I have been off for a few days.

Last Friday was a funeral down in the country near Uncle Joe’s farm. The lady was a first cousin and an avid polka dancer. I first met her and her husband at the National Polka Festival in Ennis, Texas, a couple years back. After that, I always looked forward to seeing her bright smile on the dance floor as she and her best friend polkaed, waltzed, two-stepped and twirled across the polished wood sprinkled with corn starch and racing children underfoot. Polka dancing is a family affair.

So, no blog on Friday. Sorry.

Then, over the weekend I took a walk on the trail with Ms. Mary. On our return, we noticed my back was twisted to the right. Sure enough, I was in spasm. That old sciatica had acted up. It’s been about ten years since I had an episode. The sciatic nerve is the largest and longest nerve in our bodies. Starting out from the lower back, it begins about as thick as a person’s thumb. It travels out from the spinal cord, between a couple lower vertebrae, and down the leg to the foot, branching and thinning as it goes. This is the main phone line to your leg and foot. The problem is that where it travels between those vertebrae on its exit from the spinal cord, the space is tight, not much room between your bony backbone and the gelatinous disk between your vertebrae that keeps the space open. That disk can become compressed (say, by lifting something the wrong way). When this happens, the verterbral bones move closer and can touch the sciatic nerve, abrading its surface. Oh, Wowee!! That sure can hurt, sending shooting pains down the leg. To prevent the pain from and damage to the nerve, when the nerve detects the irritation beginning, it signals up the spinal cord to the brain to pull and tighten the back muscles to open the passage wider, if they can. That’s the muscular spasm, a pulling and tightening by your back muscles to pull the bone away from the nerve to protect the nerve and you. When this happens, it’s best to lie flat and rest and give your body some time to straighten things out. Your doctor can help with what to do and take to relax and repair things. To prevent these spasmodic episodes of lower back pain (sciatica), I do straightening exercises for my spinal cord every morning, I squat down and lift things with my legs rather than bending over and lifting with my back (must have forgotten this one), I get up and walk around when I am sitting long at the computer, I exercise (walk and lift light weights – I’ll wait a while to start these again), and I try to sit with both feet on the floor (crossing the legs is rough on that sciatic nerve). Sciatica is very common – about 40% of the entire world’s population will experience some form of sciatica in their lifetimes. The good news is sciatica is treatable by rest and a visit to the Doc, and it is preventable by changing a few things you do and getting some regular exercise.

So, I haven’t been writing for a few days. Sorry.

I love to write.

I am finishing the background reading and will begin writing a book. The plan is to publish each chapter here, on Uncle Joe Stories. I am hoping to have the first chapter for you to read sometime next month, February 2013. Keep your fingers crossed.

So, I may be writing fewer blog posts in order to work on the book. Sorry.

Keep stopping by — as always, a lot is happening,

Grandpa Jim

“Alacrity” is defined as a “brisk and cheerful readiness, an excited willingness and eagerness to proceed.”

In a sentence, it might appear as follows: “With fulsome delight and focused demeanor, the alacrity of the investigator to accomplish the client’s desires was both admirable to observe and rewarding to the outcome of the case.”

“Please proceed with alacrity, Watson.” Sherlock Holmes announces to his friend. “The game is afoot. Do you have your revolver?”

If there ever was one with alacrity in pursuit of a dangerous criminal, who was also perspicacious and sagacious in his approach and analysis, it was that detective with the Inverness cape coat, deerstalker hat and poised magnifying glass.

“Perspicacious” means “to be observant and perceptive.” A synonym (another word in the same family of meaning) to perspicacious is sagacious. “Sagacious” means to be “smart and judicious.” Perspicacious and sagacious go hand in hand.

It takes a perspicacious individual to see the facts surrounding a mysterious occurrence (observant) and to identify the relationships of those facts to the unwinding of the riddle (perceptive), but it requires a sagacious individual of heightened intelligence to sort those facts and perceptions (smart), an individual who also possesses the gift of wisdom to select the right course of action (judicious), to devise the trap to capture the perpetrator before the evil act is done.

