jQuery and console.log are unrelated entities, although useful when used together.
If you use a browser’s built-in dev tools, console.log will log information about the object being passed to the log function.
If the console is not active, logging will not work, and may break your script. Be certain to check that the console exists before logging:
if (window.console) console.log('foo');
The shortcut form of this might be seen instead:
window.console&&console.log('foo');
There are other useful debugging functions as well, such as debug, dir and error. Firebug’s wiki lists the available functions in the console api.