Virtual Illusions

The following is from a tale related by the chief curator of the National Park Service, and printed in no less an authoritative source than Oceanographic Ships, Fore and Aft, published by the Oceanographer of the Navy. It has to do with a cruise of the 204-foot frigate USS Constitution, commonly known as Old Ironsides , in 1779. We quote:

“On 23 August 1779, the USS Constitution set sail from Boston loaded with 475 officers and men, 48,600 gallons of water, 74,000 cannon shot, 11,500 pounds of black powder and 79,400 gallons of rum. Her mission: to destroy and harass English shipping.

On 6 October, she made Jamaica, took on 826 pounds of flour and 68,300 gallons of rum. Three weeks later the Constitution reached the Azores, where she provisioned with 550 pounds of beef and 6,300 gallons of Portuguese wine.

On 18 November, the ship set sail for England where her crew captured and scuttled 12 English merchant vessels and took aboard their rum.

But the Constitution had run out of shot. Nevertheless, she made her way unarmed up the Firth of Clyde for a night raid. Here her landing party captured a whiskey distillery, transferred 40,000 gallons aboard and headed for home.

On 20 February 1780, the Constitution arrived in Boston with no cannon shot, no food, no powder, no rum, no whiskey. Just 48,600 gallons of water.”

Detail analysis:

Length of cruise - 181 days
Booze consumption - 2.26 gallons per MAN per day (plus
whatever they rescued from the 12 English merchant ship
s)
Guestimated re-enlistment rate - 100%
Probable EPA Award of Gold Certificate for water conservation

Courtesy of:
U.S. Atlantic Command
Joint Training, Analysis and Simulation Center

Alcohol, Urban Legends

An actual letter sent to Miller Brewing Company and their response:

Miller Brewing Company

Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201

Dear Sir or Madam,

I have been a drinker of Miller beer’s for many years (actually, ever
since that other company donated a big chunk of change to Handgun
Control Inc. back in the mid 80’s).

Initially, my beer of choice was Lite, but some time in mid-1990 while
in Honduras I switched to MGD smuggled up from Panama. Now, for nearly
six years, I have been a faithful drinker of MGD. For these past
years, I have come to expect certain things from Genuine Draft. I
expect that whenever I see that gold can of MGD, I am about ready to
enjoy a great, smooth brew. But wait! Sometime around the first of
the year, my beloved MGD changed colors, so to speak. That familiar
gold can was no longer gold! Knowing that I am, by nature, somewhat
resistant to change, I forced myself to reserve judgment on the new
can design.

Gradually, I grew to appreciate the new label. That was until about
May of this year. That was when I discovered (empirically) that I
really didn’t like the new design. Further investigation of the cause
of my distress resulted in the following observations:

1. Your cans are made of aluminum.
   
2. Aluminum is a great conductor of energy.
   
3. Your beer is commonly consumed outside, and thus, the container
   may be exposed to sunlight.
   
4. Sunlight striking the can causes radiant warming of the surface
   of the can.
   
5. The resultant heat (energy) is transferred through the aluminum,
   by conduction, to the contents of the can (the beer).
   
6. Warm beer sucks.

This is a process that can be observed in just about any beer.
However, this process is significantly accelerated in MGD because you
painted the damn can… black!!!

Who was the rocket scientist that designed the new graphic for the can
and implemented the change right before summer? Granted, this process
may not be real evident up there in Wisconsin, but down here in
Oklahoma where the summers are both sunny and hot, this effect is
quite a problem. There’s no telling what the folks in Texas and
Arizona are having to put up with.

Knowing that you would probably not address this issue unless you had
firm evidence of a problem, I and several other subjects conducted
extensive experimentation. The results of these experiments are
listed below. The experiments were
conducted over two days on the deck next to my pool. The study
included seven different types of beer (leftovers from a party the
previous weekend) that were initially chilled to 38 (and then left
exposed to sunlight for different lengths of time. These beers were
sampled by the test subjects at different intervals. The subjects, all
normally MGD drinkers, were asked at each sampling interval their
impressions of the different beers. The length of time between the
initial exposure to sunlight and the point where the subject
determined the sample undrinkable (the Suck-point) was determined.
The average ambient temperature for the trials was 95 degrees F.

