The Questioning Librarian

On Friday I found out that an old friend of mine had passed away after a long illness. We hadn't been in touch for quite a while; he was a very private person and had told me the last time we talked that he was having some health issues. While it was nothing I needed to worry about, he assured me, it made regular conversation difficult and he would be back in touch when things settled. Of course they never did, and the pain of loss was magnified by the fact that I hadn't spoken to him in so long. It's shockingly easy how people, even ones you care about, can pass out of your life with hardly a whisper. It's easy to get caught up in the business of life--in work, appointments, hobbies outside of work--and forget about the things that make it really matter, the connections with other human beings who are on the very same journey that we are. It is beyond easy to postpone a phone call, email, or whatever method of communication to those we care about but may not, for what...

A few weeks ago I finished The Monkey's Voyage: How Improbable Journeys Shaped the History of Life by Alan de Queiroz. It was a fascinating read, detailing how the voyage of plants and animals between the continents has changed the world in which we live. Even, de Queiroz asserts, something that is both random and highly unlikely in and of itself is nearly inevitable over millions of years of life, whether it is a new plant colonizing an island or monkeys from Africa crossing into South America. The book made me think once more about how randomness shapes the history of life. If we know anything from science, it is that humans are not the inevitable outcome of evolution. Neither our dominance as a species nor even our existence were assured. Random and improbable events led us to where we are. Think about just a few of the moments where, had something been different, life would have taken another path. Whatever natural disaster caused the human population to bottleneck around ...