Another comment--"Alexander's Ragtime Band" is syncopated--even if it wasn't, I am perfectly able to hear melodic similarities even when the rhythmic phrase is different--and, oddly enough, the one piece of similarity is a rhythmic phrase--however, it moves in a very different way, melodically--AR, you point out that Joplin was in the throes of syphillis by 1911--and, paranoid dementia was a common manifestation--