December 21, 2003

Monkeys! Juice up and get ready to outsmart the pesky humans
posted by Gyan 20 years ago
  • Manischewitz: the thinking man's wine.
  • We have seen similar effects in the work we've done in blueberries Sadly, I can't I think of a comment that's funnier than that quote.
  • "I saw a wino the other day, he was eating grapes . . I was like, Dude, you have to wait" --Mitch Hedberg
  • Ah, good ol' EurekAlert. Back when I worked there, it sometimes felt as if we got two or three stories like this a week. All of it lends itself to great Onion-esque articles, but such comments like the blueberry one remind me of the humility and excitement that comes in science. The researcher may well be unaware of any joke when mentioning the similarities of grapes and blueberries. In there mind, probably want to specify that this study, which is so very targeted as studies usually are, may have parallels to a wider spectrum. They're probably thinking of what structural properties grapes and blueberries share that make similarities possible. Will it apply to cherries? How many families of fruits does this cover? What does this say about flowering plant structure? Most non-scientists are, meanwhile, thinking the person's a fruitcake--or stocking up on blueberry juice. The nice thing is that, no matter how many of these stories came out, they generally reinforced what you knew anyway. You should eat a tad better than you are, more fruits and vegetables and overall balance--and relax for cryin' out loud. I should also note, with small geeky pride, that EurekAlert is still using the file-naming convention I devised for the site six years ago.