Well, I think it’s safe to say that the slim pickings on days six and seven were related to the low level of dewiness.
This morning: much dewier.
Category Archives: Personal
Snail eradication (day 7).
This morning I overslept, so I didn’t get out into the yard until 6:15 AM to commence the gastropod picking.
Either someone got to them before me, or there just aren’t many left in the parts of the yard I am actively patrolling.
Snail eradication (day 6).
This morning’s garden foray was weird.
Where were all the gastropods?
Snail eradication (day 5).
Today, I may have picked slightly more slugs than snails. And, in the process of acquainting myself with the ways of the slug, I discovered a very good reason to perform early-morning gastropod removal as a solo activity:
The ethics of snail eradication.
In the comments of one of my snail eradication posts, Emily asks some important questions:
I’m curious about how exactly you reason the snail-killing out ethically alongside the vegetarianism. Does the fact that there’s simply no other workable way to deal with the pests mean the benefits of killing them outweigh the ethical problems? Does the fact that they’re molluscs make a big difference? Would you kill mice if they were pests in your house? If you wanted to eat snails, would you? Or maybe the not-wanting-to-kill-animals thing is a relatively small factor in your vegetarianism?
Snail eradication (day 4).
This morning, it seems like the pickings were somewhat slimmer.
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.
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.
Snail eradication (day 2).
This was another early morning out in the garden picking snails. It was, however, markedly yuckier than yesterday’s foray.
One way to tell that your colleagues are awesome.
At least, if you’re a member of a philosophy department: