Re Unwin's cladogram - long

[Unwin <h0662eka@rz.hu-berlin.de>]

Re Peters post entitled:

Unwin's cladogram - long 


I am, of course, distraught, discombobulated and down cast, shaken even 
unto my very fundamentum, to learn that my phylogenetic analysis of 
pterosaurs, which appeared in that admirable little tome so peerlessly 
edited by Messrs Buffetaut and Mazin, is flawed beyond the uttermost hope 
of redemption. Pitched into the well of despair, not because of my less 
than perfect artistic powers, no! not even because the piece, which I 
thought of some wit and no little charm, completely lacks the merest hint 
of a novel graphic embellishment, but because by some gross and 
outrageous misfortune visited upon me by a doubtless jealous god, I have 
absolutely no ability in any way, shape, or form, to devise, code or 
polarise relevant, or in some cases, and speak not what follows aloud, 
lest some hideous demon emerge from the very pits of hell and drag you 
down to an everlasting fiery torment, irrelevant phylogenetic characters. 
I am only prevented from repeatedly striking myself over the head with a 
massive sheaf of European Union documents (see note below), thereby 
ending my short and miserable life forthwith, by the thought that as my 
analysis, pitiful and misbegotten creature that I now know it to be, 
shares much in common with other recent studies by Bennett and Kellner 
that they too, realising that their work must also be utterly worthless, 
might, in their inconsolable grief and anguish, attempt to emulate my 
terrible self-inflicted destruction and do something that would echo down 
the corridors of time forever, or at least until next Friday. So, I 
remain trapped in this dreary, unresolved pterosaur phylogeny haunted 
world, serving as a dread warning to you, my friends and colleagues, of 
what can happen should you choose, as the great word-smith TeePee 
himself, may God protect his blessed keyboard and the magical fingers 
that presseth upon it, has written somewhere in his 27 (or thereabouts) 
chronicles 'to meddle with things you know not wot of....'

Until next time my dears, adieu

Dave
 
(quiet sobbing and clanking of chains can be heard in the background)

Note: For more information on a new European Union funded programme aimed 
at supporting systematic research in European museums (but, sadly, only 
open to those who currently reside in the EU or Associated States) please 
go to www.synthesys.info. 




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David M. Unwin PhD

Institut fur Palaontologie, MUSEUM FUR NATURKUNDE 
Zentralinstitut der Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin
Invalidenstrasse 43, D-10115 Berlin, GERMANY

Email: david.unwin@rz.hu-berlin.de

Telephone numbers:
0049 30 2093 8577 (office)
0049 30 2093 8862 (department secretary)
0049 30 2093 8868 (fax)
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