Welcome. Thank you for your participation in the course. The issues raised by the course are significant and, I trust, meaningful to each of us.
If you would indulge me, please use this page to enter a brief personal profile.
Jim Collier: I offer a profile in progress. When I was a child, I loved watching "The 21st Century". I just ran across this clip:
Jen Henderson: My work follows those who follow the tornado. I'm most interested in the tornado warning process as it unfolds within a National Weather Service forecast office, including the construction, dissemination, and interpretation of weather warnings among multiple constituents. My dissertation will (maybe) map these processes through ethnographic and historical methods and relate findings to policies relevant to local, state, and national governance. But this is open to change. I also want to write a play about weathers.
Other interests include the following: the ways that ethical considerations come into play at each stage of the forecast process and how forecasters frame ethical decisions; how National Weather Service policies, such as the Weather Ready Nation Initiative, get communicated to and rely on different publics; issues of expertise and uncertainty; public understanding of science; and history of technology, especially meteorological technologies such as Doppler radar, earth observations satellites, and the EF-Scale. Excited to see what ways normativity fits into (and perhaps blows apart my work).
Following Jim's lead, here's a 10-minute video of the person who made me love tornadoes, Dr. Ted Fujita. (It is kick-ass and so you should watch it.) Many questions he raised in 1970s are still relevant today. BTW: I was 2 years old when this video was made.
David Winyard: After a 37-year career as an engineer in defense research and development (22 years for the U.S. Navy and 15 years for the Defense Logistics Agency), I am now seeking a PhD in STS as a step toward a second career. I am broadly interested in Christianity (especially Radical Orthodoxy) and technology (especially transhumanism).