In trying to teach an introduction to biofluid mechanics for students during the pandemic (BIOMEDE 331, Fall 2020 at the University of Michigan), I tried to teach a little more, scribbling as much as I could into the margins. Though often forgotten, much can be learned from the marginal.
This series of vignettes represents those educational margins. Through these didactic little parables I am trying to say something real about something important in ways I cannot otherwise express. I deploy an odd cast of characters, from a man on the street standing in front of a burning building to a then-president spittling during the rise of the third domestic wave of the coronavirus, speaking their own words to help me say what I’m trying to say. It is my hope here to encourage you, dear reader, to take a few moments to explore the boundaries of what we call our education (and, vicariously, our “educational systems”) and look with earnestness in the eyes of those peering just beyond and see what we can learn.
This is water, part 1
DFW: There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes ‘‘What the hell is water?’’
Arbitrary, yet nevertheless significant
BB: While arbitrary, these units are nevertheless significant, as the scattered remains of the Mars Climate Orbiter attest. In 1999, owing to a single piece of software reporting a single value in US customary units contrary to the expected SI unit, the probe entered the Martian atmosphere earlier than it should have and, in a puff of cloud no one saw, ended its trajectory. The mission cost $327 million. An arbitrary yet nevertheless significant number.
This is water, part 2
DFW: [B]ut if you’re worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don’t be. I am not the wise old fish.
Magic is practice in action
BB: Hello everyone and thank you for joining me in today’s video. For as long as I can remember I have always interest in magicians. Never the magic, but always the craft. And the craft of a magician, really, is practicing some act or art way way way more than you think anyone ever would. In an essay published in Smithsonian Magazine a few year backs, Teller of Penn & fame, (seen here) revealed some of the principles of magicianry. Among those that magician exploit, Teller notes that we “will be fooled by a trick if it involves more time, money and practice than you (or any other sane onlooker) would be willing to invest”. Magicians are fishes who see water.
DFW: Morning boys, how’s the water.
BB: Shuffle a deck of cards ten thousand times and you are liable to get good at it. Observe the assumptions of the world and you’ll notice what others forget. Magic is practice in action. Put differently, the real trick of anything is practice. So as we get further into our fluidic investigations, please keep practicing with the material, and we will grasp even the most mystical material in our prestigious hands.
This is water, part 3
DFW: Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy’s interpretation is true and the other guy’s is false or bad.
DJT: You take the number of cases––
JS: Okay.
DJT: Now look, we’re last––
JS: Last?
DJT: ––meaning we’re first.
JS: I don’t know what we’re first in.
DJT: We have the best––
DFW: Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education, at least in my own case, is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.
Human beings are born under 14.6 psi
BB: When I was a kid, I learned human beings are born under 14.6 pounds per square inch of pressure. I thought it was why babies cried when they were born. I thought it wasn’t fair.
BB: A teacher showed what would happen if someone were subjected to another 14.6 pounds per square inch by doing so to a marshmallow person assembled from tooth picks and grinning with a smile someone from the class marker-ed on. The plump figure wasted away until its tiny wooden skeleton collapsed. The teacher resurrected the mass by removing all 29.2 psi to demonstrate the effects of a vacuum. The smile contorted into an amorphous grimace.
BB: This was my introduction to the difference between “absolute” and “gage” pressure.
In our field, as in others, there is pressure
BB: In our field, as in others, there is pressure. There is a pressure to perform, a pressure to achieve, a pressure to do more and more better and better until you’re the best of the best and even then you aren’t really sure. There is pressure even in fluids that do not move. There are especially pressures in fields that do no allow movement.
BB: These pressures are accompanied by unfairness and injustice. In our own STEM fields, we need not put too fine a point on it: some folks have a hard time rising up. These systems entrench inequity and are in need of change. Perhaps a few particles will flow into that system.
BB: A few lonely atoms.
BB: What will happen to them?
BB: Who will they be?
SW: How many of them are you and me?
SW: Proclamation
VT: I led a neurotech team at Lawrence Livermore National Lab.
