:03:04
and since he was a
favorite of the Queen's
:03:08
Queen Bess, he used to call her
:03:12
smoking caught on as a fashion at court.
:03:15
I'm sure Old Bess must have shared
a stogie or two with Sir Walter.
:03:22
Once, he made a bet with her that
he could measure the weight of smoke.
:03:29
You mean, weigh smoke?
:03:31
Exactly. Weigh smoke.
:03:34
You can't do that.
It's like weighing air.
:03:36
I admit it's strange. Almost
like weighing someone's soul.
:03:39
But Sir Walter was a clever guy.
:03:42
First, he took an unsmoked cigar and
put it on a balance and weighed it.
:03:49
Then he lit up and smoked the cigar,
:03:51
carefully tapping the
ashes into the balance pan.
:03:55
When he was finished, he
put the butt into the pan
:03:58
along with the ashes and
weighed what was there.
:04:03
Then he subtracted that number from the
original weight of the unsmoked cigar.
:04:11
The difference was the
weight of the smoke.
:04:24
He's a writer.
:04:26
Lives in the neighborhood.
:04:28
And what kind of writer
is he? An underwriter?
:04:31
Very funny. Some of the
cracks you make. Tommy,
:04:35
sometimes I think you
should see a doctor.
:04:37
You know, go in for some
wit therapy or something.
:04:40
To clean out the valves in your brain.
:04:43
It was just a joke, Auggie.
:04:45
The guy's a novelist.
:04:48
Paul Benjamin. You ever hear of him?
:04:52
That's a stupid question.
:04:53
The only things you guys
read is the Racing Form
:04:56
and sports pages of the Post.