Actually, what pedantry gets me is a follow-up post

Who knew your little hearts skipped a beat over binomial nomenclature?

After publishing my entry on Wholphins, commenter Maggie astutely noted:

I'm a big fan of taxonomy too. But I was smacked down by an evolutionary microbiologist friend of mine (he studies evil microbes through the ages) the other day. He said taxonomy is becoming irrelevant, and that DNA/genomes tell the story now.

This looks like a good link for that.

She and her smacky friend are right. I had recently read "Cat Blogging From Deep Time" in Carl Zimmer's weblog, the Loom. The entry not only describes a process by which geneticists determined the feline family tree, it also includes an examination of how valid the process is. It's a good example of how scientific theories are queried and tested constantly until all what-ifs can be adequately explained.

Figuring out how species should be organized is an ongoing quest; it tickles me that 271 years after Carl Linnaeus published Systema Naturae and laid the groundwork for binomial nomenclature, we're up to Systema Naturae 2000, with its taxonomicon of classification-related data.

The taxonomicon is a dream come true. It shows multiple alternative and historical classifications, and adds data including: types of interrelationships between species and structured metadata like geographic distribution, habitat, and geologic distribution; all information is backed by citations.

One final Linneaus-related note: if you haven't already done so, be sure to read Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. You'll see Linnaeus in a whole new light once you're done.