However, an individual can be both perspicacious and sagacious and still allow the villain to escape. To catch a crook, when the time comes to act, the pursuer must do so with alacrity. Certainly, a good detective must be both perspicacious and sagacious, but a great detective acts with alacrity when the time for action has arrived — when the game is afoot.

Would we all be as perspicacious and sagacious in our evaluation of that which matters most to us as Detective Holmes, and, when the time comes to take action on whatever our plan may be, may we act with the alacrity of the quick-paced Sherlock having on our face a wiry smile and in our mind a confident determination.

A good mind without alacrity can write a good report, but it will never be quick enough to catch the crook, enjoy the chase and win the case.

Be ready to act and don’t delay when the time is right and act you must,

Grandpa Jim

They just don’t come no better than a bear (mammal), who can bear (carry) much on its bare (no clothes) back. “And me I just bear up to my bewildered best, and there’s some folks even seen the bear in me.” Thank you, Steven Fromholtz, and the July 23, 2012 blog post on homophones, homonyms and heterographs. Just type “Bear, Bear, Bare” into the search box above and you’ll have plenty to reacquaint yourself with bears, Steven and the h-term words.

By way of a quick review, homophones are words that sound the same, have different meanings and can be spelled the same or differently. If they are spelled exactly the same (bear for animal and bear for carry), they are homonyms. If they are spelled differently (bear for a growly mammal and bare for where are my clothes?), they are heterographs.

That all seems straightforward enough, if somewhat confusing and hard to remember. But, what do you call a group of words that sounds like another separate word of different meaning?

Let me give you an example.

“This beach, this island, the hotel, the pool, the restaurant, the parrots, the butterflies and you,” the husband says, on his knees, to his wife, both of whom are on their second honeymoon. “It’s all just too much. Thank you for transporting me to paradise.”

A “paradise” is a place of extreme beauty, delight and happiness.

Nathan Detroit (Frank Sinatra) wants to keep playing craps (a dice game) in the 1955 musical “Guys and Dolls.” Nathan’s friend, Sky Masterson (Marlon Brando), knows it’s time for Nathan to stop – the dice are cold and Nathan will lose his money. So, Sky proposes a bold bet: He, Sky, will roll the dice – if he loses, he will pay each of the other gamblers $1,000 – if he wins, they will all attend a prayer meeting at the local Mission. Sky bends down, shakes those dice and let’s ’em roll. The next scene is the front of the Mission. A line of gamblers is waiting to be let in. Sky won. He saved his friend Nathan from a cold pair of dice.

A “pair of dice,” which is often pronounced “pair a’ dice,” refers to two small cubes with each side having from one to six numbered spots. The dice are thrown in gambling games such as craps. Dice are also called “die.”

A big roll and a big win with a “pair a’ dice” could lead to a feeling of “paradise,” or it could lead, with the help of Marlon Brando, to a seat on a hard Mission bench and a sermon on the evils of a pair a’ dice and the odds of reaching paradise with those die in your hands.

The word “paradise” and the phrase “pair a’ dice” sound exactly the same to me, but they have different, if not opposite, meanings. They are like homophone words that are also heterographs, but one is a word and other is a phrase, and I cannot find a term for a word and phrase that sound the same and have different meanings.

Let us make up a new word.

Latin for a “phrase” or “group of words” is “coetus verba,” with “coetus” meaning “group” and “verba” meaning words. The suffix “onym” means word, and the prefix “hetero” means “different.” So, a different group of words for one word can be written “heterocoetusverbaonym.” That’s pretty long. Let’s shorten it to “heteroverbonym.” I like that.

A “heteroverbonym” is a group of words that sounds like a single word of different meaning.

The phrase “pair a’ dice” is a heteroverbonym to the word “paradise.”

Another heteroverbonym is “out a’ tea” for the word “oddity.” The English might say those have the same meaning.

And, here’s one by the Beatles: the phrase “can’t buy me love” (from the song “Can’t Buy Me Love”) comes out “puppy love” when sung by John and Paul. See the “Puppy Love” blog post of January 13, 2013 to hear this one. Wait a second – that’s two groups of words with the same sound and different meanings. Puppy lovers may say they have the same meaning. Nevertheless, we need a word for this group-to-group situation.

