Wahlberg is right

[Ron Gatrelle]

Way to go Niklas!!! I was hoping someone would say this. Americans often
wonder why they (we) are so disliked around the world. First, we can't even
speak our own language and then have the absurdity to think everyone else in
the world should or does. Our term for this here is  -- Pig Headed. Far too
many Americans are defiantly pig headed.

Next, when certain Americans call Gillett's checkerspot Gillette's
checkerspot they are not engaged in some deep intellectual or grammatical
exercise. They are just revealing typical lazy American ignorance.  Then
when they are not manly (or woman) enough to admit their mistake, their pig
head comes out and they try to defend their defenseless position. Taxonomy
101 is that our Linnean system of trinomial Latin based scientific names was
created and implemented specifically to give universal stability to the
names of organisms BECAUSE everyone was just calling stuff by what ever
COMMON NAME they wanted.
Dumbing down is going back. Going back to common names, no subspecies, no
science, just watch, take pictures, smile, be as we Americans' say fat,
dumb, and happy.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Niklas Wahlberg" <niklas.wahlberg at helsinki.fi>
To: "Ron Gatrelle" <gatrelle at tils-ttr.org>; "Leps-l" <Leps-l at lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Friday, October 27, 2000 9:29 AM
Subject: Re: Gillett's Checkerspot


> Hi,
>
>
> Ron Gatrelle wrote:
> > to hear the reasoning behind this. As I said before, what am I missing
here?
> >     Kondla referred to this unknown party when he posted _a kind person
has
> > pointed out that these [Gillette's & Gillett's] are actually English
names
> > rather than common names. My response to this was a question about what
did
> > I miss here -- I don't get it.
>
> The point is that there are many common names for many species, they
> happen to be in different languages. For instance, if I were to
> translate gillettii into Finnish, it would be gillettenverkkoperhonen.
> And the "e" at the end of gillett is purely gramatical. We have many
> common names in Finnish, but I would not presume to call the "common" on
> this international e-mail list. We have gone through this discussion
> several times and the consensus (I think) is that latin names are the
> way to go. I'm not the "kind person" in question, but I am quick to
> respond to people who think that English is the only language in the
> world.
>
> Cheers,
> Niklas
>
>
> --
> ________________________________________________________________________
>
>    Niklas Wahlberg
>    Metapopulation Research Group
>    Department of Ecology and Systematics
>    Division of Population Biology
>    PO Box 17 (Arkadiankatu 7)
>    00014 University of Helsinki
>    Finland
>    p. +358-9-191 28778, fax +358-9-191 28701
>
>  Check out our web-site:
>   http://www.helsinki.fi/science/metapop/
>



 
 ------------------------------------------------------------ 

   For subscription and related information about LEPS-L visit:

   http://www.peabody.yale.edu/other/lepsl