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
July 26, 2006
Here are a few items that have been bouncing around in my head of late. Are they connected to each other? You be the judge.
"In science, feeling confused is essential to progress. An unwillingness to feel lost, in fact, can stop creativity dead in its tracks." That is, hands down, my favorite…
July 25, 2006
In light of some of the comments on my ongoing series of posts on trying to combine a family and an academic career, I think a few clarifications may be in order:
1. Children and/or a partner are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for having a life. As it happened, I wanted children…
July 25, 2006
A long time ago, on a flight to a conference, a friend and I discussed the psychology of search committee members. We noticed that even people who thought they were exceedingly fair and open-minded might unconsciously make decisions that don't seem fair, but do, from a certain point of view,…
July 24, 2006
At the end of part 2, I had just dropped the baby-bomb on my unsuspecting advisor. Happily, he did not have a cow about it. Now, as we move into the stage of this story that is A.P. (after pregnancy), we lose the coherent narrative structure for awhile.
Given what the first several weeks with a…
July 23, 2006
The name of the ice cream and coffee blended concoction Cappachillo makes me think immediately of some chimeraical combination of a chinchilla and a chupacabra (blended with coffee and ice cream, of course).
Do you suppose this is an indication of caffeine deficiency, heat exhaustion, or both?
July 22, 2006
Where we left off in part 1: In my fifth (and last) year of funding in my philosophy Ph.D. program, staring down 30, trying to finish a dissertation, and bracing myself for the rigors of the academic job market, I said to myself, "How could having a baby make things noticably more difficult?"
Then…
July 21, 2006
I've decided to go ahead and say something about how I navigated (and am still navigating) the challenge of trying to have an academic career and a family as well. This is not a topic I can adequately address in a single post, so bear with me. And, since my main motivation for doing this is the…
July 21, 2006
It has been very hot in these parts. Last night, the Free-Ride family had a picnic in the back yard. There were also some bugs.
Younger offspring: There are lots of bugs out here!
Elder offspring: Don't worry, the mosquitos don't come out until later.
Younger offspring: Good, I don't want a…
July 20, 2006
I'm working against a deadline today in the three-dimensional world, but the Union of Concerned Scientists has just released the results of a new survey of scientists working for the Food and Drug Administration, and I thought it was worth passing along. I'm never sure what to make of the…
July 19, 2006
Zoinks! There's a new Skeptics' Circle up at Mike's Weekly Skeptic Rant, and given the Scooby-Doo theme, there might just be a Scooby-snack in it for you as well as the excellent round-up of skeptical posts.
(Fred is still a tool, though.)
July 19, 2006
I've been having a great email exchange with another blogger about the current flare-up of the battle over women in academic science, and he brought to my attention a bothersome feature of this New York Times interview with Dr. Ben A. Barres:
Q. How does this bias [that men have an innate…
July 19, 2006
Not quite a year ago, I wrote a pair of posts about allegations of widespread plagiarism in the engineering college at Ohio University. The allegations were brought by Thomas Matrka, who, while a student in the masters program in mechanical engineering at OU, was appalled to find obvious instances…
July 18, 2006
Yami at Green Gabbro puts out a call for interviewees for a book project on women in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM).
While the status of women in STEMM has improved in the past few decades, it has been a slow process with many ups and downs. Programs aimed at…
July 18, 2006
The World's Fair asks:Are there any children's books that are dear to you, either as a child or a parent, and especially ones that perhaps strike a chord with those from a science sensibility?
I'm going to offer one current favorite of the sprogs': The Coolest Cross-Sections Ever by Stephen Biesty…
July 17, 2006
One of the things that happens when I lay out a problem (say, the difficulties for scientists in communicating with non-scientists about scientific matters) is that my excellent commenters remind me not to stop there. They press me for a solution.
