Pratt recognizes a snakeoil salesman from back west, who has come to town spreading the word of the gospel, claiming to have changed.
At the revival Bartok tries to explain rainmaking in terms of nucleation promoting evaporation in a rain cloud. That's kind of backwards. A nucleus, a speck of dust or a crystal of salt or even an airborne bacterium, has water condense around it to start a raindrop. Seeding clouds with crystals to trigger raindrop formation was studied as late as the 1960s.
Janos Bartok:
Take Ramos. He studied comparative theology at Harvard.
Ernest Pratt:
Really? Theology?
Huitzilopochtli Ramos:
A good scientist always hedges his bets.
English