Beer Type	Average Suck-point (minutes)
Miller Lite (white can)	6.2
Bud (white can)	5.5
Bud Lite (silver can)	5.2
Ice House (blue and silver can)	4.4
Coors Lite (silver can)	4.1
Miller Genuine Draft (black can)	2.8
Coors (gold can)	0.1

It was evident that the color of the can directly correlates to the
average suckpoint, except for Coors which was pretty much determined
to suck at any point. It is to be hoped that you will consider
re-designing your MGD cans. All beer drinkers that are not smart
enough to keep their beer in the shade will thank you.

Sincerely,

Bradley Lee

Beer-drinker

---

The Miller response appears below. They have had a lot of fun with
this guy’s letter. Enjoy…

---

Dear Bradley Lee,

Thank you for your letter and your concern about the MGD can color as
it relates to premature warming of the contents. Like you, we at
Miller Beer take beer drinking very seriously. To that end, we have
taken your letter and subsequent experiment under serious
consideration. Outlined below are our findings and solution to your
problem. May we add that we have had similar letters from other loyal
beer drinkers, mostly from the Southern United States.

First, let us congratulate you on your findings. Our analysis tends
to agree with yours regarding Coors. It certainly does suck at about
any temperature. Now, it was our intentions when redesigning the MGD
can to create better brand identity and brand loyalty. Someone in
marketing did some kind of research and determined we needed to
redesign the can. You will be pleased to know, we have fired that
idiot and he is now reeking havoc at a pro-gun control beer
manufacturer. The design staffer working in cahoots with the
marketing idiot was also down-sized.

However, once we realized this mistake, to undo it would have been
even a bigger mistake. So, we took some other actions. From our
market research, we found a difference between Northern beer drinker
and Southern beer drinkers. Beer drinkers in the South
tend to drink slower than beer drinkers in the North. We are still
researching why that is. Anyway, at Miller Beer, it was never our
intentions to have someone take more than 2.5 minutes to enjoy one of
our beers. We pride ourselves in creating fine, smooth, quick
drinking beers and leave the making of sissy, slow sipping beers to
that Sam guy in Boston. However, it is good to know that you feel our
Miller Lite can last as long as 6 minutes. However, may we suggest in
the future you try consuming at least two in that time frame.

From your letter, we had our design staff work ’round the clock to
come up with a solution that would help not just MGD but all our fine
Miller products. We hope you have recently noticed our solution to
your problem. We found that the hole in the top of the can was not
big enough for quick consumption. So, we have now introduced the new
“Wide Mouth” cans. We hope this will solve all your problems.

Might I also suggest that if you want to get the beer out of the can
even faster, you can poke a hole on the side near the bottom, hold
your finger over it, open the can, tip it to your mouth and then pull
your finger off the hole. This is a common way to drink beer at
parties and impress your friends. This technique is known as
“shot-gunning”. You should like the name.

Again, thank you for your letter and bring to our attention that there
might be other beer drinkers taking more that 2.5 minutes to drink our
beers. Let me assure you that I am having our advertising department
work on our campaign to solve this problem, too.

Sincerely,

Tom B. Miller

Public Relations

Miller Brewing Co.

Alcohol, Urban Legends

This was apparently hacked into a Purdue class catalogue and it
wasn’t caught until too late. The person who sent this to me swears
she’s got the catalogue . . .

---

Course Description for COM 666 - Principles of Intoxication

Prerequesites: Receive a failing grade in 2 of the following: COM 114,
COM 204, COM 250, COM 300, COM 318
OR
take any one of the above more than three times.

Instructor: Professor “Uncle” Charlie Stewart

Description: The course focuses on Intoxication and how it relates to
other communication classes at Purdue. Topics include: Stripping in
front of crowds while drunk, passing out from intoxication before your
roommate and his girlfriend make too much “late night noise,” how to
avoid “beer goggling” (ie. I knew she was ugly, I just didn’t care
anymore), how to hold conversations with loved ones while getting/
being intoxicated, jumping off balconies without killing yourself or
breaking grills on the first floor, ignoring those annoying friends
who tell you that you can’t handle your liquor (there’s a test on this
one), missing exams and quizzes due to weekday parties, walking to
your significant other’s residence while too drunk to see, how to
drink anything with alcohol in it, getting alcohol for free, and how
to avoid preforming bodily functions in the wrong places.

