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"...bringing up hominy ..."
I guess this would be a bad time to offer to post my posole recipe, eh, Jackie?
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And if you want something absolutely yummy to do with your posole, brew you up some menudo. Mmmm-mm. Hominy and tripe!
And a magnificent hangover cure
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Jackie, are you really angry? [confused-e]
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Well...just worried, I guess, that people might forget altogether about making word posts. Thanks for asking--you're sweet! Much love!
P.S.--I told Hubby and my son what you said about my fa.-in-law's sense of humor; they appreciated hearing that about Dad/Grandpa. Thank you. He was a nice man. And I learned a lot from him about taking whatever comes along, and not getting all hot and bothered. (That's not to say that I don't still have a long way to go, mind you.)
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It doesn't help that our Linnaean system was established by, well, Linnaeus. Brilliant though he was, he lived and produced his great work before Darwin developed the theory of evolution. I think I recall he was a special creationist - at that time creation was as good an explanation as any.
We might infer then that he believed species were essentially immutable. This makes for a disconnect between the discrete Linnaean taxonomic system and the continuous nature of species being categorized.
Consider the following:
We start with species 'A' someplace way back in time. Through time, the descendents of this species branch all over the place - into a bush, not a tree. Let's follow one of the myriad paths from this relative 'root' to the currently existing leaf species. Say 'Z' is a modern descendent.
So we have A begat B begat C begat .... Z
Now, if the delta T (the elapsed time) has been a long time (on the order of 100s of thousands or millions of years), then A and Z are probably not the same species - they might not even be the same genus. (Note that A and Z *might* be the same species, because there's nothing I'm aware of in evolutionary theory that says that species have to die out.)
However, in each case, A is the same species as B is the same species as C is the same species as D, and so on. Each successor may or may not be assimilating some slight mutation into the gene pool. Eventually there comes a point where, say, X is no longer of the same species as A, even though A is the same species as W and W is the same species as X.
Let the string '<=>' mean 'is the same species as' and let the string '</=/>' mean 'is not the same species as.'
The upshot of my point is that you can have a case where A <=> B and B <=> C, but A </=/> C. In fact, there must have been many such cases. Mathematically we would say that the relationship 'is the same species as' is not transitive.
(It's important to emphasize that this is a thought experiment. I don't think it's possible to look at a fossil, for example, and say with certainty that it was a direct ancestor species of some existing species. The best we might say is that it appears to be at least a cousin, and 'might' be a direct ancestor. This is part of the reason why terms like "missing link" are nonsensical.)
I'm not sure whether a biologist would buy into any of this, btw. But it seems intuitively obvious.
To summarize:
Cause of Problem:
The objects (species) being categorized constitute a continuum, while the taxonomic system assumes discrete units.
Result:
There will be items among the continuum (species) that are putatively difficult to classify.
k
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Wow, Keith, you sound like a math teacher or something.  You know what this theory reminds me of? My question about whether a team, when every original player has been replaced, is still the same team though it has the same name. It is, but it isn't.
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A <=> B and B <=> C, but A </=/> C.
FF, I'm not sure we can accurately say A <=> B and B <=> C if there is even a slight mutation. I think "closely related to" is more accurate than "is the same as," na?
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Jackie, I think hoping that posts remain strictly about words is counterproductive to getting this place back to its former glory. If you remember, no matter how often we strayed into other territories, we always had a heavy core of word-related posts because, let’s face it, we’re all grammar geeks and we love it.
The different threads, and the friendly chatter among friends, made this a place everybody wanted to come to. We couldn’t imagine not coming in to talk to our pals.
The reason this place has become unpleasant is that people are afraid to open up anymore – to have fun. In the past, I never hesitated to say personal things on this site, but I’d never do it now for fear of somebody harping on it ad nauseum, and I’d get hurt.
It’ll take time to bring that original jovial environment back, or to get people comfortable again. I’m not even sure we can do it what with the negative atmosphere created by posts that attack, accuse and constantly harp on members – but damn, I’m trying to do my little bit.
Keeping the posts antiseptically word-related is tremendously dull, and certainly not something I’d look forward to getting to every day – that’s for sure.
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"FF, I'm not sure we can accurately say A <=> B and B <=> C if there is even a slight mutation. I think "closely related to" is more accurate than "is the same as," na?"
You might be right, except the relation is not "is the same as," but "is the same species as." If A and B might naturally produce viable offspring, then they are the same species (but, again, the notion of species isn't perfect, imo).
k
p.s. I consider this a word post. It's about the meaning of the word 'species'
and possible limitations. The word was developed before the theory of evolution by a man who believed largely in fixed, discretized populations.
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I know; I did say "altogether"... Thank you. 
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