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I agree with reading about it on the Internet. I like RSS, but I've found it homogenizes my content so that things don't jump out at me and the really interesting stories get buried with all the mediocre ones. So I keep the following list of bookmarks to check on a weekly basis:

ABC (Australia) Science, ABC (US) Science, Air & Space Magazine, ARKive, Ars Technica, BBC SciTech News, CBS Sci-Tech News, Chet Raymo, Cosmos News, Current: Science, Discover, Discovery News, Edge, Economist Science, EurekAlert!, Flyp media, Futurity, h+, Inkling Magazine, LiveScience, Massimo Pigliucci, Mother Jones Environment, MSNBC Science News, National Geographic News, National Public Radio (US), Natural History Magazine, New Scientist, New York Times Science, New Yorker Science, Newsweek Science, Orion, PhysOrg, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, R&D Magazine, Ripley's Believe It or Not!, Science Daily, Scientific American, Seed Magazine, Science Cheerleader, Science News, Schrodinger's Kitten, Slashdot Science, Smithsonian, Space.com, The Technium, Time Magazine Science, USA Today Science, US News & World Report Science, Wired News, World Changing

The problem with classification is that we're basically trying to simplify a very complex system of a massive amount of variation even amongst individuals of a species into a finite set of groups. There isn't always this rather binary split between species in reality.

The problem is largely in cases like this, that species don't just diverge- through interbreeding they can converge back together again, then split, and converge and so on with varying ratios of each species involved each time which with each convergence or divergence may increase or decrease the percentage of genetic material of one or the other species.

The problem is also that historically -prior to DNA analysis - we've based our understanding on visual traits, but let me show you some pictures (in this case of cacti) to illustrate how utterly misleading this can be.

Take these two plants:

Cipocereus laniflorus:

http://www.arkive.org/cactus/cipocereus-laniflorus/image-G5064.html

and Pilosocereus fulvilanatus:

http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/photo/2916062630075508785tgLHvf

They both come from Minas Gerais in Brazil, and appear very similar, and as such it made sense to group them together in the same genus. No one could really argue with this, the logic is sound. Yet, when DNA analysis came along, it turns out the genus Cipocereus is more closely related to Cereus, than it is Pilosocereus, so the plant Cipocereus laniflorus above is more closely related to a plant like this, Cereus repandus, which has it's origins 2500 miles away in Venezuela:

http://www.rarefruit.org/magicgallery05/ph05.htm

Those who had classified Cipocereus laniflorus as a Pilosocereus were then wildly wrong in their classification.

The problem that faces classification based on visual traits is that of evolutionary convergence- the species that live close in Brazil, despite having a much less close genetic heritage, both had to cater to the same conditions- the same temperatures, the same threats, the same pollinators, and in this case, evolution often just repeats the same solution. If the main pollinators in the area are hummingbirds attracted by bright purple day blooming flowers, then both plants are going to evolve that trait again, even if they're genetically different.

So you can probably see why classification based on visual traits and so forth can at times be horrendously misleading, but as you'll probably realise from my earlier point about convergence and divergence through interbreeding even the DNA records can be confusing. This is why, to this day, as far as I know, the inclusion of Homo neanderthalensis as a subspecies is unresolved. The reality is we never really had these two perfectly distinct species Homo sapien, and Homo neanderthalensis, probably through pretty much their entire period of evolution there were at least periods where them and their ancestors were interbreeding. So from there you can see that the real point is that they evolved in parallel, sometimes sharing genetic material through interbreeding and the real question is, are they genetically close enough to homo sapiens to be classed as a subspecies in that they evolved in parallel with humans and then diverged, or are they genetically distinct enough to be separated from homo sapiens altogether? It might even depend on the point at which you take your sample- a DNA sample taken from a member of the species at a period of interbreeding will likely lead you to the conclusion that H. neanderthalensis probably is just a subspecies of H. sapiens, but one taken from an individual in a population that's had no contact with H. sapiens for a few thousand years or more might lead you to a different conclusion.

I firmly believe classification based on visual traits is wrong, and a bad way to do things

The aims of ARKive were not dissimilar, but this now seems to have transmuted into a lightweight picture and sound library when they realised what they had bitten off. I wish the project well, but can't help thinking that the notion of a one-stop-shop for any huge subject online is fundamentally flawed (except for the ability to reap funding benefits). There are so many interpretations of what is valuable information that to list it all becomes unusable.

Coconut crabs (Birgus Latro) are pretty huge. They co-exist only with birds that are non-threatening on small tropical islands. It is probably the largest terrestrial arthropod in the world. http://www.arkive.org/species/GES/invertebrates_te rrestrial_and_freshwater/Birgus_latro/

More pictures and videos here

As an aside, does anyone else have problems with copy/paste in firefox 1.5?

You haven't looked around if you believe IE is the only XML tool around

So what else is there that is an XML client-side browser ? It needs a workable DOM and XSL(T), because CSS just does not cut it for a whole pile of useful things you might want to do.

Anyhow, you may be interested to know that smil, a pretty cool language, is what RealPlayer

Oh really ? Guess that one must have kinda slipped by me.... 8-(

Save the Red-tailed Wambenger !