2012

An interesting Talk of the Town item on the nature of time in this week’s New Yorker mentions “The Pitch Drop Experiment,” in which a physics professor “designed an experiment to show his students how viscous a fluid could be. He poured hot pitch into a glass funnel, let it cool, and waited.” That was in 1927. It took eight years for the first drop to fall, and nine more years for the second. And it’s still dripping! The ninth drop is likely to fall sometime in 2013.

“Unpredictability is one of the great things about nature,” said the man who presently oversees the experiment. (He’s been in charge since 1961, and has never seen a drop fall.) “I’ve been around long enough that I just see time before and time after. It’s only when the drop has happened that what has gone before makes sense in the flow of time.”

Also in 1927, my parents were born. About a week ago, with much help from my sister Lynda, they sent the first email of their lives, copying about 35 of their progeny. I expect that their use of this technology may seem relatively like the every-10-years-or-so drop of pitch, but I’m hopeful that there will be quarterly correspondence, at least, with the grandchildren. Their second great-grandchild is due to arrive any day now, and we are very eager for the first electronic photograph of the baby.

Happy new year. We will eat Thai food tonight, watch the wonderful Gilbert and Sullivan movie “Topsy Turvy,” and be asleep well before the new year’s ball has fallen.