The ZIP Code turns 50 this week, and Time Magazine reminds us that it actually stands for something: Zone Improvement Plan Code. Imagine their expressions when they realized this attempt to make things speedier could be summed up by ZIP. Astonishment! What a coincidence! But where does the word "zip" come from, anyway?It's onomatopoetic. The sound an object makes as it speeds past. Dates from the middle of the 19th century.

The article notes that people objected to being turned into a number. You heard a lot of that. Computers would turn everyone into numbers. When you read science fiction, people in the future had numbers. Winston Smith had a number in "1984." Patrick McGoohan, in "The Prisoner," insisted that he was a free man, not a number. Well, the two aren't exactly mutually exclusive, but I get the point.

So how do you sell the ZIP code to a stubborn, suspicious population? Show "The Swingin' Six," havin' a Hootenanny on its behalf. Use it day or night!

UH OH Lionfish will take over the world:

Only a matter of time before they show up at Lake Harriet, gnawing on bathers. The article relates an alarming fact about the Lionfish: it may be the first fish so successful at eating everything else they've become morbidly obese.

MUSIC "Surely one of the most bizarre career trajectories in pop history." Who? I could play one snippet of one song from 30 years ago, and you'd know. Those drums. Via Coudal, a defense of a brillaint drummer who became the poster boy for MOR:

Yes. Now, some full-strength music writing:

Why? Because Phil Collins was an incredible drummer who worked with the brainiest musicians and jazzmen in progressive rock. I mean, you can't work with Robert Fripp and then sing "You Can't Hurry Love." You - just - CAN'T. That's all.

VIDEO If I was falling to the earth, I might have other priorities. Not this guy.