LIFE WELL LIVED

A LIFE WELL-LIVED

I often learn something at funerals.  It may be the good things about the guest of honor, in this case, a former student being eulogized by the clergyman, on the basis of second-hand knowledge recently gained from his family and friends.  The deceased was in his late fifties, he had no wife nor children, a fact of life that the octogenarian priest noted he shared with him.  He pondered the meaning of a premature death as others have done.

He related the story of a Jewish scholar in Alexandria, Egypt, pondering the question about a hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ.  The scholar did not arrive at an answer but reflected that a life well-lived is more to be desired than a long life.  I think most of us would concur.  If you believe in an eternal reward for a life well-lived, the length of life becomes somewhat irrelevant.

The greatest life was only about 33 years long; today is an anniversary of his miraculous conception over two thousand years earlier.  More recently, Martin Luther King showed what a person can achieve before forty.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

The fact that I did not remember the former student did not bother me too much.  I was at the funeral because his mother was a friend of my wife from working together on some charities years previously.  But I realized how few students I still remember from the hundreds taught in the thirty-six years of teaching plus twenty-one years of retirement.  Even fewer names from that sub-group are remembered.

I started reflecting on the people that were part of our lives in the past.  A next-door neighbor, some fifty years ago, had been very good to us and we had visited her after she retired and moved away, but I couldn’t think of her name.  Well, I finally did a dozen or so minutes later.  I was telling that to my wife and she said, “you couldn’t remember my name when we were first married.”  Unfortunately, that was true several times when stressed by making introductions.

Your name does not have to be known to me in order for me to pray for you, but it helps.  I don’t pray for invertebrates, but it was exciting for me to see one for the first time as a specimen in some pond water on a microscope slide a student was examining.  It was a tardigrade and it looked just like the line drawing of it in a textbook.

BUCKET LISTS

I doubt that tardigrades would make the bucket list of things to see or do before dying for very many people.  They are not quite as spectacular as the Grand Canyon, Denali, a volcano, Waikiki, or the skyscrapers of many cities.  Celebrities and famous people and their homes, historical sites, and related tours appeal to many.

One thing that stands out upon reflecting about the many places I’ve visited are the encounters with people.  For some reason, when you are traveling it is sometimes easier to talk to strangers.  When you are older, I hope you do not regret not getting to know the people you find close to home better.  That is one thing travel often makes you realize- people are people and each one has an interesting story to tell.  The hazard of that is that if told every time it may get boring.  The joy of it is you can have an interesting life just staying home.

A bucket list is not essential.  I discovered this most convincingly when I was completing my trip around the world on the way back from Tasmania.  Although making new, interesting friends on different segments of the trip; I mostly missed doing it with someone or a group that was part of my normal life.  So, wherever you are, be happy.

Joe Engemann       Kalamazoo, Michigan     March 25, 2017

WATER

             WATER

Water-
     drop, splash, trickle, dash
     torrent, stream, creek, meander
     turbid, clear, precious, dear
                                               water

Water-
     river, stream
     ocean lake
     pond, marsh
     gulf, bay
     fountain, fall
     channel, quay
     oasis, sluice
     salt, fresh
     stagnate or use
                                            water

Water-
     hydrogen, oxygen, hydrogen
          hydrogen, hydrogen
                oxygen
                                      is water

Water-
     bathing, cleaning
     cooking, steaming
     cooling, quenching
     boiling, blanching
                                          water

Water-
     vapor, dew
     mist, rain
     hail, sleet
     ice, snow
     freeze, thaw
     sizzle, drizzle
                                         water

Water
     fished, squished
     polluted, drained
     eutrophic, stained
     chemically maimed
                                        water

Water
     saline, pure
     limpid, clear
     tossing, frothing
     churning, turning
     smooth, placid
                                       water

Water
     surf, shore
     wave, breaker
     feelings of closeness
       to our maker;
     needed, soothing
     renewing, laving
     tears, sweating
     baptizing, saving
                                       water

Water
     softened, piped
     distilled, wiped
     tanked and drank
     pumped, dumped
     leaked, sumped
     flushed, floated
     bridged, boated
                                    water

Water
     studied, muddied
     channeled, dammed
     crudded, flooded
     swum and skied
     Aquarians and all
     will ever need
                                  -water

Joseph G. Engemann
August 10, 1977

as a tentative forward to a
proposed limnology text

Copyright 1981 Joseph G. Engemann
[permission to reproduce is granted for non-profit use and/or for printings of less than 1,000 copies.]

