Janet D. Stemwedel
Janet D. Stemwedel (whose nom de blog is Dr. Free-Ride) is an associate professor of philosophy at San Jose State University. Before becoming a philosopher, she earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry.
jstemwedel
Posts by this author
May 23, 2006
Dear inventors,
My personal experience (and what I have heard from the many other academics with whom I communicate) suggests a number of inventions that would sell a bazillion units at colleges and universities world-wide. For your convenience, I list the items that would have the biggest demand…
May 20, 2006
Yesterday, I returned home after an excellent five days in Stockholm, discussing philosophy of chemistry with philosophers of chemistry, eating as many lingonberries as I could manage, and trying not to wake up instantly when light started pouring through the curtains at 4 AM.
It was a good time.…
May 19, 2006
After some discussion with the younger Free-Ride offspring, I discovered that she does not know one dinosaur or dinosaur-related song; she knows three.
And, because I asked nicely, now so do I.
Terry pterodactyl,
Bertha brontosaurus,
Trini the triceratops,
Stanley stegosaurus.
Tom tyrannosaurus,
He…
May 18, 2006
Some of you with lives tied to the academic calendar have been done for awhile. Others may still be heading for the finish line. In either case, I'm willing to bet some of you have seen some cheating.
The term is when we deal with practical matters of the prevention and punishment of cheating.…
May 16, 2006
It's "Ask a ScienceBlogger" time again, and the question of the week is whether the human race will be around in 100 years.
Folks, I don't want to get all Clintonian on you (William Jefferson, not George), but I'm going to have to say, it depends what you mean by "human".
Certainly, it's possible…
May 16, 2006
Today is one of those days. The younger Free-Ride offspring is a prime number again. (Indeed, she's a prime number that is the sum of the two prime numbers before it.) The earth has orbited the sun (or vice versa, for my Ptolemaic readers) five times since she arrived on the scene.
As best I…
May 15, 2006
When non-scientists think about the big ethical issues in the practice of science (beyond questions of how much freedom scientists should have with the tax-payers' money, and whether scientists ought to be "playing God"), they usually think about the three mortal sins of fabrication, falsification…
May 14, 2006
Because (primary) election season is almost upon us, one's mind sometimes turns to thoughts of coalition building. And sometimes, you can find allies in places you wouldn't normally think to look.
For example ...
I totally wouldn't think of Skeletor as my kind of politician. But, Skeletor's day…
May 12, 2006
When the weather gets nice, a sprog's thoughts turn to rocketry. Photos of the first mission of the bottle-rocket season after the jump.
First, giving credit where credit is due: The rockets were built by our friends the Visiting Mathematicians who, with their sprogs Double Trouble, were…
May 12, 2006
Welcome to Teaching Carnival #9. I realize that you, gentle reader, may be affiliated with a school whose term has already ended. You may be easing into those first intoxicating weeks of the summer break, where your "to do" list seems more theoretical and less urgent.
Academic calendars are…
May 11, 2006
The continuing saga of the uninvited nest seems to have come to an end. The hatchlings have died.
It's not entirely clear why they perished, althought there is no doubt that they perished -- the nest is crawling with ants.
Possibly the noise of the work being done in the yard kept the mother bird…
May 11, 2006
Do you ever feel like hearing me rattle on instead of just reading it? Here's your chance!
You can listen to the first episode of the ScienceBlogs podcast, in which I speak with Katherine Sharpe about the evils of plagiarism (among other misdeeds) in the world of science.
May 11, 2006
I can hardly believe that it's time for another Skeptics' Circle, but the evidence seems to support the conclusion that it is. EoR at The Second Sight has a real gem of a carnival, collecting bright and shiny examples of blog essay doing their skeptical best to prevent us from having rocks in our…
May 9, 2006
The choice in question was whether to try to relocate a nest full of eggs in a tree whose number is almost up. With your help, we decided against relocation. Moreover, we're ready to delay removal of the tree as long as might be necessay until the nest is vacant.