SW: Of race relations
SW: Consolation
VT: There we worked on a wide range of prosthetic technologies––
SW: Integration
VT: ––that were used in both in the academic and clinical setting.
SW: Verification
AS: So, look at me.
SW: Of revelations
AS: See me.
SW: Acclamation
SW: World Salvation
AS: Tell me––
SW: Vibrations
AS: ––what do you see?
SW: Stimulation
SW: Confirmation––
S: One of the biggest struggles I had to overcome at first was feeling like I belonged.
SW: ––to the peace of the world
SW: They’ve been spending most their lives / Living in a pastime paradise / They’ve been spending most their lives
SL: That’s a good start––
SW: Living in a pastime paradise
SL: ––but there are more to do.
SW: They’ve been spending most their lives / Living in a future paradise
SL: Systems to improve.
SW: They’ve been spending most their lives / Living in a future paradise / We’ve been spending too much of our lives
EM: I hate to say it though.
SW: Living in a pastime paradise
EM: So, uh, I think the economics of this will work out. And––
SWC: We shall––
M: Man––
SWC: ––overcome
SW: Let’s start living our lives
M: ––I feel like––
SW: Living for the future paradise
M: ––everything that’s happening was supposed to happen.
SWC: We shall––
SW: Praise––
AGNB: What do you mean?
SWC: ––overcome
M: Everything’s inevitable.
SW: ––to our lives / Living for the future paradise
M: This is how people are actually feeling.
SWC: We shall––
SW: Shame to anyones lives––
M: That how I feel about it. Is this the way I go about it? No.
SWC: ––overcome
SW: ––Living in the pastime paradise
M: But is everyone perfect? No. What I’m trying to say is everyone feel like that. Everybody feel like that. That’s all I gotta say.
Indeed our world is governed by myriad forces
BB: Indeed, our world is governed by myriad forces with which we will grapple. Some within our control, some just outside it.
On July 25 of this year, a Panama-flagged, Japanese vessel known as the Wakashio, ran aground on a coral reef in the Indian Ocean, tearing open the hull of one of the largest ships ever made, spilling oil to the shores of the Mauritius. It has caused environmental disaster, international controversy, and fears of transnational coverups.
BB: The physical factors influencing the oil spill include the specific gravity (as compared to that of the ocean water), the viscosity (to keep the fluid in one place), and surface tension (which holds the oil together). And though the devastation of this particular disaster will only be alleviated by helping human hands (and many of them), the severity of future oil spills could lessened by ensuring that lighter elements do not evaporate out of the oil (to keep the oil on top of the water). We could increase the viscosity of the transported oil (so spilt fluid does not spread). And finally, we could increase the surface tension, the subject of today’s lesson, so that the oil can be more easily extracted from the surrounding ocean water.
BB: Preventing future disaster via the knowledge gained here is as toast worthy an endeavor as any we will engage in. But let us not pop the champagne cork too early. We still have a lot of work to do. But at least we have made one step forward in our progress, learning how surface tension factors into our biofluid mechanics studies. May we apply our knowledge here as elsewhere both “well” and “for good”.
This is water, part 4
DFW: [A] liberal arts education is not so much about filling you up with knowledge as it is about “teaching you how to think.” If you’re like me as a student, you’ve never liked hearing this, and you tend to feel a bit insulted by the claim that you needed anybody to teach you how to think, since the fact that you even got admitted to a college this good seems like proof that you already know how to think.
Arteriovenous fistula and the consequences of actual pressure measurement
BB: Each year in the United States, about half a million Americans live (at least for awhile) with end-stage renal disease.
BB: To do so they either need new and/or improved kidneys or they must be kept on dialysis. Dialysis is a procedure in which blood is removed of the body and extra fluids and toxins that would normally be filtered out by one’s kidneys and working renal systems. Currently, the standard of care is to have a patient come for dialysis treatments once every two to three days for a two to four hour appointment for the rest of their lives. This can involve a lot of poking folks with needles to gain access to their vasculature to pull off their excess fluid. Since these sorts of patients might already have overburdened cardiovascular systems, sometimes vascular access can be tricky, since veins can collapse easily and arteries when poked cause big jets of blood spray.
