental maps.

Some shark species make “mental maps” of their home ranges, allowing them to pin-point destinations up to 50km (30 miles) away, research suggests.

US-based scientists analysed data from tiger sharks tagged with acoustic transmitters, and found that they took directed paths from place to place.

Other species such as blacktip reef sharks did not show this behaviour.
bbc

Funny how all these animals with much less cultural learning and much less cerebral tissue (relatively speaking) have complex and detailed neural information that is entirely learned, but when humans vary in almost any way related to behavior there are so many people who insist that it must be caused by information encoded over the ages in their genes.

Use the following search box to find information from primarily “skeptical” blogs.

I’m currently in the process of adding sites, but you should find it useful as it is.

I’ve also placed the Skeptical Search box in the left sidebar for your easy access.

Ohio Senate Schedules a Fetus to Testify About Abortion Bill

In support of a bill that proposes banning abortions after the first heartbeat (something that can happen within eighteen days of conception), the anti-abortion group Faith2Action has scheduled a nine-week-old fetus to testify as a legislative witness before Ohio’s House Health Committee. …

Details

“Hey, look! I’ve located my first love! Cool, maybe we can go have dinner or something!” … precisely the words a newlywed husband was hoping to hear from his wife …

Amanda was sitting on the couch discovering Facebook, a place on the Internet she had been assiduously avoiding until only a day or two earlier. Finally, she became convinced that she could do this and keep it under control … keep her professional life (as a teacher) separate from it (if any of her students are reading this, don’t even try to friend her!). It was fun watching her learn the ins and outs, and to reconnect with many of her college and high school friends. So when she found her first love, I thought that was great, and as I headed downstairs to the blog cave, I congratulated her.

Then I sat down at my computer.
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