The cheapo multi-disciplinarian naturalist (3/18/2019)

I often explain in my workshops that biologists would make the great economists. Or, maybe better that economy and biology are actually very closely related fields. On the first hand, you may think I am crazy, but that will be one of the arguments I will try to make in today’s post. Today’s post is also about the beauty of being multidisciplinary. I do not strictly believe that we all belong in our silos, but that our professions and specializations can benefit a lot from cross fertilization and interaction. For example, in my sermon last year, I argued that biology, or my observations of nature, reveal order, mathematics and rhythm. Nature or biology, I argued also has parsimony, she really has so much more to offer or to teach us than just biology.

Nature offers us:

• Food
• Shelter
• Fiber
• Peace of mind (or sanity)
• Health
• Art
• Wonder
• Spirituality
• And many more benefits

We are part of nature. We come from it and have evolved from it, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. Some may think we have outgrown it, but we all still have that animalistic (or natural) instinct in us, from birth, until we we die. We are created true the animalistic (instinctive or some call it loving) behavior of our parents and when we die, we again become part of nature; we even refer to it in our ceremonies: “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

But there is so much more. The natural world has offered us some magnificent art; it started in the old cave paintings, and then just think of the greats like the photographer Ansel Adams, writers like Thoreau, painters likes Monet, and I am just scratching the surface. Nature offers sanity to the forest bathers, the meditators, those folks who retreat to nature. They all offer nature something in return, their admiration, love and desire to preserve and protect it.

About once a month or so I see that picture on Facebook that offers you $3,000,000 or some crazy price to go live somewhere in nature without a phone and internet for 3 months or some period. I wish it was a true offer, I would jump at it, and disappear for 3 months, or even longer, a half year?

This photograph captures the beauty of nature.  We went for a walk in the woods behind our home and after some bushwhacking we found this little creek meandering through the woods.  Who could not just live here for 3 months (were it not for the bugs, but I think I would even be able to survive them with the proper protection).

Back to what I want to write about today! In my classes I talk about parsimony and how parsimonious nature is. Let’s look at the word parsimonious. It has become one of my favorite words and it means: “the quality of being careful in spending.” You may also call it stingy, miserly, cheap, frugal, tight, or penny-pinching. You get the idea. Not that I live that way, but nature does not waste a thing (unlike most of us humans). If you don’t live as efficiently in nature as possible you have less reserves as your neighbor, something or somebody will outsmart you, out-compete you, hunt you down and have you for dinner. It is a dog-eat-dog world out there and if you don’t do it as efficient as possible you are literally toast or at least the stuff they put on toast!

Nature is very supply and demand oriented as part of this parsimony. If you can do the same thing as your neighbor and use less of the resources available to you, you can literally do more with what is available and out-compete those guys. It is survival of the fittest, of the most efficient, or the strongest. This is the most classic Darwinian concept, but also classic economic model you can find: Supply and Demand.

The German scientist/chemist Justus von Liebig (1803-1873), also known as the father of the chemical fertilizer, developed the “Law of the Minimum.” He figured out that plants (and in his case crops) always had one limiting factor. Once you alleviate that limiting factor, say through fertilization, something else will become limiting (another element or chemical in the soil or something else like water or light). By the way, von Liebig also invented the bouillon block that we use in soup. He was supposed to be a great chemist, philosopher and teacher.

It was around that time that biology really took off, we had Darwin who really figured out this thing called evolution; then we had Mendel who figured out genetics. It must have been an exciting time to live and learn. But both Darwin and Mendel illustrated that there are other forces in play than just biology, or maybe that biology involves economics, mathematics and statistics, just to name a few. Von Liebig had showed it involved chemistry. I always tell folks that I probably came the closest to a religious experience when I studied cell biology and learned what all goes on at the cellular level, or maybe what can go wrong on a cellular level. To think we have all these people and other living organisms running around on this earth, each of which have million of cells, some of which have hundreds of processes going on inside those minute cells, was a religious experience to me. It was absolutely amazing and kind of scary to think that if one of those processes does not work that cell could potentially become a cancer cell. But then I learned we have little organs in the cell that can repair these mishaps and that we even have suicide organelles (or capsules) in our cells and if it really goes wrong, the cells can commit suicide (an interesting concept in itself). This works most of the time, but if not, we grow older and those cells may mutate and could eventually develop cancer. It is all amazingly complicated and it all works; most of the time. But no, I never became overly religious, but I did gain a heck of a lot of respect and love for biology and I retained my spirituality.