The above was found when looking in my limnology notes from long ago to find something about "Langmuir circulation".  I gave up and looked in Wetzel's limnology textbook.  It is the seeming cylinders of alternating clockwise and counterclockwise water that, where they converge, push bits of debris or oils into surface streaks paralleling the wind direction.  I was thinking it must operate in the atmosphere on a much larger spatial scale and be responsible for some of the streaky weather patterns at times seen in rain, snow, and clouds.  I was going to send an email asking the weatherman for the Kalamazoo Gazette if they use that type of phenomenon to explain small scale weather patterns.

Joe Engemann   retired, Western Michigan University,  Kalamazoo, Michigan   March 16, 2017

VALUES AND RISKS OF RESEARCH FOCUS

The importance of research focus

When focus is maintained on a research topic success in publication of results is likely to follow.  Not only will the researcher more easily add new elements to their topic, reviewers will be aware of the publication record and assume you are well qualified in the topic and publication is justified.

An additional important aspect is the ease of keeping current in the pertinent literature.  The beginner in a topic has the difficulty of mastering the literature with searches of older literature, pertinent peripheral topics, and newly published material.  Attendance at professional society meetings is very beneficial in learning what are the current hot topics and who is working on them.

Role of literature cited in manuscript evaluation

Lack of citation of key research papers can result in rejection of submissions to professional journals.  Citing the most recent review articles is helpful in reducing the need for citing countless older articles.  The most recent publication of materials and methods you use is important to cite to show you are up to date as well as to simplify your discussion of that aspect if you have not made modification of the materials and methods.

The hazards of research focus

The danger of becoming obsolete can plague older researchers who have pursued their topic to where their work is finding more and more about less and less with sadly declining value.  In my search of literature on isopods I encountered many redundant lists of measurements of isopod leg segments published in an old prestigious French science journal and authored by the editor.  Journals sometimes become less valuable when editors and/or reviewers become narrowly focused.

Some molecular work on evolution of phyla has suffered because the accepted standard ignoring generation time is too often applied and older peripheral knowledge of other disciplines is ignored.

My lack of focus, or frequent change of focus, has been detrimental to success in publishing research results.  Often it was one submission and out if a rejection was encountered.  Unfortunately, many manuscripts were never submitted because they were produced over such a long time that I felt a need, not easily met, to catch up on recent literature to update the manuscripts.  Many of the most cited research papers of others were rejected many times before publication.

Jumping in to new topics can make review of pertinent literature overwhelming.  The help of on-line searches may ease the need for Biological Abstracts, Science Citation Index, and Zoological Record .  I also used Chemical Index and Index Medicus for some past searches.  Nowadays, Google and Wikipedia are useful for both quick overviews and details to get current.  Specialty journals need monitoring for researchers to stay current.

Credibility

Focus, with success, can bring credibility.  Linus Pauling gained success for his work and Nobel Prize.  Unfortunately, he was given attention, in areas other than his specialty, in some peripheral subjects.  Much more than needed amounts of vitamin C was consumed by many others as a result.  And in a joint paper with E. Zuckercandl he ventured the idea that generation time did not need attention in molecular clock evolution studies.  That mistake has not yet been corrected as you can find in numerous other posts on this blog.

Success in one area does not equate to mastery of another area.  I will try to avoid applying that observation to current events.

Joseph Engemann    Kalamazoo, Michigan    March 3, 2017

Richard Brewer: A Tribute

What did he do?

This morning, as I was reflecting on how to tie up the ends of this blog before it is too late, it occurred to me that one of the friends I usually meet for lunch about once a week had played a significant role in the discoveries I have presented in this blog.  It may come as a surprise to him as much as to me because we are usually on opposite ends of the creation/evolution debate.  The debate is seldom discussed as our entrenched positions are usually ignored, possibly out of mutual respect.

Richard Brewer joined the Western Michigan University faculty in 1959, a year before I did in 1960.  We both retired in 1996, but he had a much more productive record in research, publishing, and teaching.  It was so much so that at least once I had nominated him for the Distinguished Faculty Scholar award.  You can verify his many contributions by examining his website - richardbrewer.org - and find such things as his most recent book on the Land Conservancy or the land trust movement.

He started as a ornithologist and had a prominent role as editor and contributor of Breeding Birds of Michigan.  His texts and lab manuals  on Ecology published by Saunders had considerable success.  He was an original and long time board  member of the Kalamazoo Nature Center as well as Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy.  He was a dedicated teacher and the major professor of many ecology graduate students.  He was instrumental in arranging for the deposit of the library of an early American ecologist into the C. Adams Center Collection of Western Michigan University Library, the collection was for many years housed in the Biology Department.

So how did that help my discoveries related to the Pogonophora?

The Adams Center was the vehicle for publishing a periodical, Occasional Papers of the C. C. Adams Center for many years.  It provided a vehicle for subscription exchanges with other science periodicals, including a Norwegian periodical, Sarsia.  The two periodicals were not likely to be encountered in most libraries.  So it is unlikely that, in their absence, I would have seen the three research papers published in Sarsia by M. Webb, two of which helped me see the extreme longevity of the group, and the other helped show the connection to the Hemichordates.

Why talk about this now?

I have a realization that I won't live in the earthly realm forever.  In fact, I am certain that God has extended my stay here to help others realize that evolution and natural selection are part of His plan, and that I have a role in helping others see that is true.  I am not the only one to see that God and evolution share that relationship.  But it seems to me that I have overwhelming evidence that my findings are far beyond coincidence and serendipity.

The role that God had in my findings is apparent to me, but I have not given all the evidence and somewhat hoped to leave it for posthumous publication of details.  How I know that is mysteriously tied up in the faith, reason, knowledge of scripture, and knowledge of nature that God has given me.  God is equally generous with his gifts to others.  The gentleness of God is infinite like God's love and shown by how good many are that live admirable lives without recognizing God.

Joseph G. Engemann    Kalamazoo, Michigan    February 25, 2017

THE ISLAMIC JESUS

Akyol, Mustafa.  The Islamic Jesus: How the King of the Jews Became a Prophet of the Muslims.  St. Martin’s Press.  288 pp.  [Reviewed by Tom Heneghan.  2017.  Muslim writer explores current relevance of Jesus’ message for Islam.  National Catholic Reporter, 53, no. 10, p. 15 & 18.]

I have not read the book, but found the review noted above very informative  and in agreement with a much more favorable view of Muslims than those following the recent campaign and election might have developed.  Akyol is a Muslim from Turkey that found Jesus, as depicted in the Christian Epistle by St. James, very much like the one depicted in the Quran as a prophet second only to Mohammad.  Heneghan quotes Akyol's book as saying

"As Muslims, who are latecomers to this scene, we have disagreements with both Jews and Christians," he writes in the book's final paragraph. "But we have major agreements as well.  With Jews we agree a lot on God.  With Christians, we agree that Jesus was born of a virgin, that he was the Messiah, and that he is the Word of God.  Surely we do not worship Jesus, like Christians do.  Yet still, we can follow him.  In fact, given our grim malaise and his shining wisdom, we need to follow him."

For Christians, it may also be a problem to get their minds around the fact that Jesus is fully human, but as the Son of God is divine for all eternity with the Father and the Holy Spirit as the One True God.  But I am sure Jesus appreciates those who get his message of love.

We may try to put limits on God.  Maybe reading the following post may help you see God's love is broader than many may think.

http://evolutioninsights.blogspot.com/2015/01/god-and-religious-traditions.html

Joseph Engemann     Kalamazoo, Michigan    February 23, 2017

PROBABILITIES

In my second blog post (Asteroid strikes, May 11,2013) I talked about the probability of a big asteroid that strikes the earth actually hitting Kalamazoo is less than once in 100,000 over a lifetime of one hundred years.  It was over 50 million years ago that the big one that was part of the disruption leading to the extinction of dinosaurs struck the earth.  The post was to help people understand that such events are probably dropping in frequency, but were an important part of the early history of life selecting for the survival of forms such as the pogonophora to repopulate the post-strike world.

I would never have made that discovery without an almost unbelievable set of coincidences in my life that is most unlikely to be duplicated and may almost be beyond serendipitous discovery in the future if I cannot help my peers understand it.

Calculating the odds

I think it was necessary for me to study a peculiar group of crustaceans in Tasmania (the center of their distribution).  The comparison made with a Michigan species (of a different group) was instrumental for my understanding how longevity and ecology impact evolution of species.  I was the only Fulbrighter at the University of Tasmania that year and probably the only one that had ever studied crustaceans there.
The probability for this is likely less than one in 200,000,000.

