"taxonomy" news and stories

You may never had put it into words, but if you think about it, you know that you've always ranked your candy on some scale of appeal. When I was a kid, the first thing my sister and I would do when we got back from Trick or Treating was to dump our candy out on the living room floor, take a quick inventory and then start to trade. Often times I could swindle Raina out of some of her better pieces of chocolate by offering a candy necklace or a cluster of Blow Pops. I'd offer up these pieces because they ranked low on my candy scale.

The folk over at The World's Fair have put together an exhaustive candy hierarchy that divides the different brands and varieties of candy into a handful of groups and strata. The top tier starts out with some of the best of the chocolate candies and works its way down from there. The only categorization that I object to is the one that places Good 'N Plenty in the bottom tier, as I feel that those candy coated licorice bits are quite tasty and wonderful.

Photo link
[via Callalillie]

Source

Some cakes are biscuits. Some crackers are biscuits. Many biscuits are neither crackers nor cakes. So what are they? A nice cup of tea and a sit down has put together a brief taxonomy of biscuits, charting their various incarnations and degrees of relatedness. The most useful part of the guide, as in every great taxonomical reference, is the "how to spot biscuits" section. It includes key points, vital for biscuit identification:

Does it come in a packet?
Does it have two sides?
Can you dunk it in tea?

You could very well have a biscuit on your hands. But check out the guide to find out precisely what level of biscuit you're dealing with before proceeding. Unless you have already dunked it in your tea, in which case, you should eat it.

Source