As you can see, biology can involve a lot of disciplines, ranging from spirituality to mathematics, to economics to actually life science. I do think multidisciplinary thinking is extremely important. We lose sight of the whole picture by being overly specialized. While writing this post I was going through my old posts knowing that I wrote about using old experiences in development of my classes. It was amazing when I reread some of my posts. There are a lot of reoccurring themes here, and I have always wondered if I label too much. However, this shows my multidisciplinary interests, my scattered brain and my love for knowledge (or the unknown). For example, I am currently studying about the construction of embankments and how to compact soil. This is something fairly new to me, I have learned a little bit about it when thinking about the rooting of plants, but never really about building dams. It is fun, and it will be something new to think about and to teach. Life is never boring this way, and all I can say is: go out there yourself, put yourself out there and don’t be afraid to learn something new, something you had absolutely no idea about; become an multidisciplinarian, we need more of them.

The Swiss-Army person (2/6/2019)

I often explain in my classes that biologists would make the great economists. Or, maybe better that economy and biology are very closely related fields. On the first hand, you may think that I am crazy, but I'll try to make an argument for it today. 

I do not strictly believe that we all belong in our silos, but that our professions and specializations can benefit a lot from cross fertilization and interaction. In my sermon, I argued that biology, or my observations of nature, reveal order, mathematics and rhythm. Nature or biology really has so much more to offer or to teach us.

Nature offers something to the artists; just think of the greats like the photographer Ansel Adams, writers like Thoreau, painters likes Monet, and I am just scratching the surface. It offers sanity to the forest bathers, the meditators, those folks who retreat to nature. They all offer nature something in return. Without the interaction there would be no preservation of the natural world. 

About once a month do I see that picture on Facebook that offers you $3,000,000 or some crazy price to go live somewhere in nature without a phone and internet for 3 months or some period. I wish it was a true offer, I would jump at it, and disappear for 3 months, a half year.

But back to what I want to write about today. In my classes I talk about parsimony and how parsimonious nature is. Let’s look at the word parsimonious. It has become one of my favorite words and it means: “the quality of being careful in spending.” You may also call it stingy, miserly, cheap, frugal, tight, or penny-pinching. You get the idea. Not that I live that way, but nature does not waste a thing (unlike most of us humans). If you don’t live as efficiently in nature as possible something or somebody will outsmart you, out-compete you, hunt you down and have you for dinner. It is a dog-eat-dog world out there and if you don’t do it all as efficient as possible you are literally toast!

Nature is very supply and demand oriented as part of this parsimony. If you can do the same thing as your neighbor and use less of the resources available to you, you can literally do more with what is available and out-compete those guys. It is survival of the fittest, of the most efficient, or the strongest. This is the most classic Darwinian concept, but also classic economic model you can find: Supply and Demand.

Then there was the German scientist/chemist Justus von Liebig (1803-1873). Von Liebig also known as the father of the chemical fertilizer developed the “Law of the Minimum.” He figured out that plants (and in his case crops) always had one limiting factor. Once you alleviate that limiting factor, say through fertilization, something else will become limiting (another element or chemical in the soil or something else like water or light). By the way, von Liebig also invented the bouillon block that we use in soup. He was supposed to be a great chemist, philosopher and teacher.

It was around that time that biology really took off, we had Darwin who really figured out this thing called evolution; then we had Mendel who figured out genetics. It must have been an exciting time to live and learn. But both Darwin and Mendel illustrated that there are other forces in play than just biology, or maybe that biology involves economics, mathematics and statistics, just to name a few. Von Liebig had showed it involved chemistry. 

I always tell folks that I probably came the closest to a religious experience when I studied cell biology and learned what all goes on at the cellular level, or maybe what can go wrong on a cellular level. To think we have all these people and other living organisms running around on this earth, was a religious experience to me. It was absolutely amazing and kind of scary. But then I learned we have suicide organelles (or capsules) in our cells and if there is anything wrong, the cells can commit suicide (an interesting concept in itself). This works most of the time, but if not, we grow older and those cells may mutate and could develop cancer. It is all amazingly complicated and it all works; most of the time. But no, I never became overly religious, but I did gain a heck of a lot of respect and love for biology and I retained my spirituality.

