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
February 12, 2009
(It's worth noting, however, that this may also be useful advice for interactions with others offline.)
I don't know what's in your heart. I don't know what's in your mind. I don't have direct access to either of those (because I'm a distinct person from you), and if I did, you'd probably feel…
February 11, 2009
(Written for the inaugural edition of the Diversity in Science blog carnival, with big thanks to DNLee for launching it.)
Back in the spring and autumn of 1992, I was a chemistry graduate student starting to believe that I might actually get enough of my experiments to work to get my Ph.D. As such…
February 9, 2009
Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century
by P.W. Singer
New York: Penguin
2009
For some reason, collectively humans seem to have a hard time seeing around corners to anticipate the shape our future will take. Of those of us who remember email as a newish thing, I…
February 6, 2009
By now, you're probably aware of the Rightful Place Project, which is collecting text, images, audio, and video from scientists, engineers, and others involved in conversations about science in response to the question, What is science's rightful place?
I'm still thinking about my own response to…
February 4, 2009
There's a lively discussion raging at the pad of Dr. Isis (here and here) about whether there isn't something inherently obnoxious and snooty about identifying oneself as having earned an advanced degree of any sort. Commenter Becca makes the case thusly:
"Why are people threatened by the idea…
February 2, 2009
It would seem that the Los Angeles Times is uncomfortable around people who don't hide their advanced degrees:
[Jill] Biden [who earned a doctorate in education from the University of Delaware and is currently teaching two courses at Northern Virginia Community College] is thought to be the first…
February 2, 2009
Left by a self-proclaimed "fitness specialist" and "trainer of personal trainers" (along with all manner of contact information) as a comment on this post:
Isn't it amazing that someone like Darwin is celebrated for his thoughts. Evolution is bunk! I am not a creationist either. But to evolve an…
February 2, 2009
I've been derelict in my duty to inform you that 2009 has been declared the Year of Science, which is, of course, just an excuse to celebrate science-y goodness every day. Each month has a theme and a variety of options for exploring that theme.
For February, the theme is evolution (in part…
February 2, 2009
Some of you may be aware that, at least in certain corners of the blogosphere, November is celebrated as International acaDemic Writing Month. Indeed, in November 2007 I jumped onboard the InaDWriMo bandwagon.
This past November I did not, largely because my November usually turns out to be a…
January 31, 2009
Robert Burns's birthday, which was January 25, is an important day for Scottish celebration and food.
Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Give it a chance.
So, back at ScienceOnline'09, I was talking with AcmeGirl about marking the 25th with some lovely Scottish food. She was talking about haggis…
January 30, 2009
The 12th annual Great Backyard Bird Count, sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society, will be taking place February 13-16, 2009. This is a lovely (and long-running) bit of citizen science that aims to compile a continent-wide snapshot of bird populations during a…
January 30, 2009
Dr. Free-Ride: What have you been learning about in science this school year?
Younger offspring: Lots of stuff.
Dr. Free-Ride: Like what?
Younger offspring: We learned about rocks and minerals. Rocks are made out of minerals, and some rocks have more than one kind of mineral in them.
Dr. Free-…
January 29, 2009
You may recall the case of Luk Van Parijs, the promising young associate professor of biology at MIT who was fired in October of 2005 for fabrication and falsification of data. (I wrote about the case here and here.)
Making stuff up in one's communications with other scientists, whether in…
January 28, 2009
Remember the scares around December 2007 about lead in children's toys manufactured in China? Back then, people cried out for better testing to ensure that products intended for children were actually safe for children. Partly in response to this outcry, a new law, the Consumer Product Safety…
January 23, 2009
As I turned on the lights this morning, the younger Free-Ride offspring graced me with some faces.
Younger offspring: This one (eyes squinted and teeth wide in a gappy second grader smile) and this one (eyes bugged out and mouth in an O of horror) creep people out. My mad look (eyebrows lowered…
January 19, 2009
There were some really good discussions of ally work in the gender in science session led by Zuska, Alice, and Abel and in the race in science session led by Danielle Lee and AcmeGirl.
