Dog On A Root

- jim Young “Everything that’s old is new again.” - anon Scottish music promoter Andi Lothian claimed he coined the phrase “Beatlemania” when being interviewed at the Beatles’ Caird Hall Concert on October 7, 1963. On October 13th, the Beatles starred on “Sunday Night at the London Palladium”, the UK’s top variety show which was televised and viewed by 15 million people. The next day, a national paper claimed they coined the term “Beatlemania” in their headline. And on the 21st of October that same year, Vincent Mulchrone used the word “Beatlemania” for the headlines of a story in the “Daily Mail.” Regardless of who coined the actual term “Beatlemania”, the Beatlemania Phenomenon was actually invented prior to that, by publicist George Evans. Except it wasn’t called “Beatlemania” at the time for the simple reason that the Beatles had not yet met and in fact were only about 2 or 3 years old at the time. Read on to discover how the Beatlemania Phenomenon was invented, but first, here’s ...

- jim Young 20220803 “In Eastern culture, people see ghosts, people talk about ghosts… it’s just accepted. And in Western culture it’s just not.” — Jessica Alba Oxford Definition of Ghost:   For most people, the word “ghost” conjures up a wide variety of images, from the benign “Casper, The Friendly Ghost” , through the comedic “Slimer'' of “Ghostbusters'' to the evil and sinister spirits of, “Poltergeist” .  Or if you’re more of a romantic person, perhaps you would prefer to fantasize sitting at a potter’s wheel, “hungering for the touch” of your deceased lover. The Oxford dictionary defines a ghost as “ An apparition of a dead person which is believed to appear or become manifest to the living, typically as a nebulous image.”   For many, the word “ghost” is synonymous with apparition, bogeyman, ghoul, haunting, illusion, phantom, poltergeist, specter, spirit, spook or anything supernatural and pretty much everything that “goes bump in the night” . When it comes...

- jim Young Mother: Always remember, sharing is caring. Son: What if I don’t care? Next to learning to talk and walk, learning to share may be the most difficult thing for a child to learn. Admittedly we’ve all seen those cute videos of a very young child instinctively sharing something with a parent, sibling or even a pet that makes us all go “Awwww.” But as the child grows older, sharing becomes less of an instinct and the child must be taught to share. One of the difficulties in this is teaching the child “why” he or she should share. A parent may explain the need for sharing as being “a nice thing to do”. Sometimes however a child just doesn’t want to be nice so that reason for sharing goes out the window. The child might be told, “if you share with others, others will share with you.” But that concept more accurately describes barter than it does sharing. “It will make you feel good,” the parent might suggest in an attempt to teach shari...

Taste buds are a funny thing. Our taste buds can differentiate between 5 basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, savory and bitter. Not only do our taste buds change over time, they often decrease as we age. Sometimes we can even force a change. My coworker, Jennifer once told me that if you eat something you don’t like eight times, you will begin to like it.  “My Shirley loves asparagus but I hate it,” I replied, “Maybe I’ll give it a try.”    “Uh, you might want to start with something not quite so strong as asparagus,” Jennifer suggested.  While that experiment never made it to the lab, I know it is true that we can learn to like things we don’t already like.  I remember in public school my mother would sometimes forget that I didn’t like onions and make me cheese and onion sandwiches for lunch. (They were one of Dad’s favourites.) I would remove the onion, but after sitting at room temperature in the classroom all morning, a hint of the onion flavour remained in...