The following topics are included: ideas received from Max Born and Karl Weissenberg; Born's definitions of internal energy and heat flow; features common to science and religion; fallacious improbability arguments in the evolution literature; comparison of elementary particle theory and rheology; contrast between early constitutive proposals of Weissenberg and Reiner; elementary definitions of body tensors; recoil; molecular network and tube theories; liquidating a solid: the rubberlike liquid; the Stressmeter: measurement of the first normal stress difference in steady shear flow at shear rates up to 10 6 s −1 and shear stresses up to 200kPa; cP-liquid viscosity measurement at shear rates above 10 6 s −1 , with a scatter of 0.2% (new results); on-line detection of very small changes in the high molecular weight tail of a polymer molecular weight distribution; measurement of 0.004psi pressure differences under ambient pressures of 2000psi (new results).