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
October 27, 2008
Ewan made a generous donation to one of the projects in my challenge and, as he did last year, he requested a poem illustrated by the sprogs on the subject of memory.
It turns out that drawing "memory" is pretty challenging! However, the sprogs worked out some ways to represent the concept of…
October 24, 2008
By now you've probably seen the news that Seed has kicked in $15,000 to fund projects in our Blogger Challenge slates. We are, as always, thrilled at our Overlords' generosity.
This year, though, rather than applying the money at the end of the drive, we have a situation where each blog with an…
October 24, 2008
Jake has a great post up today about the frequency with which American internists and rheumatologists prescribe placebos and the ethical questions this raises. Jake writes:
For my part, I don't think I would be comfortable deceiving my patient under any circumstances. I see my role as a future…
October 24, 2008
A conversation from the sidelines at the elder Free-Ride offspring's soccer game:
Dr. Free-Ride: Hey, what are you drawing?
Younger offspring: Stars.
Dr. Free-Ride: Hmmm.
Younger offspring: I know they don't look like the way they teach you how to draw stars, but real stars don't look that way.
Dr…
October 23, 2008
Given that today is Mole Day, it seemed only fair to follow up on our earlier experimentation with avocados. You may recall that, in discussing our efforts to dissolve avocados, we said:
One further experiment we've decided to try at some future point is to investigate whether we can make…
October 23, 2008
This is National Chemistry Week. It's always chosen to coincide with whichever calendar week includes October 23 (or 10/23), since October 23 is "Mole Day".
"Huh? Why would chemists celebrate a furry critter that burrows underground?"
Not that mole. The mole chemists celebrate is a unit.
1 mole…
October 22, 2008
I've talked about a number of these issues before, but since Abel and PalMD are having some conversations (here, here, here, here, here, and here) in preparation for their session at ScienceOnline09, and since I've experienced the blogosphere on both sides of the pseudonymous line, I thought I'd…
October 22, 2008
Maybe you heard about the melamine contamination issue when tainted pet food started killing pets. But, if you don't have a pet, maybe you didn't worry so much.
Or maybe you noticed when tainted infant formula started sending infants to the hospital. Stuff that harms babies (even way far away in…
October 21, 2008
On the East Coast, the sun is rising on day 21 of Blogger Challenge 2008. With only 10 days left in the drive, it seems like a good time to check how the ScienceBloggers with challenges are making out. Thus, I present the "Top Six" standings to date:
Amount raised:
Uncertain Principles ($4,887)…
October 20, 2008
Another generous donor (who prefers to remain anonymous) made a contribution to my challenge and requested some artwork from the sprogs.
The requested subject matter, cats, is one about which the Free-Ride offspring are pretty enthusiastic (perhaps because I'm allergic to cats and can't live with…
October 20, 2008
Drawing on the Guardian article on the sorts of interview questions being deployed by Oxford and Cambridge to "identify intellectual potential" in prospective undergraduates:
How do you organise a successful revolution? And, given the present political climate, why don't we let the managers of…
October 19, 2008
My better half was clearing plates from the kitchen table as I was cooking something.
Dr. Free-Ride's better half: Hey, I thought our kids like zucchini bread.
Dr. Free-Ride: They do. That piece was [the kid across the street's] -- always gladly accepts a snack, never has more than a few bites.
Dr…
October 18, 2008
What would the Blogger Challenge be without hand-drawn bar-graphs?
You'll see that Chad is about 80% of the way to a "monkey dance". In less than $1300 in contributions to his challenge, he will be dancing for the amusement of his readers.
As for the big incentives I'm offering, my challenge has…
October 17, 2008
Nearly three months after we sowed the seeds in our raised garden beds, it feels like we're on the edge of a change of seasons. The days are still quite warm (with temperatures in the mid-eighties for most of the past week), but the days are definitely cooler, and the hours or sunlight grow…
October 17, 2008
At long last, we review a book to which we have alluded in at least two previous posts.