Let’s invent another word: heterocoetusverbym.

A “heterocoetusverbym” is a group of words that sounds like another group of words with a different meaning. We can thank the Boys from Liverpool for this one.

Keep your ears tuned to the next heteroverbonym or heterocoetusverbym as it sounds and waves its way to you on the avenues and airways of aural amusement and applause.

Good listening and distinguishing,

Grandpa Jim

Sherlock Holmes had been dead almost eight years when he was discovered near the Baskerville estate in the bleak Dartmoor highlands. Hidden beneath the black tor and  camped in the neolitic ruins of an ancient home, he continued the investigation of the late Baron’s fallen body and, near the spot of the crime, “the footprints of a gigantic hound”.

The world’s first consulting detective, the coldly cerebral and daringly deductive Sherlock Holmes, was first spied in 1887 in the company of his friend and narrator, Dr. John H. Watson. Their first adventure was a longish short story entitled by the publishers “A Study in Scarlet.” A 28-year-old storytelling physician by the name of Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle had glimpsed the antics of the brilliant Holmes and the bumbling Watson. Conan Doyle proceeded to place the two on paper to the endearment of a growing and devoted audience of fans. Through the second Holmes story, “The Sign of Four,” published in 1890, and twelve more episodes of incisive intrigue and reasoned revelation, released between 1891 and 1892 and compiled in “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” Dr. Doyle chronicled the growing success of the secretive sleuth and his steady sidekick.

Of that success, Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle became jealous.

The observing physician with the quick pen confided that it was he who had first brought the stories to popular attention, and he, Arthur Conan Doyle, never thought much of the condescending Holmes. The detective was always showing off and acting so smart. What did Holmes know? Arthur Conan Doyle was just as smart — just you wait and see. Conan Doyle wrote his mother that he was thinking of doing to Sherlock Holmes what the insufferable detective deserved.

“The game is afoot,” and the criminal perpetrator is none other than the author himself.

In December of 1893, Arthur Conan Doyle killed Sherlock Holmes.

It was at the top of Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, in the story entitled “The Final Problem.” Holmes is struggling with his archenemy, the master criminal Professor Moriarty, whom he has tracked down and trapped. Justice is about to be done . . . evil defeated. The determined detective is prevailing. When . . . someone rushes from the dark at the two grappling figures and pushes them both over the precipice to the sharp rocks and crashing waters below.

The public outcry was deafening.

How could you!!!

Conan Doyle sat back, counted his money and threw the letters from the Holmesian fans into the trash.

Eight years passed. Our scrivener physician had written many other books and stories. They and he had been somewhat successful. Still, the public was clamoring for more Holmes and Watson.

“What is it about those two?” Conan Doyle thought to himself. “Oh well, a little extra cash won’t hurt. There is that ‘real creeper.’ I never shared the story with anyone. Let me remember . . . it occurred back in 1889, four years before Holmes fell from the falls. I see it now. Holmes was asked to advise on the ‘curse of the Baskervilles.’ What a tale that is. As I recall, there was ‘a great, black beast, shaped like a hound, yet larger than any mortal eye ever rested upon,’ with ‘blazing eyes and dripping jaws.’ That is a good one. It’ll get the public off my back and I’ll make a bundle while I’m at it.”

And so, in August of 1901, the first installment of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” was published.

The public and the King loved it.

A year later in 1902, Conan Doyle was knighted “Sir” Arthur Conan Doyle by King Edward. After the ceremony, pulling the now middle-aged and rounding physician aside, the King winked and encouraged his newly dubbed vassal to investigate what really had happened back in 1893 at Reichenbach Falls. Was the chronicler certain the secretive Holmes had not survived and was avoiding the public gaze?

Did the King know something the man of letters did not?

When the King asks, it is best for a new knight to go on the quest.

The new Sir Arthur recalled that, in the excitement, he had not walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down to see what had happened to the detective.

A year later, in 1903, in the new story “The Adventure of the Empty House,” the knighted investigator revealed, to the King, the Nation and the World, that Sherlock Holmes had, in fact, survived the fall at Reichenbach Falls.

