Author: Peter Saxon

One mattin her mamma dissed: “Dear Cappuccett, take this cest to the
nonn, but attention to the lup that is very ma very kattiv! And torn
prest! Good luck! And in bocc at the lup!”
Cappuccett didn’t capish very well this ultim thing but went away, da
sol, with the cest.
Cammining cammining, in the cuor of the forest, at acert punt she
incontered the lup, who dissed: “Hi! Piccula piezz’e girl! ‘Ndove do you
go?”
“To the nonn with this little cest, which is little but it is full of
sacc of chocolate and biscots and panettons and more and mirtills”, she
dissed.
“Ah, mannagg ‘a Maruschella (maybe an expression com: what a cul that
had) dissed the lup, with a fium of saliv out of the bocc. And so the
lup dissed: “Beh, now I dev andar because the telephonin is squilling,
sorry.”
And the lup went away, but not very away, but to the nonn’s House.
Cappuccett Red, who was very ma very lent, lent un casin, continued for
her sentier in the forest.
The lup arrived at the house, suoned the campanel, entered, and after
saluting the nonn, magned her in a boccon.
Then, after sputing the dentier, he indossed the ridicol night berret
and fikked himself in the let.
When Cappuccett Red came to the fint nonn’s house, suoned and entered.
But when the little and stupid girl saw the nonn (non was the nonn, but
the lup, ricord?) dissed:
“But nonn, why do you stay in let?”
And the nonn-lup: “Oh, I’ve stort my cavigl doing aerobics!”
“Oh, poor nonn!”, said Cappuccett (she was more than stupid, I think,
wasn’t she?), then she dissed:
“But…what big okks you have!! Do you bisogn some collir?”
“Oh, no! It’s for see you better, my dear (stupid) little girl”, dissed
the nonn-lup.
Then cappuccett, who was more dur than a block of marm: “But what big
oreks you have! Do you have the Orekkions?”
And the nonn-lup: “Oh, no! It is to ascolt you better”.
And Cappuccett (that I think was now really rincoglionited) said:
“But what big dents you have!”
And the lup, at this point dissed: “It is to magn you better!” And
magned really tutt quant the poor little girl.
But (ta dah!) out of the house a simpatic, curious and innocent
cacciator of frod sented all and dissed:
“Accident! A lup! Its pellicc vals a sac of solds”.
And so, spinted only for the compassion for the little girl, butted a
terr many kils of volps, fringuells and conigls that he had ammazzed
till that moment, i

Settle back, because today I’m going to tell you the dramatic true story of what happened when some Japanese researchers decided to re-create the historic discovery of the law of gravity:

As you recall, this discovery occurred in an English orchard in 1666, when, according to legend, Isaac Newton, the brilliant mathematician, fell out of a tree and landed on an apple. No, hold it. Upon reviewing the videotape, I see that in fact the apple fell out of the tree and landed on Newton.

Had this occurred today, of course, Newton would have simply put on a foam neck brace and sued everybody within a radius of 125 miles. But those were primitive times, and Newton was forced to settle for discovering the law of gravity, which states: “A dropped object will fall with an acceleration of 32 feet per second, and if it is your wallet, it will make every effort to land in a public toilet.”

Later on, Newton also invented calculus, which is defined as “the branch of mathematics that is so scary it causes everybody to stop studying mathematics.”

That’s the whole point of calculus. At colleges and universities, on the first day of calculus class, the professors go to the board and write huge, incomprehensible ”equations” that they make up right on the spot, knowing that this will cause all the students to drop the course and never return to the mathematics building again.

This frees the professors to spend the rest of the semester playing cards and regaling one another with hilarious stories about the ”mathematical symbols” they’ve invented over the years. (”Remember the time Professor Hinkwattle drew a ‘cosine derivative’ that was actually a picture of a squid?”)

Yes, Newton made many contributions to science, but gravity was definitely his biggest. That’s why a group of Japanese researchers decided, as an international goodwill project, to re-create the original discovery, using an apple tree that was descended from the original Newton tree.

I found out about this project thanks to an alert reader named Harley Ferguson, who sent me a story about it from an English-language Japanese newspaper called The Daily Yomiuri. The article states that in August 1996, researchers at the Construction Ministry’s Public Works Research Institute in Arai, Japan, received a sapling descended from the original Newton tree. This sapling, according to the story, came from the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, which is in charge of weights and measures (so if your pants don’t fit the way they used to, this is the agency to complain to).

I was curious as to why a U.S. government agency would be providing Newton saplings, so I called NIST and spoke with the official archivist, whose name is Karma A. Beal. She sent me a bunch of information, which I will attempt to summarize here:

The original Newton tree — for simplicity’s sake, let’s call it ”Bob” — died in 1814. But before Bob went to the Big Orchard in the Sky, cuttings were taken, and over the years these cuttings became trees, and cuttings were taken from those, and so now there are genetically identical offspring — let’s call them ”Boblets” — all over the world.

One Boblet lives at the NIST facility in Gaithersburg, Md. It produces apples, but not many; the information Karma Beal sent me refers to the tree as (I am not making any of this up) “a very shy fruiter.”

The story gets a little murky at this point, but apparently the sapling sent to Japan for the historic re-creation of Newton’s discovery was grown from a seed from one of the NIST Boblet apples.

This is significant because if the sapling came from a seed, as opposed to a cutting, it is probably not a pure Bob descendant. As the NIST documentation states, ”the original flower was almost certainly pollinated by some other tree.” (Trees are total sluts this way.)

But let’s not be picky. The important thing is that the Japanese researchers had a sapling that was in some way connected to the original historic Bob. According to The Daily Yomiuri, their plan was to videotape the exact moment when the very first apple fell.

The sapling was planted, and eventually it produced a single apple. The researchers set up a video camera. All was in readiness as, day by day, the apple grew riper and riper, getting closer and closer to the big moment. And then, finally, it happened: A local resident, who knew nothing about any of this, wandered by, saw the apple, and ate it.

So the researchers never did get to videotape the apple falling in a historic manner, although the article states that, ”they did get scenes of the man munching on the apple.” The man is quoted as saying, “It just tasted really bad.”

But this does not mean the project was a waste of time. Often, in science, so-called ”failures” produce the greatest discoveries. And this project resulted in a discovery whose value to humanity cannot be overemphasized. I refer, of course, to the fact that ”Shy Fruiter and the Saplings” would be a great name for a rock band.

(This classic Dave Barry column was originally published March 16, 1997.)