I really thought I had. But I can’t find it.

I was in this bar in St. Louis, a real hole in the wall late at night. This fellow with a beer gut, a beard, and a lazy eye saunters up to me and exclaims that he loves my shirt. “No one understands science anymore, no one! Just look at the world trade center…” and he launched into a diatribe about the melting point of steel and the ignition point of jet fuel. Rather than pointing out that no one ever claimed that the steel in the world trade center melted (It doesn’t have to melt in order to lose enough strength that it will collapse), I simply nodded my head. I tried to explain the cosmic background explorer data to him, and he was actually interested. Then he started talking about Douglas Hofstadter, whose books I also appreciate. Despite my best effort to keep him away from tin-foil-hattery, he kept coming back to the subject. Rob eventually bought the guy a beer, but then walked off and left me alone with him. And that was really a cruel move: fueling the guy with beer, and then leaving me to the consequences. That said, he was perfectly nice fellow, just not all there. By the time the bartender kicked us out, the three of us were his only customers. Apparently the tin-foil-hatter was a regular, since after he finished Rob’s beer, he borrowed money from the bartender for his next two beers. I’ve never seen anyone do that before, but I do lead a somewhat sheltered life.