Article 71

[Jim Croft]

An exchange between Richard Zander and Hendrik Segers:
>
> > For instance, conservationists, ecologists and lawyers would applaud our
> > giving the tomato a scientific uninomial, say 453456798, that would not
> > change with regrouping from Lycopersicon to Solanum and back again. With
> > computerization, why, we could even do it!
>
> Ever gone through species lists? Almost any of these contains
> orthographic or printing errors. One can make out what name is
> actually meant when it's a list of Latin names, but imagine the fun if
> such lists would consist of nothing but numbers....

Think of the possibilities here - by appending a number to a mnemonic
human-recognizable species name with an embedded checksum or CRC, no
taxon need ever be misspelled again...

-- jim

sorry - it is just one of those threads...