AggroBoy's blog

The Taxonomy Fail Index

Taxonomy fails irk me. Some might say disproportionately so. They might even have a point. Nevertheless, I think it’s important to at least try to get these sorts of things right, so I was pleased to Alex Wild, over at Myrmecos, taking the time to come up with a formula for figuring out just how wrong a taxonomy fail is.

Bats are really loud!

If you’re a human being, that’s probably something of a surprise, since the chances are that you can’t hear them at all. We all know they use sound for echolocation, but those sounds are simply too high-frequency for most humans to hear.

A potentially fatal mistake

I know it must seem like I get a real kick out of spotting other’s taxonomic mistakes and pointing them out here, but really I’d be a much happier man if it wasn’t necessary. All it would take would be for journalists to double check their terms before going to press, or to make sure they got their pieces proof read by someone familiar with the subject.

What’s up with text-shadow rendering in Firefox 3.6?

So, Firefox 3.6 is finally here, and on average it’s 20% faster than 3.5. It’s actually a really noticeable improvement for both rendering and scrolling around pages; I’d say it’s more or less on a par with Safari on most pages. I hear from Windows using friends that it’s similarly quicker on that platform too, approaching the speed of Chrome, in places.