Here I was, in the hallowed halls of academe, listening to seminars on taxonomy. You know, taxonomy—the science of naming species and organizing them into the classification scheme that we all memorized in introductory biology. I could not imagine a topic less relevant to everyday life, let alone one less likely to lead eminent senior scientists into apoplexy and the loss of much of their human dignity. The injunction “Get a life” could not have seemed more apt.