The slippery sleuth was back in business with the trusty doctor at his side.

True to his words, Conan Doyle followed with three more collections of stories and another novel, “The Valley of Fear,” all featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Unfortunately, a rift had developed between the writer and his leading character. The new post-fall works had lost something. Perhaps, the reclusive Holmes was not as willing to share with his watcher, the writer. Attempted murder is a serious matter, and it may cool even a close relationship. Miffed by his death and literary exile, the more entertaining episodes of unraveled fact in subsequent stories may have been kept by the detective for a more worthy observer. Such is the reader’s loss when a writer and his protagonist part ways.

We can be thankful that before the rift became severe, “The Hound of the Baskervilles” was resurrected and published intact. The work has been called “the most famous mystery novel in literary history” — a tribute that echoes true and far in both sound and sight. The story on the moors of Dartmoor has been filmed twenty times and more. It loses nothing in the retelling and gains much in the rereading. If you haven’t, please consider a read. You will not be disappointed with your new acquaintances. And, if you have, consider another. Old friends are the best and can be even more surprising when revisited.

Some would say that a good story never really ends, despite the odds.

I wonder how Professor Moriarty feels after his fall?

Stay tuned for more,

Grandpa Jim

“Things just don’t seem to be getting better.” The parent slumps down in the chair, head lowered. “Every time I pick up the room, it gets messy again. Even when I think no one has been there, I walk in and clutter is everywhere. Stuff seems to just throw itself on the floor.” The other parent nods in agreement and asks to the air, “Why is it always more disordered than before?”

Because that’s apparently what the Second Law of Thermodynamics demands.

Simply said, the Second Law states: The entropy of an isolated system increases to a state of such disordered lack of energy that no work can be done.

“Entropy” is the degree of disorder in a system, in a room, in the universe. The Second Law enunciates a universal rule that disorder is on the rise, and it cannot be reversed. Things will and are becoming more disordered, and there is very little in the short term, and nothing in the long run, we can do about it.

The parents stop – their hands touching on the open door to their teenager’s room as they both gaze sadly at the disordered interior. They know empirically (from experience) and analytically (from reason and logic) that, for that room, the trend simply cannot be reversed. They’re stuck. There will come a time, sooner rather than later, when they will have to close the door and buy a new house. No energy will be left, in them or in that room, to work to order the disordered maze. Entropy will have prevailed. Together, they will wait for the moving van and pray for college.

You can do that for a room and a child, but what about the universe? If the universe is all there is, then there’s no place to move to. . . . We’re all stuck in a downward spiral to greater disorder, right?

If the second law is correct, the matter and energy in the universe will degrade to an ultimate state of inert uniformity — which is another way of saying “Boring!” We will all be sitting around on a log floating aimlessly in place on a sea of tepid unmoving water waiting for someone to do, to say, anything; and no one will, because no one has the energy to lift a finger, to make a point. At this point, I think we can say, while we still can, “What is the point of such a law? I’m getting off this log while I can.”

And, you would not be alone. The Second Law of Thermodynamics has been called “the most pessimistic and amoral formulation in all human thought.”

“Let’s change it,” you say, “and formulate something more positive and optimistic and fun.”

I certainly agree, but Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington thought about doing just that and was forced to the position that: “If your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics, I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.”

Now, that reminds me of the most wonderful statement of Gimli, son of Gloin, the indefatigable dwarf warrior, near the end of “The Return of the King.” Aragorn (also known as Strider) has just proposed a truly outlandish plan to defeat the evil nemesis Sauron. Strider’s plan is that we, the greatly outnumbered forces of the West, attack the big bad black statue guy with the huge glowing all-seeing red eye and all his orcs, mountain trolls and nazgul flying in the sky. We attack them all, straight on and demand Sauron and the whole mob surrender to us. Gimli gulps, then smiles and says – and you got to love him for this – “Certainty of death . . . small chance of success . . . what are we waiting for?”

It sounds to me like the perfect time for a new approach.

What have we got to lose? That teenager’s room is hopeless. We’re collapsed in deepest humiliation. Our log is going nowhere. Certainty of disorder . . . no hope . . . what are we waiting for?

