Sic transit gloria mundi
Oct. 23rd, 2005 06:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bktheirregularLet me tell you about this guy I knew.
He was a professor, chairman of the Astronomy Department at Columbia University. Bright guy, gentleman, scholar. But that's not what I wanted to say.
He went to graduate school - Cornell, actually - in the mid-50's. He and my father and a few others shared a graduate pad in town, and they lived like most graduate students on their own - stretching nickels week to week. They could hardly afford to buy beer, so they decided - hey, they were physicists and chemists and among the brightest scientists around, so they'd be damned if they couldn't figure out how to brew their own beer.
So they did.
They brewed it, bottled it, and distributed it a little to their friends. They called it "Old Undershirt Brew", because one of the steps was to let the beer ferment in a cask covered by something like cheesecloth, to let in the air and keep out the insects and muck. They didn't have cheesecloth, so one of the guys sacrificed an old undershirt, which was thoroughly laundered and put to use protecting the beer while letting it breathe.
Some of the brewing was done by guesswork - they did rough estimates of how long to let the beer go before bottling it, that sort of thing - but they decided to try and use the scientific method to figure out the optimum moment to bottle and cap the beer. Charts were made, lines were drawn, and the experimental batch was laid down. As it turned out, they should have measured on a curve - whether a logarithmic curve, a parabolic curve, or a hyperbolic curve, I don't know if they ever quite figured it out - but the one thing they should not have used was a straight line. Which they found out very quickly ... as the beer bottles began to explode.
A council of war was formed, and the decision was made that the beer had to be uncapped before it all went ka-blooie. Nobody was exactly eager to get close to a bunch of glass grenades on variable timers, so if I recall right, straws were drawn.
One guy drew the short straw, and went into the closet where the beer was being kept - wearing a saucepan for an armored helmet, and a mattress in front of him as a breastplate, reaching around the mattress with a bottle opener to uncap the beer bottles before they went ka-BOOM.
As he told it later, it was a hilarious story. At my family's New Year's Eve dinner, a couple or three years back, it drew laughter from everyone present, several of whom had been part of the Old Undershirt consortium, including my dad.
Let me tell you about this guy I knew.
His name was Norman Baker, and he was a prestigious astronomer, a respected teacher, a funny, classy guy, and as far back as I can remember, he was a friend.
1931-2005.
I'm going to miss him.
He was a professor, chairman of the Astronomy Department at Columbia University. Bright guy, gentleman, scholar. But that's not what I wanted to say.
He went to graduate school - Cornell, actually - in the mid-50's. He and my father and a few others shared a graduate pad in town, and they lived like most graduate students on their own - stretching nickels week to week. They could hardly afford to buy beer, so they decided - hey, they were physicists and chemists and among the brightest scientists around, so they'd be damned if they couldn't figure out how to brew their own beer.
So they did.
They brewed it, bottled it, and distributed it a little to their friends. They called it "Old Undershirt Brew", because one of the steps was to let the beer ferment in a cask covered by something like cheesecloth, to let in the air and keep out the insects and muck. They didn't have cheesecloth, so one of the guys sacrificed an old undershirt, which was thoroughly laundered and put to use protecting the beer while letting it breathe.
Some of the brewing was done by guesswork - they did rough estimates of how long to let the beer go before bottling it, that sort of thing - but they decided to try and use the scientific method to figure out the optimum moment to bottle and cap the beer. Charts were made, lines were drawn, and the experimental batch was laid down. As it turned out, they should have measured on a curve - whether a logarithmic curve, a parabolic curve, or a hyperbolic curve, I don't know if they ever quite figured it out - but the one thing they should not have used was a straight line. Which they found out very quickly ... as the beer bottles began to explode.
A council of war was formed, and the decision was made that the beer had to be uncapped before it all went ka-blooie. Nobody was exactly eager to get close to a bunch of glass grenades on variable timers, so if I recall right, straws were drawn.
One guy drew the short straw, and went into the closet where the beer was being kept - wearing a saucepan for an armored helmet, and a mattress in front of him as a breastplate, reaching around the mattress with a bottle opener to uncap the beer bottles before they went ka-BOOM.
As he told it later, it was a hilarious story. At my family's New Year's Eve dinner, a couple or three years back, it drew laughter from everyone present, several of whom had been part of the Old Undershirt consortium, including my dad.
Let me tell you about this guy I knew.
His name was Norman Baker, and he was a prestigious astronomer, a respected teacher, a funny, classy guy, and as far back as I can remember, he was a friend.
1931-2005.
I'm going to miss him.
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-23 11:56 pm (UTC)Absent friends.