Bad Bad Batz

There once were two monkeys, Mike and Patricia, who did everything together we’re told, including get shot into space in May 1952, awake and weightless in the nose-cone of a rocket.

They made it back alive, and retired to the National Zoo in Washington, DC, where Patricia died just a couple of years later of natural non-space-related causes. She was survived by her mate Mike, who lived until 1967.

Let’s spare a thought for Mike in his dotage, a widower, on display at the National Zoo, a government worker until the end, whose memory, primatologists tell us, may well have held thoughts of Patricia and that odd adventure they took one spring day long ago.

So wonderful.

Paul Lukas:

The new Meat for Dummies nomenclature, announced earlier this month and slated to start appearing in supermarkets this summer, is designed to make your local meat case less confusing, in part by using the same terminology across different animals. The term “ribeye,” for example, has traditionally been associated with beef, but pork loin rib chops will now be known as ribeye chops. Similarly, top loin pork chops will now be known as porterhouse chops.

If that sounds like a sneaky way to make pork chops sound sexier and command a higher price point just in time for the summer grilling season, then congratulations! You’ve just learned the first lesson of Meat for Dummies, which is that meat can be rebranded, just like everything else. There’s nothing wrong with this per se (or at least it’s no more wrong than when every other industry does it), but it makes Meat for Dummies feel more like a corporate marketing scheme than a consumer-friendly information program.

I can’t wait for the first time I see “pork t-bone” on a menu, for certainly the courts will find me duly justified for burning the entire restaurant to the ground.

And of course Meathead has an in-depth evisceration, as it were.

This is pretty much the only kind of celebrity news story I appreciate.

This post presents about as good an overview on the challenges and opportunities in academic publishing as I’ve read in a while, though I am not yet convinced that the big publishers and the societies they publish won’t have a key role in the transition.