Today's developments documented…
May 9, 2006
Very busy. I plan to resurface soon. In the meantime, a few items:
Help a blogger out: Coturnix (aka Bora Zivkovic) is a science blogger extraordinaire, keeping not one but three excellent blogs (Science and Politics, Circadiana, and The Magic School Bus). He's also a graduate student and a…
May 5, 2006
ScienceBlogs is introducing a new feature called "Ask a ScienceBlogger" wherein the ScienceBloggers are all asked to respond to a question. (You'd never guess that from the name, would you?) The first question is:
If you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made…
May 5, 2006
The Free-Ride offspring have developed a serious penchant for nature programs. The latest one they viewed was Nature: Encountering Sea Monsters, and as you might expect, they have some thoughts (and artwork) to share. So, we follow in Tim Lambert's footsteps by combining Friday cephalopods with…
May 4, 2006
OK, if you clicked through the links in my answers to the ABC meme, you know an embarrassing personal detail about me: I rather enjoy watching America's Next Top Model. (Truth be told, I wouldn't enjoy it nearly so much were it not enhanced by the reading of snarky episode recaps by Potes. And,…
May 4, 2006
Please notice that the title of this post promises a "paranoid response", not a careful analysis. It's one of those unscheduled features of this blog. Kind of like a snow day.
Yesterday's Inside Higher Ed has an article about the U.S. Senate getting kind of testy with the director of the NSF…
May 3, 2006
There's an article in yesterday's New York Times about doubts the public is having about the goodness of scientific publications as they learn more about what the peer-review system does, and does not, involve. It's worth a read, if only to illuminate what non-scientists seem to have assumed went…
May 2, 2006
Next Friday (May 12), I will be hosting Teaching Carnival #9, right here. The Teaching Carnival encompasses the many aspects of teaching, learning, and figuring out why it all matters, in the realm of higher education.
I especially encourage submissions about teaching or learning science in higher…
May 2, 2006
Hey, it's May already! Could that explain why things are crazy-busy here?
There will be new content soon, once I've plowed through some more grading and exam-writing and curricular trouble-shooting. In the meantime, since I copped to enjoying reality TV more than I should (in that ABC meme, under…
April 30, 2006
Yesterday I asked for advice about how to deal with a nest of eggs that presents itself in an inopportune place (a tree slated to meet a gruesome end in a whisper-chipper) at an inopportune time (mere days ahead of when we finally launch our backyard overhaul). The consensus among commenters who…
April 29, 2006
I need to call on the collective wisdom of the internets to address an issue in my back yard.
We have this tree in our back yard. It's a pretty awful tree. It was probably a living Christmas tree that the people who lived here before us planted, but it's in a really bad location (from the point…
April 29, 2006
Via GrrlScientist, the precisely calibrated quiz for determining theme songs yields the following for me:
Your Theme Song is Back in Black by AC/DC
"Back in black, I hit the sack,
I've been too long, I'm glad to be back"
Things sometimes get really crazy for you, and sometimes you have to get…
April 28, 2006
Last weekend, the Free-Ride family sat down to watch a nature program together: Nature: The Queen of Trees. The program looked at the variety of life around a giant fig tree. The central "relationship" in the program was between the tree and a wasp. From the program description:
The wasp and the…
April 27, 2006
The grading is unrelenting. The crud is not entirely cleared from my system. I still owe you the promised post on plagiarism.
Must be time for a meme (specifically, the ABC meme, which I saw at jo(e)'s)!
Accent: Not usually. When I taught lots of kids from Maryland and Virginia, I'd drift a…
April 27, 2006
Although certain bloggers of my acquaintance are suspicious of Emily Dickinson, I think she's the bee's knees. It wouldn't be National Poetry Month without a selection from Emily.
In case you're hesitating about clicking "Read on", I will entertain, in the comments, a discussion of whether the…
April 26, 2006
Even though it's outside the realm of science, given its relevance to recent discussions here, I just can't leave this story alone:
Via Nanopolitan, the latest on the sad case of Harvard sophomore and author(?) Kaavya Viswanathan, whose situation keeps unravelling. Viswanathan got herself a book…
April 26, 2006
Would Coturnix really present the latest Skeptics' Circle as a research report -- with a title with a colon in it?
You'll have to pop over to Science and Politics to find out.