Borges tidbit

Taxonomy has been on my mind lately. I was excited to read this line from JLB's "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins" at artist Paul Perry's remarkable Alamut:

Beauty belongs to the sixteenth category;
it is a living brood fish,
an oblong one.

Though tech author Douglas Crockford provides a more literal interpretation

The whale belongs to the sixteenth category; it is a viviparous oblong fish.

and points out an underlying typo—belleza (beauty) for ballena (whale)—I much prefer the former version.

Two very different sites (one extant, one not) with much to explore. Crockford has a lot to say on JavaScript. The subject index of Alamut is itself quite a taxonomic tour de force.

Speculation about "how this confusion was orca-strated" in a comment on Will Fitzgerald's translation.

There's another refreshingly unformulaic blog post about the Borges quote at readin.