Janet D. Stemwedel (whose nom de blog is Dr. Free-Ride) is an assistant professor of philosophy at San Jose State University. Before becoming a philosopher, she earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry. Email her at dr.freeride@gmail.com.
Happy 2008! Let the bullets commence:
*I am now to the point of totally refusing to acknowledge this interstitial period between semesters as a proper break. Far too much of it has already been taken up with matters from last term, and there's no end of that in sight. Meanwhile, certain details of the upcoming semester are still sufficiently unresolved that I cannot yet do things like updating my course calendars.
*A piece of free advice to students: If you are emailing your instructor during an official break and would like a prompt and helpful response, avoid being abusive in that email message. (Look it over before hitting send.)
*Stealing an excellent idea from Julie's commenter Bev, the Free-Ride family is trying to institute a New Year's policy of "remorse eating". Basically, this will involve working our way through all those unlabeled containers of left-overs in our deep freeze, then giving the freezer a proper defrosting and starting fresh. (We may also include the dark recesses of the pantry.) While my better-half persists in calling this "revenge eating," so far it has been fine. I will likely put a "freezer finds" box in my left sidebar to satisfy your curiosity as to how it's going.
*Julie's theme for 2008 is "It's easier to stay caught up than to get caught up." This sounds more virtuous than its evil twin, "The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up." I'll see if I can cast my lot with virtue this year.
*Perhaps as a way to stay caught up, I'm going to be doing regular "linkfest" posts rather than trying to hold onto all my links until I have enough time to say lots of well-developed things about them. I will also be writing "real" posts.
*Less than two weeks until the 2008 Science Blogging Conference and no one has added any questions or issues to discuss on the wiki page for my session on the ethics of science blogging. I don't know whether to take this to mean that no one's coming to my session, or that people are planning to come but expecting me to have All The Answers (ha!), or what. Meanwhile, I'm hoping the airline doesn't reschedule my arrival by another 10 hours.
Comments
I like the "remorse eating" label. I've been thinking of it as "doing something with the Trader Joe's impulse buys that have been taking up space in our cupboard for the past year," but that doesn't really roll off the tongue.
So far, we've consumed cans of mandarin oranges and lychees, and have a box of Bengali Lentils on tonight's menu. I'm at a loss for what to do with the bottle of Pomegranate Glaze, though.
Posted by: Liz | January 8, 2008 9:03 AM
A piece of free advice to students: If you are emailing your instructor during an official break and would like a prompt and helpful response, avoid being abusive in that email message. (Look it over before hitting send.)
Heh. Got a couple of those in my day. It's always amazing that a minority of students (a) don't realize professors are human, and (b) have such a sense of entitlement that they think that being abusive might help them.
Posted by: Rob Knop | January 8, 2008 1:21 PM
In your youth remorse eating, a.k.a. clean out the freeze dinner, was often billed as Chef's delight or even Chef's surprise if the frozen objects included were so old as to be totally unrecognizable, sometimes even after reheating. Generally we cooked a pot of rice and put everything over that.
If you are taking too much flack, get one of your bros on the phone and put him on speaker during dinner to describe how he was made to eat "livin' disaster" in his youth by his mean mother. Ah, for the good old days...
Liz, try calling into The Splendid Table (on NPR) with the Pomegranate glaze and 4 other fridge ingredients for the "Stump the Chef" segment. Report back to us on the suggested recipe, just to satisfy OUR curiosity.
Posted by: Super Sally | January 8, 2008 5:07 PM
I have been having problems editing the wiki-pages for the science blogging conference. I hope it is a temporary problem. I don't have any new questions to add, but I wanted to say that my overwhelming concern in blogging about science is the fear that I will say something inaccurate and thus contribute to the problem of misinformation. Because of this, I am less likely to post about actual research and more likely to post about my experience as a scientist. This feeds directly into my decision to have a pseudonym because in blogging about my experiences as a scientist and a graduate student, I do not want people to judge me or my lab. So, for me, the two issues of accuracy and anonymity are linked--not because I don't want to be responsible for inaccurate information but because I blog more about personal issues in order to avoid problems of accuracy.
Posted by: Mrs Whatsit | January 8, 2008 11:30 PM
Mom's view of leftovers ran along the lines of, "If it hasn't developed space travel yet..."
Posted by: Alan Kellogg | January 9, 2008 12:48 AM