Snail eradication (day 3).

Today was the first school day of our snail eradication project. This meant I had to get out to the yard a bit earlier (just after 6 AM), and that I had a fairly limited time to pick slugs and snails before I needed to get inside to propel the sprogs school-ward.

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Letters to Our Daughters.

Dr. Isis asked me to write a letter for her most excellent Letters to Our Daughters project, which she describes as follows:

When I was a graduate student, I took a physiology class in which I was given the assignment to recreate my scientific family tree. When I did, I found that my family tree is composed some brilliant scientists. But, my family tree is also composed entirely of men, plus me. The same is true of the tree from my postdoc. I have scientific fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, but no aunts, grandmothers, or mothers. As I considered my career path in science, I found myself wanting and needing the perspective of more senior women scientists.

The inspiration for my Letters to Our Daughters Project comes from my hope that we can recreate our family tree here, creating a forum where the mothers and aunts in our fields (which I hope to not limit to physiology, but that’s where I’ll start because that’s who I know) can share their wisdom with us. I think there is a wealth of information among these successful women and I hope to use this forum to share it with young scientists who are yearning for that knowledge.

I’m actually in a somewhat weird position, in that my scientific pedigree (at least as I see it) includes quite a number of foremothers in college (and two in graduate school). And, I am blessed to have a mother whose own example inspired me as I looked toward advanced studies in chemistry.

Also, at least by the standard reckoning, I leaked out of the pipeline when I left chemistry to become a philosopher of science. So it’s possible you’ll want to take my advice with a grain of sodium chloride. However, philosopher or no, the fact remains that I love science.

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Snail eradication (day 1).

The most troublesome invasive species in my backyard garden is the snail.
Yesterday morning, when I took out the buckets of shower-warning-up and vegetable-rinsing water to feed to my plants, I was horrified to find snails on my carrots, snails on my chard, snails on my potatoes, snails on my garlic, and especially snails on my tender pea plants.
The strawberries that were starting to get nice and red? Shot through with slugs (which are basically snails without the convenient handles).
On top of our wee little lime tree? Snails copulating.
This is not a situation conducive to effective gardening. Thus, the sprogs and I mounted an early (for a Saturday) morning raid on their dewy, shady stomping (sliding?) grounds.
Today’s take: in excess of 500. (We lost count.)

Living within your ethics: animal research and medical care.

From time to time, when we’ve talked about people who object to research with animals on ethical grounds, the claim has been made that it is hypocritical for people with these objections to avail themselves of modern medicine. Our drugs and surgical interventions, after all, are typically the result of research that includes animal research.
Occasionally, a response like this is made: There is no reason to opt out of the existing treatments, since the animal suffering that went into that research cannot be undone. Given that these past animals suffered, the knowledge produced from their suffering should not be wasted. However, it would not be ethical to cause further animal suffering the the development of new medical treatments.
I have never found this sort of response especially persuasive. The other day, I thought of a pair of potentially analogous situations that may illustrate why not.

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