The grading scale is based on the average BAC you maintain during the
class (0.4 gets you a 4.0, 0.3 gets you a 3.0, etc.). Best of all it’s
a 12 credit hour course, with all lab materials supplied, if you know
what we mean.

Alcohol, School, Urban Legends

DOS Beer

Requires you to use your own can opener, and requires you to read the directions carefully before opening the can. Originally only came in an 8-oz. can, but now comes in a 16-oz. can. However, the can is divided into 8 compartments of 2 oz. each, which have to be accessed separately. Soon to be discontinued, although a lot of people are going to keep drinking it after it’s no longer available.

Mac Beer

At first, came in only a 16-oz. can, but now comes in a 32-oz. can. Considered by many to be a “light” beer. All the cans look identical. When you take one from the fridge, it opens itself. The ingredients list is not on the can. If you call to ask about the ingredients, you are told that “you don’t need to know.” A notice on the side reminds you to drag your empties to the trashcan.

Windows 3.1 Beer

The world’s most popular. Comes in a 16-oz. can that looks a lot like Mac Beer’s. Requires that you already own a DOS Beer. Claims that it allows you to drink several DOS Beers simultaneously, but in reality you can only drink a few of them, very slowly, especially slowly if you are drinking the Windows Beer at the same time. Sometimes, for apparently no reason, a can of Windows Beer will explode when you open it.

OS/2 Beer

Comes in a 32-oz can. Does allow you to drink several DOS Beers simultaneously. Allows you to drink Windows 3.1 Beer simultaneously too, but somewhat slower. Advertises that its cans won’t explode when you open them, even if you shake them up. You never really see anyone drinking OS/2Beer, but the manufacturer (International Beer Manufacturing) claims that 9 million six-packs have been sold.

Windows 95 Beer.

A lot of people have taste-tested it and claim it’s wonderful. The can looks a lot like Mac Beer’s can, but tastes more like Windows 3.1 Beer. It comes in 32-oz. cans, but when you look inside, the cans only have 16oz. of beer in them. Most people will probably keep drinking Windows 3.1 Beer until their friends try Windows 95 Beer and say they like it. The ingredients list, when you look at the small print, has some of the same ingredients that come in DOS beer, even though the manufacturer claims that this is an entirely new brew.

Windows NT beer

Comes in 32-oz. cans, but you can only buy it by the truckload. This causes most people to have to go out and buy bigger refrigerators. The can looks just like Windows 3.1 Beer’s, but the company promises to change the can to look just like Windows 95 Beer’s. Touted as an “industrial strength” beer, and suggested for use only in bars.

Unix Beer

Comes in several different brands, in cans ranging from 8 oz. to 64 oz. Drinkers of Unix Beer display fierce brand loyalty, even though they claim that all the different brands taste almost identical. Sometimes the pop-tops break off when you try to open them, so you have to have your own can opener around for those occasions, in which case you either need a complete set of instructions or a friend who has been drinking Unix Beer for several years.

AmigaDOS Beer

The company has gone out of business, but their recipe has been picked up by some weird German company, so now this beer will be an import. This beer never really sold very well because the original manufacturer didn’t understand marketing. Like Unix Beer, AmigaDOS Beer fans are an extremely loyal and loud group. It originally came in a 16-oz. can, but now comes in 32-oz. cans too. When this can was originally introduced, it appeared flashy and colorful, but the design hasn’t changed much over the years, so it appears dated now. Critics of this beer claim that it is only meant for watching TV anyway.

VMS Beer

Requires minimal user interaction, except for popping the top and sipping. However cans have been known on occasion to explode, or contain extremely un-beer-like contents. Best drunk in high pressure development environments. When you call the manufacturer for the list of ingredients, you’re told thats proprietary and referred to an unknown listing in the manuals published by the FDA. Rumors are that this was once listed in the Physicians’ Desk Reference as a tranquilizer, but no one can claim to have actually seen it.

Alcohol, Computers