Southeast Michigan Mensa

On the night of January 10, 1992, an enormous container ship from China, crossing the north Pacific, ran into a storm and eventually lost several tractor trailer sized containers to the sea. This actually happens quite often and some people get their kicks hunting down Adidas sneakers, or the ten thousand catcher’s mitts or hockey sticks that bob to the surface after the ocean pops the container open. But on this Friday night the cargo was 28,800 floating bath toys.

Join us at 7:00 pm (Eastern), on Saturday, April 20, when Donovan Hohn, our guest speaker, will relate how he read an article about the 28,800 floating toys, and the search for information about them took over his life for the next three years! He figured he would interview a few oceanographers, talk to a few beachcombers, read up on Arctic science and geography, and ascertain the global ecological impact. But questions can be like ocean currents: wade in too far, and they carry you away. Hohn’s accidental odyssey pulls him into the secretive arena of shipping conglomerates, the daring work of Arctic researchers, the lunatic risks of maverick sailors, and the shadowy world of Chinese toy factories. This is the true story of a journey into the heart of the sea and an adventure through science, myth, the global economy, and some of the worst weather imaginable.

Donovan Hohn is the author of The Inner Coast: Essays (2020) and Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea (2011), a New York TimesNotable Book and runner-up for both the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction and the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. His essays have appeared in such publications as Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Lapham’s Quarterly, and The New Republic. A recipient of the Whiting Writer’s Award and an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, Hohn spent a number of years editing essays, fiction, and literary journalism at Harper’s. He has taught nonfiction in the MFA program of the University of Michigan and is now Director of Creative Writing at Wayne State University. 

You can attend Mr. Hohn’s live presentation at the Northwest Unitarian Universalist Church in Southfield, at 7:00 p.m. (EDT), on Saturday, April 20, for a chance to also mingle with your fellow Mensans and guests, or join us via Zoom.

There is no charge for the Zoom presentation, but, due to rising costs, your donation via PayPal is greatly appreciated. Please donate $5! To donate go to http://www.paypal.com and click on the “Send Money” tab. Enter the e-mail address treasurer@nullmensadetroit.com and your payment amount. Be sure to include a notation that your donation is for “SEMM Zoom Presentations.”

The Zoom room opens at 6:30pm (Eastern) for mingling. The program starts at 7:00pm (Eastern). Please remember that all attendees need to pre-register by clicking on the following link: https://tinyurl.com/SEMM-2024-Gathering

Journey with us to Isle Royale, a remote, rugged, island wilderness in the middle of Lake Superior. Fifty miles from the Michigan shore and about fifteen miles from Minnesota It is only accessible by ferry, seaplane, or private watercraft. 

But Isle Royale, is also a unique national park, where a thrilling drama is unfolding between wolves and moose, the island’s ultimate predator and prey, whose lives and deaths are linked in a drama that is timeless and historic.

Join us at 7:00pm (EST), on Saturday, March 16, when Dr. Rolf Peterson, of Michigan Technological University, will discuss the wolf-moose relations in this isolated ecosystem where neither wolves nor moose are hunted by humans. After 70 years of coexistence, wolves declined to virtual extinction in the 2010s because of inbreeding, as the arrival of occasional new wolves is increasingly hampered by lack of ice on Lake Superior in winter as the climate warms and becomes increasingly windy.

In 2018-2019 the National Park Service attempted to restart the wolf population by introducing animals from several areas around the Lake Superior region. Dr. Peterson will summarize the status of the new arrivals and the significance of wolf predation for the island’s ecosystem. His findings are the result of the longest-running, most widely-cited predator prey study in the world.

Rolf Peterson has been studying populations of wolves and moose in Isle Royale National Park for over 50 years, especially their predator-prey relationship in an area where neither species is directly impacted by humans. His Ph.D. from Purdue University involved his initial work in this area, and he has used similar approaches for wolf-related studies in Alaska and Yellowstone National Park. At Michigan Technological University he has been on the faculty in Biological Sciences as well as in the School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science (SFRES). Since retiring from his regular faculty appointment, he has continued doing predator-prey research as a Research Professor in SFRES. He has over 150 peer-reviewed publications from his research.