The probability of that rare individual also composing a chapter for an invertebrate zoology text book and learning pertinent facts about the pogonophorans is very low.  Perhaps a few dozen biologists have done so in the United States out of several thousand.  That may be about one in a hundred.
Probability of 1 in 200,000,000 times 1 in 100 = 1 in 20,000,000,000.

The probability of being an INTP type of personality and jumping to new topics or studies before fully disseminating the knowledge or topic may be about 1 in 20.  If I had stayed on track I would have pursued things to completion and never have combined the necessary information to understand the evolutionary points I make.
Probability of 1 in 20 times 1 in 20,000,000,000 = 1 in 400,000,000,000.

The probability of having the childhood and later circumstances could be described  but are unique for everyone, even identical twins.  Some of those events may be described later, but it makes me almost certain the chance of someone doing the same is a practical impossibility.  We share a lot, but you will be the only you, just like me.

Joe Engemann     Kalamazoo, Michigan    February 22, 2017

COINCIDENCES

A small sample

Life is full of coincidences; we probably experience many more than we are ever aware of.  Sunday, the obituary of a distinguished dentist, president of the American Academy of Restorative Dentistry among many other honors, was published in the Kalamazoo Gazette.

To my knowledge, I never talked to him (Harold Ward Fountain) when he was in my town driving a red convertible and looking to me like a movie star while he was courting his wife, Glenna; they married in 1943.  Her parents lived at the time where their lot backed up to our lot.

I later noticed he was a dentist in Kalamazoo where no contact was made during the 33 years we both were here.  He retired in 1983 and they then moved to Arizona.  Perhaps I saw him when he was a teenager in his home town of Remus when my father took me with him when he was delivering butter wrappers to the Remus Creamery.

After marriage he entered the Navy as a dentist until discharged in 1946.  The Navy called him back in 1950 and loaned him to the Army.  He was sent to Germany and provided dental service to the U.S. soldiers and their dependents.  When they had free time they toured postwar Europe.  It is kind of dumb to think about the possibility of meeting them by chance there when I was visiting similar places in 1952.

Perhaps I think about such things because I have had chance encounters with people I knew from elsewhere.  Two buddies stationed with me in Munich were on a three day pass in Paris.  I had taken an earlier leave and had made a circuit around northern Europe ending up in Paris on my way back to Munich.  I was leaving a show late at night and heard "Joe" from them seated at a street cafe on a nearby street.  We spent the rest of the evening wandering the streets of Paris.

I met an older couple on the train from Chicago to San Francisco in 1956.  Then they were on the same cruise ship from San Francisco to Sydney.  A younger lady on the same ship that was part of a social group that developed on the trip was in the crowd several months later moving in the opposite direction around the Olympic stadium in Melbourne.

The following year on the trip across the Indian Ocean one of the travelers I met stayed with the ship all the way to England.  I had gotten off in Marseille to do some sightseeing on my way to catch a different ship from Southampton to New York; in London we happened to notice each other in Trafalgar Square.

What is the chance?

Are such coincidences remarkable?  Probably not.  There are billions of people in the world.  Those traveling are a much smaller subset.  Travelers also use mostly a limited part of the worlds transport system and visit with a much higher focus on "must see" travel destinations.

How do we zero in on those we know in such circumstances.  I came from a home town of about 4,000 people.  The ones I saw in my neighborhood were almost always people I knew.  You expect to recognize and greet people in such places, the habit of scanning crowds for familiar faces is probably not unusual.  It is probably not unusual in the animal world; consider the penguins returning to a large number of seemingly identical penguins and easily finding their mates.

I think it was in 1952 when I was visiting the London Zoo and was outside the lion exhibit.  A small group of people were watching a large lion resting in seeming boredom not far from the fence.  All of a sudden his head perked up and he alertly looked toward people farther away on the walk.  He may have had an early warning from clicking heels of a young well-dressed young lady approaching.  She stopped in front of him and they looked at each other, perhaps sharing more communication than I was aware of.  I suspected she had a role helping him through his early development.

I wasn't planned, the meeting in Trafalgar Square.  I was crossing to go to a museum, she was killing some time waiting for her train home.  But there are probably many possible coincidences that do not occur because the time of travel intersecting does not match; a minute could make the difference.  And today you might be too busy with your cell phone.  Will you see a friend in the picture you are taking when you get home?

Joe Engemann    Kalamazoo, Michigan    February 20, 2017