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
June 1, 2007
Younger offspring: Can I tell you something awesome?
Dr. Free-Ride: OK.
Younger offspring: I touched every sea creature today, even the monkeyface pickleback eel.
Dr. Free-Ride: But you didn't have a field trip today. How were there sea creatures for you to touch?
Younger offspring: We went…
May 31, 2007
The Society of Women Engineers is hosting an event on June 3rd that may be of interest to girls (or their parents) in the Twin Cities area:
On June 3rd, hundreds of girls in St. Paul, Minnesota will attend an event hosted by SWE called, "Wow! That's Engineering!" Through hands-on activities, girls…
May 31, 2007
I want to lay this at Julie's feet, or maybe John Lynch's, but I'm starting to think the LOLcats are taking over! My kids speak to each other in LOL dialect, and I've been mentally captioning ... well, everything.
My internal dialogue from part of commencement transcribed below. If you know a…
May 31, 2007
Perhaps you heard Steve Inskeep's interview with NASA administrator Michael Griffin on Morning Edition this morning. Perhaps you also are trying to tease out the logical consequences of this statement he made about climate change:
I have no doubt that ... a trend of global warming exists. I am…
May 30, 2007
Although this question is somewhat connected to issues from the previous post, it's a question I've been meaning to put out there for some time:
What do you find most challenging or scary about talking about science with kids?
They can be your kids, but they don't have to be.
They can be kids with…
May 30, 2007
In the May 18th issue of Science, there's a nice review by Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg [1] of the literature from developmental psychology that bears on the question of why adults in the U.S. are stubbornly resistant to certain scientific ideas.
Regular readers will guess that part of my…
May 29, 2007
Having finished grading (yea, having submitted the final grades themselves), I attempt to resurface from my cave.
It's really rather bright out here!
Anyway, as you will have deduced from my last post, there was a commencement-sized break in my grading activities on Saturday. The commencement…
May 26, 2007
Ahem.
Beach ball here! Kids, I'm not going to march myself into the stadium!
That's better. Thanks dude!
The pomp! The circumstance!
How long is this supposed to take?
Well, the people on the podium giving the speeches won't mind if we entertain ourselves.
Whee!
Just keep it under…
May 25, 2007
Since folks in the U.S. have a long weekend, and because the last entry was younger-offspring-centric, you get a bonus Sprog Blog.
Elder offspring: (following up a request at breakfast for a slice of bagel with avocado spread on it) It's not brown avocado, is it?
Dr. Free-Ride: No, it's just ripe…
May 25, 2007
A conversation with the younger Free-Ride offspring at the elder Free-Ride offspring's soccer practice this week:
Dr. Free-Ride: Hey, can you tell me about the science you've learned in kindergarten this year?
Younger offspring: No.
Dr. Free-Ride: Why not?
Younger offspring: We haven't really…
May 24, 2007
This post brought to you by my intense desire to avoid grading any more papers.
More than a dozen years ago, when I earned my Ph.D. in chemistry, I made what many at the time viewed as a financially reckless decision and purchased academic regalia rather than just renting it.
At the time, there was…
May 23, 2007
Because I am engaged in a struggle with mass quantities of grading, I'm reviving a post from the vault to tide you over. I have added some new details in square brackets, and as always, I welcome your insight here.
I just got back [in Octiber of 2005] from talking with an outside evaluator about…
May 23, 2007
Yes, there will still be Friday Sprog Blogging this Friday. No, Wednesday Sprog Blogging is not going to become a regular feature.
On the walk to school this morning:
Younger offspring: I wonder if we'll see that pair of crows or ravens on the field again today. I like how they can jump.
Dr.…
May 21, 2007
I used to think what I really needed this time of semester was elves.