Let’s give it shot. .  . advance on our own, in close rank and sound theoretical formation. Yes, our order is diminished. Yes, we are greatly outnumbered by the sluggish masses of disorder. But . . . we shall demand change! We shall demand order from disorder! Entropy shall not prevail!

I like the ring of that.

Remember the First Law of Thermodynamics: The total amount of mass and energy in the Universe remains constant (it is conserved), merely changing from one form to another. There are different types of energy (mechanical, chemical, electrical, nuclear and others). Energy can change from one type to another. No one is really sure what mass (matter, substance) is, and no one really knows all about how mass relates to energy (activity, work).

Start thinking and don’t worry . . . there’s only a small chance of success.

See you next week,

Grandpa Jim

Joy

What’s in a word? Or, in a name?

As Juliet cries to the stars, not knowing that her Romeo is waiting and listening in the bushes beneath her balcony, at the foot of the trellis he would soon climb to her surprise and side:

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet.”

I mean what is the big hang up with names, with words? A rose is a rose is a rose, whatever the word that named it so. She saw, hidden though he was, that Romeo was Romeo Montague and she was Juliet Capulet. Their families, the Montague’s and Capulet’s, were sworn enemies. They were divided by their family names and by their own, Romeo and Juliet. It was no play on words. It was tragedy at its heart, and she would change it by changing his name, if she could.

So would he. For her love, he would that name be changed:

“I take thee at thy word:

Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptized;

Henceforth, I will never be Romeo.”

But, it doesn’t work that way, as they soon found. Life is words and words are life, as the Bard taught us so well. She could call him not Romeo but love, but Romeo he would still be. In their fated match, the words held true as loved enemies they left this land for another. In that paired leaving, love in its word held the two in its own embrace. Those so wrongly worded if rightly named, our Romeo and Juliet, will always be, to us, the love they so long to be renamed. The joy they lost for their wronged names lasts forever in the words, Romeo and Juliet.

It is a curious custom, our fondness for words.

Why do we find joy in tragedy, happiness in sadness?

If joy is happiness, how is it found in tragedy and unhappiness?

Why is there in great sadness, this feeling of great joy?

Can it be the antonym is also the synonym?

Happy sad and in the sad also joy?

Apparently, so. . . .

In their curious construction, words seem to be more than they say.

And that is, I think, the sad joy of Juliet and her Romeo.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose”

In its own name another word would be.

Sweet joy, in its own name, can be where sweet sadness can be found.

See the word and the word it holds and know joy and sadness both can there be found.

“O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?”

Not far in words from his sweet Juliet,

Grandpa Jim

Been fighting a bit of the flu. Had the shot, but this season’s flu seems to strike even those who have been stuck, though less severely – I hope. FLU stands for “Forlorn, Lost and Under the weather” – think of wet puppy and be kind to those so sadly afflicted.

So, it seems a good time to address the First Law of Thermodynamics. I am saying that in a big voice so that it echoes through the house: TTTThe FFFFirst LLLLaw of TTTThermodyamicS!S!S!S! . . . There, I feel better for having said it. Now, what does it mean? And, who cares?

The concept of “thermodynamics” resides in the perception that things run around, expend energy, are corralled and restore energy for another run. We see the sweat on the horses in the corral and see a relationship between heat and energy in how those horses behave – running, eating, resting and running some more. “Thermo” is the heat part of the word, and “dynamics” is the energy part. “Thermodynamics” is a way to say: “I see you heat and energy, but how do you relate?” What is the relationship between energy and those who use and lose it?

Giddyup – enter the First Law.

The First Law of Thermodynamics, for all its consonants and vowels, is a simple saying: The amount of energy in the universe, or an isolated system (say our corral), is a constant. In the corral, you can add energy by feeding and watering the horses hay. In the universe, you can’t add more energy, because the total amount is fixed – you got what ya got and you has to live with that.

But, how does anything get done?

