Fanfare Greatest Honor EVER!

[Octopus Messiah]

You will find no hyperbole here:
Litopia After Dark guest and mongabay.com founder (yes-his-name-is) Rhett Butler has just been honored with his own bug: Cactopinus rhettbutleri!!!!!!!!!!!
That's right, folks: HE IS ON THE CUTTING EDGE OF DEAD ETHIOPIAN CACTI!
Rhett: On behalf of biogeeks everywhere, we salute you.
It couldn't have happened to a nicer beetle.
http://news.mongabay.com/2015/0417-dangelo-auction-church-forests.html
(and just to make things even more relevant: mongabay is always on the look out for environmental journalists, often with paid positions.)

 

[Lex Black]

That is so cool!

 

[Octopus Messiah]

That is so cool!

Isn't it just!

 

[Jennifer Stone]

Congratulations! Such an honour.

 

[Meerkat]

That's one cool-looking bug!

 

[Marc Joan]

That's one cool-looking bug!

[Warning: severe attack of pedantry follows].

Tut, tut: beetle, not bug. Bugs are exclusively found in the Heteroptera/Hemiptera, which is a subdivision of the order Coleoptera [beetles]. You can distinguish them from other beetles by their sucking mouthparts.

Sad, am I not?

 

[Meerkat]

[Warning: severe attack of pedantry follows].

Tut, tut: beetle, not bug. Bugs are exclusively found in the Heteroptera/Hemiptera, which is a subdivision of the order Coleoptera [beetles]. You can distinguish them from other beetles by their sucking mouthparts.

Sad, am I not?

Actually, I'm impressed that you know that.

 

[James Marinero]

[Warning: severe attack of pedantry follows].

Tut, tut: beetle, not bug. Bugs are exclusively found in the Heteroptera/Hemiptera, which is a subdivision of the order Coleoptera [beetles]. You can distinguish them from other beetles by their sucking mouthparts.

Sad, am I not?

Yes, but attention to detail led to Darwin's Theory of Evolution.

 

[Marc Joan]

Newsflash: pedant places foot in own mouth then shoots it. A quick check reveals that true bugs constitute an order in their own right, not a sub-division of Coleoptera. Unforgivable error, given the amount of time I spent catching them when I was a child. Hope this foolish error has not irredeemably changed anyone's life for the worse, although the butterfly effect suggests it could lead to political change in remote corners of the globe.

 

[EPHahn]

This entire thread just slayed me. It had its ups, its downs, its inevitable plot twist in the eleventh hour...

Thank you.