Your's truly sitting behind his desk at home, trying to do some work.  It's a little cramped and I desperately need to clean it up ... maybe this weekend. (photo courtesy of my wife)

As you can see, biology can involve a lot of disciplines, ranging from spirituality to mathematics, to economics to actually life science. I do think multidisciplinary thinking is extremely important. We lose sight of the big picture by being overly specialized. While writing this post I was going through my old posts knowing that I wrote about using past experiences in development of my classes. It was amazing when I reread some of my posts. There are a lot of reoccurring themes here, and I have always wondered if I label too much. However, this shows my multidisciplinary interests, my scattered brain and my love for knowledge (or the unknown). For example, I am currently studying about the construction of embankments and how to compact soil. This is something fairly new to me, I have learned a little bit about it when thinking about the rooting of plants, but never really about building dams. It is fun, and it will be something new to think about and to teach. Life is never boring this way, and all I can say is: go out there yourself, put yourself out there and don’t be afraid to learn something new, something you had absolutely no idea about; become a multidisciplinary persons, we need more of them.  It does not have to be biology, that is just me, just do not stop learning and experiencing.

Explorers (7/24/2018)

I have always been a fan of (the lone) explorers.  As a teenager, I read a book about the Scandinavian (Swedish) explorer Sven Hedin.  As an adult, I have been and are still fascinated by the likes of Sir Richard Burton, Charles Darwin, John Wesley Powell, Everett Ruess, and John Muir.  Actually, when working in Yemen I became interested in Peter Forsskal, one of those explorers that not many people have heard of, but more about him in a little bit.

All explorers I mentioned here were cartographers and/or naturalists in one way or another.   They were all ahead of their time and maybe with the exception of Ruess somewhat prophetic; although Ruess disappeared and presumably died at a very young age.  Forsskal died very young as well.

At the time that I liked Hedin and his accounts of travel through the desert of Inner Mongolia, his discovery of a solution for the existence of the lake known as Lop Nor and his travels to Tibet, there was no Internet and Wikipedia,  otherwise I would have learned that in his later years Hedin was a huge fan of Hitler and the Third Reich. Hedin would have been an unwelcome visitor on our bookshelves if we had known that since one of my uncles died in a concentration camp and our father spent time in one.  However, I loved Hedin’s account of his travels and writing about it and now, I wonder if this is where I got my interest and love of the desert; I was fascinated by his tales of the Gobi desert and how in his mind a whole civilization disappeared because a river and lake dried up.  It seems that Hedin was initially motivated by the lust for fame and secondly by curiosity.

If there is any person I admire a lot, it is Sir Richard Burton.  A true renaissance man, he traveled India, Afghanistan, and was one of the few Europeans to enter Mecca. He spoke a multitude of languages (29); he was the ultimate spy for the English empire.  I want to be like him when I grow up!

I will not say much about Darwin except that we named our sailboat “the Beagle.”  I will leave it to you to guess why, but as a hint, I will tell you that Darwin traveled the world on a ship named “the Beagle.”  It was on this ship that parts of his theory of evolution were developed.

Powell explored the west, and one of my favorite books is an account of his exploration of the Colorado River.  He starts in the Green River and trouble starts almost instantly in the Flaming Gorge.  Powell had a great career as a geologist and predicted amongst others the water shortage experienced during the dust bowl, 50 years later.

Muir has occurred in many of my writings and I will leave it at that.  Just look through the labels.  What amazes me is that he not only traveled the Sierra, but he first actually walked from Kentucky to the Florida Keys.  

Which brings me to the two enigmas: Forsskal and Ruess.  

Peter Forsskal was a Swedish/Finnish botanist philosopher.  He was a student of the famous Linnaeus; however, he also studied oriental languages and philosophy.  Interestingly, in 1759, he published a pamphlet entitled (loosely translated): “Thoughts on civil liberty.“  In this pamphlet he pushed for the freedom of print (freedom of expression?), which did not endear him with the powers of the time.  In other words, he was also way ahead of his time, freedom of the expression showed up in the U.S. Constitution that was first proposed 30 years later (I think) around 1789.  I read the pamphlet and it is darn revolutionary.  However, what initially interested me in Forsskal was the fact that he died in Yemen, approximately 20 miles from where we lived.  In Yemen, I ran into a plant that was named for him by Linnaeus (Forsskaolea tenacissima) and I started wondering who the heck this guy was and what he was doing in Yemen in the mid 1700s.  Linnaeus recruited a number of his students to swarm out over the world and collect biological specimens for him.  This was a big thing at the time; it seems that your status in the world went up with the number of species in your collection.  Linnaeus was one of the most ambitious of them all.  Moreover, he was the inventor of a completely new classification system of life; a system that we still use today.  Linnaeus sent Forsskal to the Middle East, first Egypt and then Yemen to collect plants.  It seems he contracted malaria and died in Yemen at the age of 31.  There was a time I was hoping to write an article about Forsskal, if not a book.  Maybe one day, but there is very little information on Peter, at least in English.