Again, a simple saying: Energy changes. In our corral, we start with horses, water and hay; as the horses tire from running, we give them more hay and water, which they convert to running energy; but our isolated corral system has limited hay and water and is constantly losing energy in the form of heat and sweat to the outside environment, so the horses will stop running unless we add more energy in the form of more hay and water from outside the system. In the universe, there is no outside, there is no place to go to, no more to add. That’s it folks. That’s all there is.

So, what happens?

Einstein, Newton and those guys — those Big Heads stated in fancy equations of general applicability what we all see in the specific energies of daily life. We all see two kinds of energy: 1) active energy, activity or work (think Olympic gymnast); and 2) resting energy, mass or matter (think couch potato). Activity and mass are what make the universe go round, and round and round again. When you need some activity, you convert some mass to energy (throw another log on the fire); when you need some mass, you sit down, have a big meal and rest (the mass settles right in, along with the fliers from Weight Watchers). It’s a constant process of change that occurs continually in the entire universe: mass changing to energy and energy to mass and back again. The smaller isolated systems, like our corral, may run down from lack of hay, but the universe is big enough to just keep borrowing back and forth to keep the whole she-bang going on and on and on.

Recognizing this constant and continuing give-and-take, the First Law of Thermodynamics can also be stated as the Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy: The total amount of mass and energy in the Universe remains constant (it is conserved), merely changing from one form to another.

But, isn’t that perpetual motion?

Precisely, it appears to be so. You just keep moving back and forth from mass to energy and energy to mass. So, theoretically, the whole thing, the universe, should go on forever. The universe should never run down. Individual systems (our corral) may run down, but not the universe. It should be perpetual.

Are you sure?

I’m tired and need some rest. Perhaps, a little hot tea with honey, for energy.

But, will the universe, the big system, really never run down?

I’m running down. There are more laws of thermodynamics. Let me acquire some lost mass and we’ll talk more later.

Keep your energies up,

Grandpa Jim

It has been a busy weekend and Monday.

The Christmas lights are down and the tree is placed in its place in the storage unit with the other well-organized but distant items that await their time and season.

I miss the Holidays already, even the packed-to-the-spaces parking spaces at the NorthPark garages. ((The NorthPark Mall is the #1 tourist destination in Dallas – I love it, but not all of it all the time. Let me digress, just a post-seasonal remembered interlude. We were searching for a parking place with my granddaughter, driving aisle-to-aisle, up-and-down, back-and-forth (and I had just about given up), when this polite young man knocked on the girls’ window (they are the prettier) and said follow me and take my space. We did and watched “Life of Pi” and enjoyed it muchly, even my first-grader granddaughter.))

Mars is a long way away, but not that far it seems.

For John Carter, that young Confederate Captain, it was a chase from Apache Indians and the refuge of a very odd cave in the New Mexico mountains that brought him to “A Princess of Mars.” I first found the book in this odd narrow room lined with books at the top of the stairs of the old farm house in Oxford, Iowa. The only heat was from the great belching noisy furnace in the basement, which loved noise more than heat, so that none seemed to reach us in our multi-covered-and-quilted beds on the second floor up the narrow stairs when we over-nighted at Grandma and Grandpa’s farm. I have no idea where they slept. It was as if we were on another planet — with chamber pots on the floor (quite the experience for a bookish city boy and his introspective sight). After breakfast in the warmed and added-on kitchen (everything is added in an old farm house), I’d sneak back up and visit that long little room with all the paperbacks. Edgar Rice Burroughs and many more of those writing persons lived there behind the worn-and-frayed bindings facing the wide-eyed face of a young wonderer. I found them there and never left them. Except, it is hard to keep reading on a raft with a tiger . . . a hungry tiger . . . at that. But, perhaps, that is what reading is all about, a frozen upstairs sanctuary in the midst of winter looking out over ice-covered fields and inward across an expanse of moss-covered heather at another planet.

So, we parked the car and glided through the throngs of strangely and pleasantly dressed mall crawlers to our theatre and our next view of life in its strangely placed wonders.

A good book is often in the eye of the beholder,

Or, in the eye of the tiger.

What do you see?

