I think I’m due an undirected rant, and so let’s have a look at this news article.
The entomological pedant (2) within me would like to make known the following:
1. Most critically, final paragraph, the camel spider, or solifugid, is not an insect, for the love of all that’s chitinous. This utter failure of knowledge, in an age […]
“From childhood’s hour I have not been / As others were; I have not seen / As others saw; I could not bring /
My passions from a common spring…”
wrote Edgar Allan Poe (1), although very few fantasists haven’t felt like that on occasion. It’s a genre that traditionally appeals to the odd and the […]
Oh to have a reputation.
Specifically, a full half-dozen people have sent me links to the same news story, linked herewith: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7104421.stm
The obvious thought, when confronted with this, is, “slow news day.” Had the story broken a day later, then the football (1) would have squeezed it out entirely. Like the fossilisation process itself, a news story […]
Palaeontology, hotbed of political controversy, jingoism and prejudice!
A bold statement, you might think. I mean, anthropology, yes. One can see how debates over the history and development of the various races(1) of man could be turned to a number of political ends, and generally highly undesirable ones, but go back far enough for palaeontology to take […]
Actually, before all that, what was that about insects?
After promising some manner of insectery, which in itself is a monstrous and unwieldly neologism (1), I appear to have failed to deliver. The thronging hordes in their millions of species have been conspicuously absent. Even the affectation “the insect man” is currently unsubstantiated.(2) Why, then, “theinsectman”?(6)
Insects and their […]
