[Taxacom] taxonomy article in the NYTimes

[Barry Roth]

Maybe Adam did in fact name them all but the results were lost thru poor bioinformatics. 

Barry Roth

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 11, 2009, at 8:35 AM, Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu> wrote:

Genesis 2: 19-20

19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of 
the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man 
to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each 
living creature, that was its name.

20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air 
and all the beasts of the field.

Well, this would demonstrate two things:

(1) Taxonomy would accordingly be the world's oldest profession (as 
opposed to the presently-titled "world's oldest profession")

(2) Given that Adam and his descendants have not even managed to give 
names to 10% of the life forms on the planet after all this time, one 
can only assume that God intended for Man to be a pitiful 
underachiever. Either that or He's really, really disappointed, and I 
dread the interview at the next performance review:

"So, how's that "naming all the living creatures" job coming along? 
Got a good task force working on it?"

"....."

Peace,
-- 

Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314        skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
             http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82

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