Grandpa Jim

PS: Snow in Dallas this morning!! The picture is in the early-still-dark morning hour, looking across the rooftops to downtown. The white flakes and cold covering are fun to wake to, but not to drive in. Dallas stops in the snow and works from home, if we can. Stay warm and have some hot chocolate.

Are the Mastodon and Smilodon dinosaurs?

At the museum, the bones  are in the dinosaur room, they look pretty strange, one is a really giganteous critter, the other is very scary, and . . .

Let’s take those beasties one at a time.

Big fella, you first.

A Mastodon is a large extinct (no longer in existence) mammal related to the modern-day elephant. The first Mastodon started lumbering about the Earth 27 million years ago, and last Mastodon disappeared around 12,000 years ago, in or about 10,000 BC. In fact, you can see some Mastodon’s working on a pyramid in Egypt in the movie “10,000 BC” – which received a “D” by the critics but is, I thought, a fun period piece, and it does have Mastodons. Dinosaurs, or terrible lizards, are much older. The first terrible lizard started roaring and stomping about 230 million years ago, and the last big noisemaker fell over in the cold and turned into a fossil about 65 million years ago. Working with these dates (from the experts on the Internet, of course), the Mastodon missed the Age of the Dinosaurs by about 38 million years, give or take a million years, here or there. So, the Mastodon and the Dinosaur are not contemporaries. They are also not considered to be in the same family of critters – as taxonomists, biologists and paleontologists classify old bones. It is thought that cold weather (possibly from an asteroid hitting the Earth and forming what is now the Gulf of Mexico) caused the bigger dinosaurs to get the flu in the ensuing ice age and expire, while the Woolly Mammoths, who are also proto-elephants and cousins of the Mastodons, were better covered with a big furry coats and seemed to have enjoyed cold weather, which has led some to speculate that the current residents of Minnesota, who love snow and ice, may be distantly related in some manner to the Mastodon and Woolly Mammoth.

Here are the bones of a Mastodon or Woolly Mammoth (not sure what it said on this big guys’ driver’s license, but I think the Mammoths have the trunks like these curving together) from the newly opened Perot Museum of Natural History in Dallas, Texas (a must place to visit, if you are stopping by the town). Aren’t the tusks amazing? They must have almost touched in real life.

Now for the cat. Please take the stage, Mr. Smilodon . . .

“My, what large teeth you have.” But this is no Big Bad Wolf in Grandma’s bed clothes, and those teeth are much larger and longer. That smiling Smilodon is one big cat with saber-toothed maxillary canines (big long sharp front teeth). In fact, the name “Smilodon” comes from the Greek for “carving knife.” Get the picture. Don’t mess with this kitty. The saber-toothed cat is often incorrectly called the saber-toothed tiger, but this feline is not closely related to the tiger. It was cat, but a cat with 11-inch knives for teeth, and it was big. The biggest saber-toothed cats may have weighed over 900 pounds. You can only imagine what that pet would do to your living room furniture. We’re talking toothpicks, assorted furballs and dust motes for all that would be left, in short order. Luckily, there are no more Smilodons purring beside our beds to wake us screaming in the morning running from our homes. The first big cat started sharpening his teeth about 2.5 million years ago, and the last Smilodon sank into the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles, or thereabouts, about 10,000 years ago. Yes, I think there were a couple saber-toothed cats in the movie 10,000 BC. Those smiling felines with the lengthy incisors were prowling about watching the Mastodons and Mammoths graze for food, but the saber-toothed cats seldom messed with the Big Tuskers, because you see those Mastodon tusks were bigger and longer than those of Smilodon even with its ferocious teethy feline grin.

Below is the skeletal frame of what may be a young Smilodon scampering about, without its fur, at the Perot Museum. Smilodon was not, as I bet you have surmised at this point, a dinosaur, and it did not live during the Times of the Big Saurs, but I bet that cat would have scared off even a few of those terrible lizards.

The world is a big place full of strange and interesting creatures.

It is good that some, at least, are no longer with us.