I started, in my earlier post, to gesture toward…
July 15, 2006
After my post yesterday suggesting that women scientists may still have a harder time being accepted in academic research settings than their male counterparts, Greensmile brought my attention to a story in today's Boston Globe. It seems that almost a dozen professors at MIT believe they lost a…
July 15, 2006
It's been warm in these parts lately. In weather like this, by evening the indoors is stiflingly hot, while the outdoors is just staring to cool down. So, it makes sense that we'd be driven outdoors. Perhaps it makes less sense that, after escaping the heat indoors, I'd build a blazing hot fire…
July 14, 2006
Here is the U.S., especially, we love to think the ivory tower is a meritocracy, and that the tribe of science is objective in all things -- including how it treats its members. A nice little pile of data runs counter to this picture, however. A quick roundup:
At Majikthise, Lindsay Beyerstein…
July 14, 2006
Dr. Free-Ride: Hey, can you get your slime lizard [a plastic lizard embedded in slimy goo] off the table before dinner?
Elder offspring: Sure.
Dr. Free-Ride: Why do you two like gross stuff so much?
Younger offspring: I don't know.
Elder offspring: We just do.
The sprogs like learning. And,…
July 13, 2006
Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon put up a post about gender essentialism that starts by citing this post at Mixing Memory on how people's representations of homosexuality affect their attitudes toward homosexuality. Because Chris's post cited my two posts (initially sparked by Jessica's post at…
July 12, 2006
Loyal ScienceBlogs reader Dr. Kim D. Gainer is moving to a newly-renovated office (Yay!) that is smaller than her current office -- which means that some of the goodies on her bookshelves are in need of new homes.
That's where you come in.
She writes:
If folks would like any of these books, they…
July 11, 2006
This is going to look like I'm tooting my own horn again, but actually I'm tooting for Concerned Scientist Daniel Rhoads on this one. Meme Therapy has another installment in their "brain parade" series. In this one, they ask:
We're seeing renewed attacks on evolution, certain branches of…
July 11, 2006
While I hope this hurricane season is a lot less eventful than the last one, it's always good to be ready. To that end, I'm brushing off (and bringing together here) two "classic" posts from the 2005 hurricane season.
As we look to the scientists to tell us what nature may have in store for us, we…
July 11, 2006
The other day I was chatting with one of my contacts within the world of journalism, who told me about attending a conference aimed at getting reporters more access to scientists. The conference actually collected a good number of working scientists who came to speak with the reporters (not just…
July 10, 2006
How is our vision of the world affected by the possibilities we see explored in science fiction? Meme Therapy asked a bunch of science fiction writers (and some philosopher of science), and got some interesting answers about reading and writing, grappling with conflicting messages, questioning…
July 10, 2006
The Ask a ScienceBlogger question of the week is:
On July 5, 1996, Dolly the sheep became the first successfully cloned mammal. Ten years on, has cloning developed the way you expected it to?
On the technical end of things, I suppose I'm a bit surprised at how challenging it has been to clone…
July 10, 2006
The problem with having eyes and ears everywhere is that sometimes they deliver sensory data that make you want to rip them out of your head or stuff them with cotton, respectively.
An eagle-eyed reader pointed me toward some eyebrow-raising comments on another blog, which would not be of much…
July 8, 2006
So, because of assorted commenting issues across the ScienceBlogs galaxy, our tech gurus installed a new spam filter. And apparently, it's quite the enthusiastic little spam filter. Word is that it has swallowed a number of legitimate comments (known with some certainty to be legitimate because…
July 7, 2006
Just one more follow up on the matter of how research universities will make do as federal funds for research dry up. Some have suggested that the answer will come from more collaboration between university labs and researchers in private industry.
Perhaps it will. But, a recent article in the…
July 7, 2006
Yesterday I blogged a bit about how the rollback of NIH research funding may impact scientists at research universities. In light of those comments, here's another news item worth your attention.
The Boston Globe reports that Yale University may be in some amount of trouble for accepting lots of…