Sunday 20 January 2013

PhD week 46: The poetry of taxonomy

Not-so-gratuitous picture: My new favourite bird: the Fernbird Megalurus punctatus. Image out of copyright.

There is a poetry in the process of taxonomic description. Reducing an organism's appearence to a paragraph of characters requires a certain degree of creativity and wordsmithing. It it unfortunate, therefore that the end result should be somewhat unenthralling. Descriptions are useful though and writing them makes one appreciate good ones all the more.


Read:
   Pine-Coffin RS (translator). 1961. The confessions of Saint Augustine Middlesex: Penguin
   Chesterton GK. 1908. Orthodoxy. Image, New York (2001 Edition)
   Proverbs 6–8, Romans 1–11

Websites:
Dolph Schluter's Laboratory blog
geomorph R package
Spinnerette—A webcomic
ABC Religion and Ethics

Listened:
Antagonist A.D.—Nothing From No One

Watched:
Star Trek: Enterprise Season One

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