Keep smiling and polishing those teeth,

Grandpa Jim

The Beatles recorded this song on January 29, 1964 in Paris, France. It is the only English-language Beatles track that the Beatles themselves recorded in a studio outside the United Kingdom (UK or England). This was the group’s third consecutive number-one song, after “I Want to Hold Your Hand” (the 1^st at #1) and “She Loves You (the #2 at #1). The song went #1 on April 4^th, 1964, on which day the Beatles held the top five spots – a record that has not been achieved by any other band. It is the fifth song on Side 2 of the Beatles’ third album, A Hard Day’s Night, released in the U.S. on June 26, 1964.

What is the song?

You got it. The song is . . . “Can’t Buy Me Love.”

It has a secret, as many Beatles songs do or think they do – at least for me, and I’ve been listening to the song since it first came out. It has a secret that fundamentally alters and corrects (in the ears of some) Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation.

Listen with me. (I’ll let you play the song on YouTube, as you read on. Just open another window, paste and listen to www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMwZsFKIXa8 or click here to listen to “Can’t Buy Me Love”)

Here are the last four verses of the song, as they are written – listen carefully to the choruses.

Say you don’t need no diamond ring and I’ll be satisfied
Tell me that you want the kind of thing that money just can’t buy
I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love
Owww

Can’t buy me love, everybody tells me so
Can’t buy me love, no no no, no

Say you don’t need no diamond rings and I’ll be satisfied
Tell me that you want those kinds of things that money just can’t buy
I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love

Can’t buy me love, love
Can’t buy me love

Do you hear it? John and Paul are singing a different chorus, and here it is – for the first time (that I am aware of) revealed and made public. I’ve highlighted the changed word.

Say you don’t need no diamond ring and I’ll be satisfied
Tell me that you want the kind of thing that money just can’t buy
I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love
Owww

Puppy love, everybody tells me so
Puppy love, no no no, no

Say you don’t need no diamond rings and I’ll be satisfied
Tell me that you want those kinds of things that money just can’t buy
I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love

Puppy love, love
Puppy love

The Beatles are not singing “Can’t buy me love,” they’re singing “Puppy love.” Listen again. I’m sure you can hear it. Until the lyrics were examined, I never knew it to be anything else. And, this is very cool and very scientific.

Those fun-singing boys from Liverpool figured out what was missing from Sir Isaac Newton’s presentation of gravity, and they used the formula they were best at to express the missing factor for the world to hear in their song.

On the trail the other day, I saw what I’d heard all those years. A little puppy was walking with her mistress. Everyone stopped and was drawn to the cute little doggie. They couldn’t resist the clumsy cuddly ball of fur. Normally very proper adults bent down and reached out to touch and pet and scratch and say doggie words that they would never utter in public otherwise. There was a crowd and more were being drawn in as I watched. The whole mass of people, with arms and legs sticking out, was sort of attached and sticking to the penumbra that surrounded that adorable little puppy. I could hardly squeeze past. Why would I want to? It was puppy love at work and was it ever working.

Then it hit me. Newton had seen the apple but he’d missed the puppy. It isn’t just the mass of an object that attracts another object. It’s the object’s mass and its puppy-love factor. Clearly, the little dog I was observing had the attractive power of a small planet. How else could all those people be attracted to and stick to that cute little doggie pooh? Normally they’d be flying off and running and jogging down the trail “as dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly.” Not now, now they were all captured, stuck and contained by the massive attractive force of that cutsie smallish canine.

I knew then that Newton’s formula must be adjusted, and here it is.

Fpl=G((mp+mpl)x(mpa)/(r)x(r))

In the revised formula, Fpl is the measure of the gravitational attractive force between two objects with the new component for puppy love (or pl), G is the gravitational constant, mp is the mass of the puppy (negligible), to which you have to add the mass of puppy love (mpl, which is an enormous number), mpa is the mass of the puppy admirer (not much), and r is the distance between puppy and the admirer (very little indeed). When you put these together, I think you can see how important puppy love is and what an impact it has on those around it.

The Beatles saw it. There’s nothing like puppy love. You can’t buy it – don’t even think it. That’s why it’s puppy love. Sing it with me,

Puppy love, love
Puppy love

Now, maybe the International Astronomical Union (IAU) will see their mistake and modify the definition of planet to let that cute little Pluto back in.

Go puppy power,

Grandpa Jim