Taxonomist’s revenge 21 Jun 2009 There’s a long and distinguished history of taxonomists taking revenge upon friends and enemies (sometimes simultaneously!) by naming unpleasant things after them. Linnaeus himself named an ugly useless weed after his major critic, Siegesbeck, who had attacked the “sexual system” of Linnaean botany. More recently, Quentin Wheeler named three types of slime beetles after the then President Bush, VP Cheney and architect of the Iraq war, Rumsfeld, although he swears it was an honour. Now, a San Francisco mycologist has named a stink horn fungus Phallus drewesii after friend and colleague Robert Drewes, a herpetologist, at the California Academy of Sciences. It’s shaped like a penis, droops and is two inches long, but Robert Drewes claims, at any rate, to be honoured: “It’s a wonderful honor and great fun to have this phallus-shaped fungus named after me,” says Drewes. “I have been immortalized in the scientific record.” All I can say is, never piss off a taxonomist, even in fun. Biology Humor Science Species and systematics Systematics
Epistemology Prescriptions for atheists 25 Nov 201122 Jun 2018 Jeez. You go away for a few days, to the beach and countryside, and come back to find that progress has been made in philosophy; in particular regarding the right view to hold about religion and the religious. The story so far: I wrote a series of posts about agnosticism,… Read More
Humor Buffy is my personal saviour 28 Oct 2009 As always, the Onion has the scoop. I really like this new religion of Fictionology. One gets to choose a fictional character as your messiah, deity or general moral teacher. Who better than Buffy? Look good, kick evil doers, and have time for a social life. “Unlike Scientology, which is… Read More
Yet another reason not to use your real name on the net. But isn’t taxonomy also an instrument of praise? Surely something is amiss when there is no Biggus Dickus.
Is there some sort of dispute emerging in biology of late or have I been drinking too much Wilkins coffee? I did like the remarks on the Linnaen sexual system as repugnant and immoral. Delightfully stupid.
I don’t think it’s funny. You are a gifted academic and more than capable of winning an argument. We have a plant in Scotland called Stinking Billy in England it goes under the name of Sweet William named in honour of Prince William after his cold blooded murder of many Scots in the aftermath of Cullodin. Emotive folk taxonomies can be somewhat devisive and just keep bitter memories alive. They can also be subverted. I am sure we have all faced unreasoned responses to our views it’s unpleasant and I find at the moment in first writing up my own research that it is a bit unbalanced and one-sided. As I have a particular axe to grind which I think is perfectly correct; but I can’t allow the emotive part of a heated debate to have a place in my final results. It must be balanaced free of personal belief and emotion. In other words I have to learn to do science. I find it helpful to imagine I have Robert Boyle sitting on my shoulder when I write. What a guy! Although sometimes he slips off and I become all too human. But such are the creatures we are Mr Boyle was a rare thing.
An elderly friend of mine, author and illustrator of ‘Mushrooms of Western Canada’, once gave me a gift-card with one of her paintings. It prominently featured Phallus adrianus. I blushed, she didn’t.