[TN] '01 Clos du Caillou CdR

Congrats! Them's not pushover courses, especially the organic as a rule.

Still not a bad double major, and the BA doesn't hurt a pre-med at all.

Chem/Bio double majors are very employable, Dick. Both pharmaceutical and biotech industries hire lots of bachelors-level chemists and biologists (and in both areas, the double major is a big plus) as laboratory researchers. Those two industries are also among the top in job security and job satisfaction, though as always it depends on who you work for.

Good luck to him in his upcoming studies. Selfishly, I hope that he does decide to do something other than medicine, though we need good doctors every bit as much as we need good scientists.

Mark Lipton

Yup. I still have nightmares of some of the things my organic chem I course covered. Tell him though it'll get a bit better with II - synthesis is a bit more fun than some of the pure theory. (Although if he's taking physical chemistry in the next year, it may not be any less painful...)

Hope you don't mind me butting in as well Richard - but as a chem student (formerly biochem), I'd say there's a lot of opportunity in research outside the pre-med world. I'm presently doing some research in nanotechnology (application in biosensors) and there's a lot of scope in that area - as Mark said, the pharmaceutical world is also a very good option. And if your son's interested in other areas of chemistry, there's always the opportunity to do some post-grad work (or even at the undergrad level as a minor/elective courses) in chemical engineering, which also pays quite well.

- Salil

Sounds great, Mark. I've seen a few other wines from this producer around in stores recently - any thoughts on their Chateauneuf?

Their CdP is more toward the modern end of the spectrum than my preferences lie, somewhere close to Dom de Cailloux (no relation) and Dom de Morderee, if either of those names mean anything to you. There was also the untimely death of the winemaker/owner about 5 years ago, and I'm not sure how well they've recovered from that tragic event. Given your fondness for Pegau, you might find the wine a bit tame by comparison.

Mark Lipton

I was a physical chemistry major. I will never forget my basic organic chemistry course. The one I had to take, for chemistry and chemical engineering majors, was 5 semester hours for two semesters. My course was taught by an old gentleman who was about to retire and at one time was the head of the chemistry department. He wrote the very long organic chemistry text we used. He was a legend at the university. He received his PhD from a top German university, because in the days when he was educated you nearly had to have a PhD from a German university to get a job teaching organic chemistry in a major US university. I believe he came from the NYC area.

He had a near photographic memory. If you asked him a question, likely as not he would say something of the sort: footnote 95, page 567, didn't you read the book? He gave tests in which the top grade often was in the 30s on a scale of 100. He would not give partial credit. He said that if a step was left out or wrong in a chemical synthesis path, then the reaction would give no results and you deserved no credit. He had make up classes for the Christmas vacation. He said you were not required to attend these. But if you did not you might not do well on the next test, so most attended. At one time he apparently had dreams of being an actor. Once every year, without any warning, he would stop in the middle of a lecture and recite "Casey at the bat" from memory. He would tell some of his best students that, if they really wanted to learn organic chemistry well, then he could flunk them and allow them to repeat his course. It was sometimes very difficult to tell when he was serious and when he was making a very dry joke. Of course one could not get away with this sort of teaching in most US universities these days. If the university allowed it, then the students likely would riot.

On Mar 9, 3:38�pm, Mark Lipton wrote: �By the end of the evening, our house

Similar to our house last night. No kids, but our friends brought over their standard poodle. She and Lucy chased each other for 30 minutes, and then we gave them each a marrow bone. Mostly calmed them, though Lucy decided halfway through she wanted Jaja's bone. Would be interesting to see if 2 3 year olds or 2 dogs make more noise. :)

Thanks for notes. I have liked Clos du Caillou, though it's not very common around here.

Oh, the 3 year olds were very quiet (even the 18-month old younger brother who was with them) -- that's what should have warned us that they were up to no good: the upstairs playroom's walls were "decorated" with markers, one of which turned out to be indelible (don't ask) and our living room was turned into a beach when they dumped out colored sand onto the floor and the rug. Nothing that 45 minutes of determined cleaning couldn't cure, though (my neighbors might have thought that I was deranged, shaking out 6' x 8' rugs on the front stoop at 11 pm in

20° weather). There's still some ink on the playroom walls, but I have yet to try all of the solvents I have at hand :)

All of mine are North Berkeley imports, which might explain the lack of an East Coast presence. Unlike David Hinkle's Burg imports, though, these don't show any evidence of a "barrel program" even when labeled as "Cuvée Unique."

Mark Lipton