The Zoom room opens at 6:30pm (Eastern) for mingling. The program starts at 7:00pm (Eastern). Please remember that all attendees need to pre-register by clicking on the following link: https://tinyurl.com/SEMM-2024-Gathering . 

There is no charge for the Zoom presentation, but, due to rising costs, your donation via PayPal is greatly appreciated. Please donate $5! To donate go to http://www.paypal.com and click on the “Send Money” tab. Enter the e-mail address treasurer@nullmensadetroit.com and your payment amount. Be sure to include a notation that your donation is for “SEMM Zoom Presentations.”

In December 1942, a team at the University of Chicago achieved a milestone in human history: The first nuclear chain reaction. At the forefront of this breakthrough stood Enrico Fermi, creator of the world’s first nuclear reactor, and, later, a key figure of the Manhattan Project. A man whose impact went well beyond these epochal events, revolutionized modern physics, and was awarded with a Nobel Prize.

But how did Fermi become Fermi? The answer, as you may guess, is not simple and straightforward. Join us at 7p.m, on Saturday, February 17, when David N. Schwartz, whose biography “The Last Man Who Knew Everything: The Life and Times of Enrico Fermi, Father of the Nuclear Age,” published by Basic Books in 2017, will speak about Fermi’s life trajectory and offer some perspectives on how this universal physicist – perhaps the last of his kind – was able to achieve what he did.  

David N. Schwartz received a BA from Stanford and a PhD from MIT, both in political science. He has written widely on various subjects, including defense policy and nuclear weapons strategy, as well as a recent book about the retailing giant Costco, “The Joy of Costco” which he wrote with his wife Susan. His father, Melvin Schwartz, shared the 1988 Nobel Prize in physics for performing the first high energy experiment studying neutrinos, and the discovery of the second type of neutrino, related to muon decay. 

The Zoom room opens at 6:30pm (EST) for mingling. The program starts at 7:00pm (EST). Please remember that all attendees need to pre-register by clicking on the following link: https://tinyurl.com/SEMM-2024-Gathering . There is no charge for the Zoom presentation, but, due to rising costs, your donation via PayPal is greatly appreciated. Please donate $5! To donate go to http://www.paypal.com and click on the “Send Money” tab. Enter the e-mail address treasurer@nullmensadetroit.com and your payment amount. Be sure to include a notation that your donation is for “SEMM Zoom Presentations.”

Our study of the universe started with stargazing. Looking up at the stars connects us to a legacy of wonder and science stretching back thousands of years, in civilizations all around the world. While the night sky definitely inspires awe, early astronomy was also practical—farming according to the solstices and equinoxes yielded better crops, and more food fueled the growth of human society and innovation.

Today we know that stars are the essential sources of raw material in the universe, recycling and distributing the elemental building blocks of everything we observe: new stars, nebulas of gas and dust, planets, and even humans. All life on Earth contains the element carbon, and all carbon was originally formed in the core of a star.

The Universe is a huge place loaded with at least 200 sextillion stars but there could be as many as 70 septillion stars. (That’s a 7 followed by 43 zeros!) That means, that for every grain of sand on the Earth there are at least 10,000 stars. And there are many different types of stars as well. Varying greatly in their make-up and size. Some live several million years where others continue to function for up to 200 billion years. This presentation will attempt to illuminate the life cycle of different types of stars and will ultimately explain what we can expect from the future of our nearest star… the sun.

Join us on Saturday, January 20, when NASA Solar System ambassador Ken Bertin takes us on a tour of the stars. Mr. Bertin received his first telescope at the age of seven and has been an avid astronomer ever since. He has traveled to and observed ten solar eclipses, three annular eclipses and both transits of Venus. He has seen numerous Lunar and partial solar eclipses, photographing each type. Ken is past president of the Warren Astronomical Society. His stated purpose in life is “the acquisition of knowledge, and the imparting it to others.”

The Zoom room opens at 6:30pm (Eastern) for mingling. The program starts at 7:00pm (Eastern). Please remember that all attendees need to pre-register by clicking on the following link: https://tinyurl.com/SEMM-2024-Gathering . 

There is no charge for the Zoom presentation, but, due to rising costs, your donation via PayPal is greatly appreciated. Please donate $5! To donate go to http://www.paypal.comand click on the “Send Money” tab. Enter the e-mail address treasurer@nullmensadetroit.comand your payment amount.