Mermaids and Suckling Pigs

A big part of cataloging objects in a museum is classification.  I read this the other day and it made me laugh

"Just because a classification system allows you to assign a category to everything does not mean that it is a useful system.  In “the Analytical Language of John Wilkins” essayist Jorge Luis Borges describes a Chinese encyclopedia called The Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge that divided animals into 14 groups:

1.  Those that belong to the Emperor

2.  Embalmed Ones

3.  Those that are trained

4.  Suckling pigs

5.  Mermaids

6.  Fabulous animals

7.  Stray dogs

8.  Those included in the present classification

9.  Those that tremble as they were mad

10. Innumerable ones

11. Those drawn with a very fine camel hair brush

12. Others 

13. Those that have just broken a flower vase

14. Those that from a long way off look like flies

Maybe I’ll use this list to help standardize the collection database at work.  I'm sure identifying animal bones as a Mermaid would be perfectly excepted. Or even better, maybe I should use this list to help us standardize other things in life like Boys:

1.  Those that are trained

2.  Those that smell good
3.   Those that smell bad

4.  Those that from a long way off look like weirdos

5.  Those that are handsome

6.  Those that belong to me