When the term papers and final exams and case studies and research reports were in their stacks on my desk, casting shadows on my prospects of getting any other substantial projects done, I'd think, "Wouldn't it be nice if I…
May 19, 2007
In the comments on a number of recent posts, I've been sensing a certain level of cynicism about the realities of scientific practice, and it's been bumming me out. (In fairness, as I reread those comment threads today, the comments aren't as jaded as I remember them being; it's probably that the…
May 18, 2007
Ann Althouse asks why schools should bother having kids read fiction:
And why does reading even need to be a separate subject from history in school? Give them history texts and teach reading from them. Science books too. Leave the storybooks for pleasure reading outside of school. They will be…
May 18, 2007
A conversation while walking to school with the Free-Ride offspring:
Younger offspring: Look out, a bumblebee!
Dr. Free-Ride: We're far enough away that we're not bothering it. I doubt it would sting you unless it was scared you were going to hurt it.
Elder offspring: Hey, did you know that…
May 17, 2007
I hope you've noticed that Seed has sent a team to blog the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair currently raging in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
I love science fairs. I've judged them (and recruited others to judge them). At our county fair, I'm always sucked right into the science-fair-…
May 17, 2007
Dave at The World's Fair is collecting field data on coffee mugs. Or maybe he's trying to create a meme.
Anyway, he poses a bunch of questions which I seem to be unable to resist answering:
Can you show us your coffee cup?
Can you comment on it? Do you think it reflects on your personality?
Do you…
May 17, 2007
Someone forgot to tell our department photocopier that finals started today; rather than being a vengeful photocopier toying with the pitiful mortals in its thrall, it was a happy photocopier that photocopied my final exams beautifully. And since I wasn't clearing any cryptic paper jams, my mind…
May 16, 2007
My recent post on the feasibility (or not) of professionalizing peer review, and of trying to make replication of new results part of the process, prompted quite a discussion in the comments. Lots of people noted that replication is hard (and indeed, this is something I've noted before), and few…
May 15, 2007
Today is our last day of classes before final exams, and it's looking like this semester is notably different from the nine semesters that came before it:
As well as I can ascertain, none of my students have committed plagiarism in any of their assignments for me!
Yes, that should be the normal…
May 14, 2007
When my "Ethics in Science" class was discussing scientific communication (especially via peer reviewed journals), we talked about what peer review tries to accomplish -- subjecting a report of a scientific finding to the critical scrutiny of other trained scientists, who evaluate the quality of…
May 13, 2007
In part II of the interview, my mother discussed her transition from mentor-ific undergraduate physics to a graduate physics program with no mentoring to speak of, not to mention astronomy courses that were described in the course catalogue but not actually taught. Here, in the final segment of…
May 12, 2007
In part I of the interview, my mother described what it was like to be propelled by her dream of being an astronomer from being at home with four children to being in an undergraduate physics classroom and finding a serious mentor.
Part II: Out of the comfort zone and into the graduate program:…
May 12, 2007
In honor of Mother's Day, I want to celebrate the ways that mothers have blazed trails, knocked down barriers, and challenged expectations of what their daughters' lives can be.
When we're young, we don't always appreciate how important our parents (or other adults in our circle) can be as role…
May 11, 2007
It has recently transpired that I will be teaching (and before that, designing and constructing) a brand new ethics module in the large introduction to engineering class at my university that all the freshman who are majoring in any of the multitude of engineering disciplines must take. I'm jazzed…
May 11, 2007
I would like to rejoice that it is Friday. And yet, as the end of the semester draws nigh, the press of Tasks That Cannot Be Deferred Any Longer is sucking a good bit of the Friday-ness out of this Friday.
So, I suppose this post is the cyber-equivalent of an itemized primal scream:
When the…
May 11, 2007
Younger offspring: (brandishing a decorated and labeled paper plate) You're going to blog about this on Friday.
Dr. Free-Ride: I am?
Younger offspring: Yes! It has to do with science, and I made it.
Dr. Free-Ride: (pretending to think it over) Well, I don't know ...
Younger offspring: And this way…
May 10, 2007
I got a chance to have dinner with Bora last night in San Francisco on the eve of his job interview with PLoS ONE. This gave us the opportunity for a free-wheeling discussion about the potential of new technologies to change the ways scientists communicate with each other (and with non-scientists…