If I had not failed Fluid Mechanics

Have you ever been in a situation where everyone seemed to know what was going on except you? Like maybe you didn't speak the language, didn't know how to use the tools. You could watch in bewilderment, but no one was explaining anything to you.

Thats how it felt when I took a course in Fluid Mechanics. Why would someone do this, you may ask? Back in the days when it was easi-er to get into a good college and it didn't cost a quarter-million dollars to send 2 kids to good colleges, if you did well on the math SATs, you were leafletted with postcards inviting you to the exciting and lucrative field of engineering.

Well who in high school doesn't want an exciting and lucrative career? That would use your excellent math skills? Certainly this would be a better life than working at the city library the rest of my days, yes? So why not chose a major, like say civil engineering, at random from a catalog? Well, it didn't work out that great back then (though since then, random choices I've made have worked out very well, more in future blogs, like say that Progressive Party).

Fluid Mechanics was a required course. I didn't fail exactly, how did I manage to get a D - oh yes, I showed up for all the classes, recitations, and labs. So showing up can get a person credit, Keanu Reeves was right.

The one thing that sticks with me, and this relates to the BP news we heard from the Obama administration this past week. A very long equation which solves for theta, and has many terms on the right side. This models fluid flow, apparently. If I look a bit I could probably find it in my garage, since I likely did not bequeath this text to either of my math-y kids (or maybe I burned it, I forget). Anyhow to solve this equation you have to hack off the least significant variables.

Yes and what did we hear about the BP spill this past week? The first news was "75% of the oil has been: burned, absorbed, collected, and is basically gone". Then later Ms. Lubchenko (from Oregon, so you know you can trust her), the head of NOAA, announces it was really 50% that was gone.

OK so the "rest" is still out there - instead of the oil left to clean up being 18 Exxon Valdez' worth, we "only" have 9 Exxon Valdez' left to clean up. Is this supposed to provide comfort? To oystermen, to oil workers, to marsh preservationists, to shorebirds?

And so if 50% or even if its only 20%? Back to that 80/20 rule (which I did not learn in fluid mechanics) - it will cost 80% of the resources to clean up that remaining pesky 20%. So we are a very very long way from being out of the woods. I think Obama and friends can present this data yes, show relief that the static kill is holding yes, but - they should continue to express remorse that we still have a long way to go. I am not ready for optimism on this and I am not buying it.

And what about those variables that got hacked off the equation? What do they represent? How many oil-slicked pelicans?