I once attended a meeting in the south of France on the permeability of skin, my professional interest.
My colleague D___ (as they say in Russian novels) who was not from Vancouver, attended the same meeting. At some point he made me a proposition: "I've got a car. Let's fuck off and get a drink in the Camargue." I thought of Eric Newby and a botched British commando raid:
...beyond the soldiers were the planes. I had never seen so many J.U.88's in my life.
"What I think we should do," George said, "is..."
"Fuck off," said a readily identifiable voice which was not that of an officer. "That's what we should do, fuck off while there's still time."
The suggestion was so eminently sensible, and the person who made it so experienced in these matters, that it only remained to put it into practice.
So that's what we did.
The Camargue is a marshland area of coastal France, famous for bulls, horses, and flamingos. The connection is obvious when you think about it. Being France, we assumed there would also be wine and somewhere to drink it. It was gorgeous yet after half an hour there was no wine or wine bar and we became increasingly irritated. "See anything?" "No, just more fucking flamingos." It went on like this. Eventually we were on the other side of the Camargue feeling cheated. The motorway gave us a choice between Italy and Nîmes. D___ was in no doubt, "There will definitely be a bar in
Nîmes. They've got a Roman Colosseum."
We drove fiercely down the motorway and into Nîmes, passing numerous Ferrari dealers. The city centre came into view: Colosseum, car park, and sidewalk cafes.
After a glass of wine we observed little groups clustered around the Colosseum and moving through it, each with what seemed to be a leader. "Probably people from the Nîmes Historical Society," we said to ourselves, "conducting tours."
"Thank God it's not us on a tour," we continued in the same vein.
The next night was the conference dinner in a lovely chateau, but before that there was a surprise and the conference buses got on the motorway headed back to Nîmes. "Wouldn't it be funny," we said, "if the surprise turned out to be a tour of the Nîmes Colosseum."
It was. As we stood in the car park where we'd been the night before, forming up in little groups with our tour guides, I was slipping into sheep-like acceptance (sheep are also a feature of the Camargue) when I was saved by a hand that dragged me gently backwards. It was D___ directing me to the sidewalk cafe where we'd been the night before, from which we had the subsequent pleasure of observing our colleagues on their tours, and their frankly envious and resentful glances in our direction.
And so we come to the permeability barrier of skin.
Why don't flamingos explode?
This is an interesting question. Osmosis being what it is, you'd expect that the bag of saline and feathers that is a flamingo would swell up and explode while standing in fresh water. Well OK that's not fair, the Camargue isn't exactly fresh water. But the question is also why don't human beings swell up and explode when in a dilute solution of urea that is a fresh water swimming pool.
The answer is a biological membrane that exists between cells in the outermost layer of skin. Why is this remarkable? Because if you put human red blood cells in water they swell up and explode.
This was the fundamental problem of sea creatures emerging on dry land, if you accept Darwin's evolution hypothesis. Me, I think it's an excellent hypothesis but even if you don't, somebody came up with the idea of using biological membranes to protect the bags of saline and protein that are humans from melting down in air or swelling up in water. The thing is, most biological membranes are permeable to water.
So, how does nature change permeable membranes to impermeable membranes?
That is the very interesting question that D___ and I were discussing in a sidewalk cafe while our colleagues toured the Colosseum at Nîmes.
...to be contnued
The answer is a biological membrane that exists between cells in the outermost layer of skin. Why is this remarkable? Because if you put human red blood cells in water they swell up and explode.
This was the fundamental problem of sea creatures emerging on dry land, if you accept Darwin's evolution hypothesis. Me, I think it's an excellent hypothesis but even if you don't, somebody came up with the idea of using biological membranes to protect the bags of saline and protein that are humans from melting down in air or swelling up in water. The thing is, most biological membranes are permeable to water.
So, how does nature change permeable membranes to impermeable membranes?
That is the very interesting question that D___ and I were discussing in a sidewalk cafe while our colleagues toured the Colosseum at Nîmes.
...to be contnued