BB: To improve vascular access, medical professional developed the idea of an arteriovenous fistula, a type of surgical “anastomosis” or connection created between a lower pressure vein and a high pressure artery. This has the benefit of plumping up the vein and making it large and tough and amenable to multiple needle pokes. It has the down side of failing about half the time. Work is being done across the globe, even across the street at Ann Arbor’s VA Hospital, to improve the procedure and outcomes for patients.
BB: The number one cause of arteriovenous fistula failure? Putting a sphygmomanometer cuff on the arm that has the fistula.
BB: Therefore, let us always remember the important consequence of this lesson: in an ideal situation it does not matter how you gauge pressure; in a real one it does.
This is water, part 5
DFW: As I’m sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head.
Magicians are especially good at fooling very smart people
BB: I leave you with one parting thought. Magicians are especially good at fooling very smart people. This is due primarily for two reasons.
BB: The first, very smart people think they are less susceptible to being fooled or that if fooled are “smart enough” to figure out the trick. This conflates the idea that if you are “smart” or “intelligent” or “gifted” or “talented” in one aspect of life, you will be just as “smart” and “intelligent” and “gifted” and “talented” in other aspects. Competence does not work that way, even if the confident try to make it so.
BB: The second is that very smart people can justify their own mistaken beliefs with greater logic, more well-reasoned arguments, and, thereby, a correspondingly deep disregard for the world as it is outside their own very smart heads. This can lead to fierce and stubborn defenses of one’s initial way of thinking, especially if one’s initial way of thinking is quote “wrong”.
BB: Cutting the box in half does not halve the assistant.
BB: In this class, we’re likely gonna be wrong a time or two. Don’t stew, study. Ask us questions and ask each other questions and try to find better and better answers to better and better questions. It’s how we learn. As Stevie Wonder reminds us, “When you believe in things / That you don’t understand, / Then you suffer. / Superstition ain’t the way.”
BB: Thank you for joining me in this video and I hope you’ll watch the next.
SW: Superstition ain’t the way.
P&T: She’ll be safe no matter what. This will make sure that she is in no way harmed whatsoever.
On the importance of wearing a mask
DJT: But they’re dirty fighters. And the dirtiest fight of all––
RJ: Beef is at the front door / I got power, go to war / We need money, soldiers / So I’ll lay ’em down, kill the poor / Tyrants want the greedy whore / Shake ’em down, gimme more / The rich they paid protection plays the underscore / Give me yours / Live on tour, the screams and wars / The private lives are at the core / Visions soar in my mind / All seeing I was blind / Blocking out the sunshine / Eternally, we be fine, globally / We decline anytime we mistreat / Murder everywhere we turn / Birth of a nation / Slaves on plantations / Traps keep us facin’ / Distracted, rat-racin’
DJT: And I just want to again wish you a––
RJ: Poisonous, we taste it
DJT: ––happy Labor Day everybody. Thank you very much.
RJ: Uncover truth, let’s face it / I’ll be in the basement / Rallying for placement / Changin’ lives is basic / The future’s now don’t waste it / Get up out the matrix.
This is water, part 6
DFW: The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance.
DFW: [B]ecause the really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. If your total freedom of choice regarding what to think about seems too obvious to waste time discussing, I’d ask you to think about fish and water, and to bracket for just a few minutes your skepticism about the value of the totally obvious.
DFW: The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.
DFW: [L]earning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.
DFW: The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.
DFW: And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along on the fuel of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom.
DFW: The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
DFW: That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
DFW: It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: “This is water.” “This is water.”
Cast in order of appearance
DFW: David Foster Wallace
BB: Barry Belmont
DJT: Donald J. Trump
JS: Jonathan Swan
SW: Stevie Wonder
VT: Vanessa Tolosa
AS: Alexis Scott
S: Student
SL: Sieren Lim
EM: Elon Musk
SWC: Stevie Wonder’s Choir
M: Man
AGNB: All Gas No Brakes
P&T: Penn & Teller
RJ: Rita J.