The book: The Periodic Table: Elements with Style, written by Adrian Dingle, illustrated by Simon Basher. (Boston: Kingfisher, 2007)
The format:
The book introduces several representative elements from the…
October 16, 2008
Over at Effect Measure, Revere takes issue with a science educator's hand-wringing over what science students (and scientists) don't know. In a piece at The Scientist, James Williams (the science educator in question) writes:
Graduates, from a range of science disciplines and from a variety of…
October 15, 2008
Dear Sarah Gardner and Marketplace producers,
I listened with interest to your story on today's show about the current prospects for the solar energy sector. While the story was engaging, I have a nit to pick.
In the course of listing the elemental components of photovoltaic solar panels, you…
October 15, 2008
This is a project in Brian Switek's DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge, and if it doesn't find full funding by the end of today, it's not going to happen.
Throw Us a Bone!! was proposed by Ms. P., who teaches in a high poverty high school in a rural community in south Mississippi:
This year will be my…
October 14, 2008
There's an article in the 19 September 2008 issue of Science ("And Then There Was One") [1] that catches up with many of the 30 men and women who made up the incoming class of 1991 in the molecular biophysics and biochemistry (MB&B) Ph.D. program at Yale University. The article raises lots of…
October 14, 2008
We're nearly to the halfway mark (in terms of time) on Blogger Challenge 2008 and the mommy bloggers are still leaving us in their dust. We've told you about the school kids you could help by donating to our challenges, we've offered small incentives (and big incentives).
Today, the news comes…
October 10, 2008
In a lot of ways, the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge is a community endeavor. It is all about what you, our community of readers, can accomplish together for public school students and teachers in need. Also, it's a great example of how citizens of the blogosphere think about community -- not…
October 10, 2008
Today is day 10 of Blogger Challenge 2008, in which generous ScienceBlogs readers help public school teachers come up with the funds to deliver the educational goods to their students. As I write this post, challenges mounted by ScienceBloggers have crossed the $10,000 mark.
Given that this money…
October 10, 2008
At Casa Free-Ride, our science fair discussions take an unexpected turn:
Younger offspring: I want to do a science fair project, too.
Elder offspring: Hey, second graders don't have to do science fair projects!
Younger offspring: But second graders get to do science fair projects if they want.
Dr…
October 9, 2008
2008 is the tenth year of the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science awards to remarkable female scientists from around the world. Indeed, our sister-site, ScienceBlogs.de, covered this year's award ceremony and is celebrating women in science more generally with a For Women in Science blog. (It,…
October 8, 2008
Charles B. Nemeroff, M.D., Ph.D., is a psychiatrist at Emory University alleged by congressional investigators to have failed to report a third of the $2.8 million (or more) he received in consulting fees from pharmaceutical companies whose drugs he was studying.
Why would congressional…
October 7, 2008
We're in the last hour of week one of Blogger Challenge 2008, and ScienceBlogs readers have already donated a respectable $8,999 to public school projects. Yay ScienceBlogs readers!
You know I'm offering you enticements to donate to my challenge, but tonight I want to point out some proposals in…
October 7, 2008
Let's wrap up our discussion on the Martinson et al. paper, "Scientists' Perceptions of Organizational Justice and Self-Reported Misbehaviors". [1] You'll recall that the research in this paper examined three hypotheses about academic scientists:
Hypothesis 1: The greater the perceived…
October 6, 2008
(Kick off post here.)
I'm inspired by The World's Fair to write this update in the style of Harper's Index.
22: number of ScienceBlogs blogs that have so far mounted challenges.
8,480: dollars donated so far through those challenges
700 billion: the only number other than the year in a…
October 6, 2008
A generous donor who prefers to remain anonymous made a contribution to my challenge and requested some artwork from the sprogs. In particular, the donor requested dragonflies:
Many species are considered vulnerable or imperiled by the Nature Conservancy (Species Report Card) and it's my next…
October 6, 2008
The past couple years in California have been scary ones for academic researchers who conduct research with animals (as well as for their neighbors), what with firebombs, home invasions, significant intentional damage to their properties and threats to their safety.
In response to a ratcheting up…