[Taxacom] What are accurate phylogenies?

[Tony.Rees at csiro.au]

Ah, but you would already know how much the rocks weigh (1 pig...)

- Tony


-----Original Message-----

Sitting down here in the real world looking up at the ivory towers, the view
is often fuzzy. As much as I enjoy reading the bickering that goes on in
this forum I often feel like a beer drinker at a wine tasters' convention.
The terms used describing wines are no less subjective that many used here.
Anyway, on the subject of the oxymoron "accurate estimates," I consider
cladistics and other subjective methods to be much like our old way of
weighing pigs.

My family was poor and we raised/grew most of our own food. We also raised a
few pigs to sell every year. To be sure we were not cheated when we sold
them, we needed to know their weight. Not being able to afford scales we
would get a log, balance a board across it, and place a box on each end of
the board. We would put a pig in one box, and then put rocks in the other
box until it balanced. When it balanced, we would then guess how much the
rocks weighed.

Respectfully (really),

dick p.




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