Finally Ruess; he was somewhat of an enigma.  He was a poet, artist and can be considered an explorer in his own right.  Since he was only 20 years old when he died in in 1934, we can never really say much about what he achieved either metaphysically, philosophically or scientifically.  However, I think he played on a lot of people’s fascination.  In 1931, at the age of 17, right after high school graduation, Ruess left home and started traveling alone through California and later on through the Four Corners Region on a horse and borough.  He made linoleum and wood blocks, did drawings and wrote home to his parents or brother Waldo on almost a daily basis.  These letters form a daily diary of his travels.  Ruess disappeared in 1934 and is thought to have been killed by two Ute Indians who stole his animals.  The mystery of his disappearance is still a subject to speculations.  In his writings home Ruess appears much wiser and knowledgeable than hi young age would give him credit for.  He even interacted with Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange, three famous photographers.

So what fascinates me about these explorers, what is the common thread?  The fact that they roughed it, survived rough conditions to a point, discovered things: new cultures, new plants, animals, not only for themselves but also for society.  Ruess appears to have been murdered; I hope it was swift and as painless as possible.  Forsskal most likely suffered.  It somehow reminds me a bit of some of the situations we endured in Uganda, from being held at gunpoint a few times to having very little food to eat and two matches per night during the civil war when Idi Amin was being removed from power.  It also reminds me of the hikes through Nepal and our stays in villages in areas where few had ever seen white folks; or where we were in danger of being flooded (see this post); my stay at a home where they had a funeral for an important Buddhist lama; or that one time we slept in a home at an elevation above 12,000 feet.  It reminds me of sitting between these two heavily armed Yemenis driving through the Empty Quarter up and down sand dunes looking for a Land Rover mechanic.  In a way, I miss it. 

Reaching back to the past.  While working in Nepal I had to hike into the back country and get into villages where some of the folks (especially kids) had never seen Europeans.

One of my favorite pictures and I suspect I showed this one before, but when traveling on the Tibetan plateau, we ran into this guy and had a great talk with him.

Seaford (8/17/2014)

It was a very quiet Sunday morning when I went to the boat to prepare it to receive a coat of nonskid paint in the cockpit.  I took this picture at 10 in the morning.  I was the only one there, and there were even very few people at the public boat launch in the far back of the photograph.

Typing the word cockpit makes me all the sudden realize that airplanes also have cockpits.  Interestingly the dictionary says its origin is from an enclosed area where they had cock fights.  It goes on and says it is also the name of the quarters of warships where the junior officers are housed.  A very interesting juxtaposition here.  On small water crafts like sailboats and smaller motorboats the word “pit” in the word cockpit sounds more true to its meaning; it is a well where you stand in and do most of the boating and having a nonskid floor is important. 

Oh well.  An egret was standing on the dock, peering down, probably looking for a juicy morsel like a small crab or small fish.  At low tide (which it was) the mud flats are often overtaken by fiddler crabs.  Neat little animals; the males have one huge claw and one that is the normal size.  Females have equal size claws.  Makes you wonder if size matters in this part of the animal kingdom as well.  There are so many ways of being attractive to the opposite sex in the animal kingdom; it is amazing.  Even in our own species, the humans, different cultures have different (physical) things they look at to judge whether that person makes a good mate.  It is absolutely fascinating what evolution did to further a species and facilitates selecting mates that would make my offspring more successful than yours.  That’s what Darwin called “Natural Selection” and “Survival of the Fittest.”  Guess that is also why we called out boat the "Beagle."

Anyway, there had been heavy dew fall, and after drying the boat and waiting some time, I had a successful day getting the nonskid paint down.  It is now safer down there; it looks better and hopefully less sensitive to water getting into the core of the boat.