One of the issues that has become clearer to me is that there is an inescapable asymmetry in the relationship…
January 17, 2009
Some quick thoughts in response to the session led by PropterDoc and Sciencewoman.
In some sense, this is really just an extension of the problem of managing your public persona as you go through transitions in life.
Maybe it's something even deeper than that. Maybe it's a piece of the project of…
January 16, 2009
Abel Pharmboy set up a wine-tasting for this evening with a selection of wines from Wine Authorities for us to taste.
Abel professes to be an "amateur" at wine-tasting, but I'm coming here from Northern California, so I have to represent! Also, after this morning's coffee tasting, I'm kind of sold…
January 16, 2009
Counter Culture Coffee generously invited us to join us for their regular Friday morning cupping at their Durham, North Carolina headquarters.
Here are the dimensions on which the coffees are evaluated in the cupping:
Fragrance:
smell of coffee when it's dry (undertones, first thing that comes to…
January 16, 2009
One less fish
by Kim Michelle Toft and Allan Sheather
Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge Publishing
1998
Within the past week, each of the two Free-Ride offspring picked up this book, read it all the way through, and said to me, "You should write about this for the Friday Sprog Blog."
Instead of…
January 15, 2009
Once again, I'm sitting in my favorite airport with free wifi, bound this time for Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, for ScienceOnline'09. The conference has grown to feature two days of official sessions, plus a third day of semi-official goings on, and the place will be lousy with…
January 14, 2009
Around these parts, folks sometimes get het up about issues like scientific literacy (or lack thereof) in the general public, public interest (or lack thereof) in matters scientific, and whether scientists have the chops to communicate information clearly to non-scientists.
It's worth remembering…
January 11, 2009
While the ScienceBlogs upgrade was underway, a shiny new Bloggingheads diavlog was posted, featuring yours truly and PalMD.
Mostly we talked about medical ethics, with some time spent on ethical issues around research with human subjects.
January 10, 2009
To celebrate the successful (!!) upgrade of ScienceBlogs to MT4, here is a dragon:
Thanks, as always, for your patience.
January 9, 2009
You've probably already gotten the news that ScienceBlogs is getting a backend upgrade to MT4 this weekend.
While this is going on (from Friday 1 PM Eastern until sometime Saturday, we hope), you'll still be able to read the ScienceBlogs posts that are already up, but Sb bloggers won't be able to…
January 9, 2009
You know what makes an already scary world a lot scarier? When a government decides it's a crime for disease researchers to do their job.
From Declan Butler:
Iran has summarily tried two of the nation's HIV researchers with communicating with an "enemy government," in a half-day trial that…
January 9, 2009
During a recent bath, the younger Free-Ride offspring shared some deep thoughts:
Younger offspring: There's always life, even though every living thing dies.
Dr. Free-Ride: Oh?
Younger offspring: But life still continues because the Earth never explodes.
Elder offspring: (from the hallway) Not so…
January 8, 2009
There's an interesting story on The New Republic website at the moment, "Going Under" by Jason Zengerle, that relates the sad story of a young anesthesiologist's descent into addiction. What I find interesting about it is the larger questions it raises about why this particular anesthesiologist's…
January 6, 2009
Or is it the kind of thing those other people do?
In the car yesterday, I caught a story on Marketplace that was looking for insight into why people on Wall Street cheat. In the piece, host Kai Ryssdal interviewed Duke University behavioral economist Dan Ariely about research conducted (with…
January 2, 2009
Last weekend, the Free-Rides visited the National Zoo in Washington, DC. Here are some of the animals we saw:
The giant panda.
Younger offspring: It eats a lot of bamboo.
Elder offspring: Would do great living in a Chinese restaurant if it had a hundred bucks.
Dr. Free-Ride: Why a hundred bucks…