I'm not 100% sure now that I properly communicated my annoyance with the platypus/echidna episode, so I'll spell it out just to be sure.
The final straw for me was not that the answer "platypus" was wrong, but that Stephen was happy to use the word "echidna" in more or less the very next sentence. Echidna is a genus of moray eels; in order to adhere to his own standards of pedantry he should have said Tachyglossus. This was slightly more hypocrisy than I could momentarily take.
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Date: 2008-02-03 05:11 pm (UTC)The final straw for me was not that the answer "platypus" was wrong, but that Stephen was happy to use the word "echidna" in more or less the very next sentence. Echidna is a genus of moray eels; in order to adhere to his own standards of pedantry he should have said Tachyglossus. This was slightly more hypocrisy than I could momentarily take.