I have a distinguished friend in The Villages who was born and raised in England, but worked here in the US as a citizen and University professor. We are both part of a group that meets for breakfast every Tuesday morning. At each of these meetings he hands me copies of The Economist. As you are aware it is a high class publication with all sorts of erudite information within its pages.
He hands me this even though he fully knows the type of articles I write – which as those who read them know do not normally fall within the mode of articles in The Economist. In fact, they probably fall more in the Mad Magazine category – did I ever tell you that I had the first issue of that great publication. I also had a mother who liked a neat house which is why I do not have Action Comics #1 (Superman) anymore either.
To return to the high class publication, I thought to myself that most likely The Economist would not accept an article from me. However, I could probably write commentaries on articles from that fine publication in my normal venue. The Blonde in the house said that it was fine with her, so I opened a copy of the magazine to see what I could find. My gracious, but there were a lot of articles about important issues that make you want to go back in time when things were simpler.
Thinking about “going back in time” made me look at an article where some bright scientists were trying to determine how dinosaurs knew boy from girl. For some reason, the scientists wanted to know how. I assume they figured that if Jurassic Park was ever discovered they would know immediately which is which. It obviously would not help the dinosaurs at this point. If the scientists could go back in time, they might be able to give the guy dinosaurs some tips which might result in their still being around at the present time. Their leader would most likely be Godzilla and we would all be in trouble including the scientists.
I have digressed from a very important story. Apparently they have been checking on the bony plates on the back of Stegosaurus. They found remains of five of them in Montana. It was quickly determined that they died before John Wayne was in control there. They also discovered almost as quickly that there were two types of Stegosaurus plates. Some were broad oval ones, and the others were tall, narrow ones. The tall narrow ones were smaller than the broad oval ones. Aha! Perhaps that is how the dinosaurs knew boy from girl. Hold on, now this is science, and one cannot just jump into an important decision without more study of several years or so.
For example, this group of Stegosauruses could have been a rogue pack of dinosaurs where the queen mother had messed around with an Apatosarurus, Things did happen even back then. That would certainly louse up the DNA line. Personally, I think it was much easier for the dinosaurs to know girl from boy than scientists like to let on. Let’s face it, dinosaurs had very small brains. Thus they had to keep things simple. My theory which I will soon forward to The Economist – after checking out Google thoroughly – is that the dinosaurs just named all the girls “Alice” and the boys “Jethro”. That fit in with their pea brains. Therefore amorous dinosaurs just had to ask another one they met what their name was, and then they could proceed accordingly.
I was also going to comment on the “commitment anxiety” between Brussels and Kiev, but space is gone. Boy, dinosaur love life and “commitment anxiety”! I never knew that The Economist was such a racy magazine.
Barry Evans writes about Life in The Villages for Villages-News.com.
