Carl Linnaeus is a Dumb Jerk

At the zoo, you'll hear all sorts of fuss and nonsense about how animals are categorized. But the system of kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species that Linnaeus crapped out is totally inadequate. There are MANY things that you can see at the zoo that don't fit into this antiquated taxonomy. Read on for the definitive answer to all of your classificatory questions, as provided by the Douglassian Taxonomy.

To give you a feel for how this works, let's go through several questions that can be answered by this chart. Also, apologies to the editor-in-chief for getting in her chart-turf. And apologies to KELLYq for having both questions and answers.

Q: How are Churros classified?
A: Let's step through the chart from top to bottom. You can most assuredly eat a churro. Churros are obviously not gross (and if you think they're gross, well, they don't even have churros in China so it still works). The zoo practically encourages you to eat churros, and they taste better with cinnamon than they do with barbeque sauce. Churros are thus placed in the same category as apple pie, and in a different category from hamburgers and owls. This nicely dovetails with the layman's view of churros.

Q: What are bricks related to?
A: Good luck trying to fit bricks into the 5 kingdoms. In this scheme, it obviously falls under the category of "hurts teeth." There's no useless dithering about whether it reproduces sexually or asexually: it's a brick. You don't even need a microscope to confirm it. Just bite the damn thing and skip the other 5 steps of the scientific method.

For those of you that have forgotten, the scientific method is:
1. Form a Hypothesis
2. Pour Fluids into Beakers
3. Write Things on Clipboard
4. Biting
5. Analysis of Results
6. Fabrication of Results
7. Put Process on Tri-Fold Poster Board

This proves that bricks are closely related to street curbs and broken glass.

Q: Are Sharks Mammals?
A: The Douglassian classification system treats this question with utter contempt. When you're face to face with a shark, you shouldn't just float there trying to remember if sharks are bony, cartilagenous, or a type of dolphin. You should be reaching for your abalone chisel and accepting Jesus into your heart.

Q: This doesn't seem very comprehensive.
A: That's not a question. Linnaeus is an asshole.

Justin Douglas writes "Nerdish Leanings" for The Bathtub on Monday afternoons.  You can e-mail him at j.d.bathtub@gmail.com.

Comments

[Quincy Nottingberle]

How would a pencil fall under this scheme?

[justin]

A pencil is also in the "hurts teeth" category. While certain parts of the pencil are soft and palatable, the metal portion attaching the eraser can ding up your enamel pretty good.

Of course, a gum full of splinters is no walk in the park either.

[KELLYq]

dude science fair projects are wicked sweet because you don't actually have to do any science. ones i've done include:

5th grade: which type of salt melts ice the fastest? onion, rock, regular, or regular salt that is dyed teal?
answer: was rock salt, obviously

7th grade: can people tell the difference between coke, pepsi, and generic?
answer: clearly they can, but more importantly this should not count as science

8th grade: does it matter if you do homework with the tv on or the radio on?
answer: I dont' remember. this was mainly an excuse to call hot boys in 8th grade for their results, and convince them to participate in my study

[Phylan]

Pencils are best administered rectally anyway.

[the mayor]

as a professional fake scientist I can tell you that putting your results on a tri-fold cardboard poster is a vital aspect of the scientific method even through the PhD level.

you downt even now what your talking about do you becouse thats exactley the way your patraying yourself

[justin]

what? I'm hated by the illiterate?!