Good luck with that.
Hey, someone has to fight the good fight!
Next up: Are dolphins whales?
Actually, they’re both fish (according to both the traditional meaning of “fish” for any aquatic animal, and the cladistic one).
Dolphins are mammels and not fish, no? Miami Dolphin fans excepted.
Dolphins are both mammals and fish. And mammalian dolphins, cladistically speaking, are also fish. (See my post #31 above.)
Wouldn’t it be simpler to just classify them all as “critters”?
In that case, you are a fish too. (And I’m a monkey’s uncle – but don’t tell my nieces and nephews that I said that.)
Yep. We are fish and monkeys and apes. You’re welcome, Uncle Giles!!
The good new is, you’re probably NOT a reptile.
George: The sea was angry that day, my friends - like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli. I got about fifty feet out and suddenly, the great beast appeared before me. I tell you he was ten stories high if he was a foot. As if sensing my presence, he let out a great bellow. I said, “Easy, big fella!” And then, as I watched him struggling, I realized that something was obstructing its breathing. From where I was standing, I could see directly into the eye of the great fish.
Jerry: Mammal.
George: Whatever.
Yes, whales are fish, ants are bugs, and the millennium started at midnight, Jan. 1, 2000. There is common usage and technical usage and they will never be brought into congruence. So what!
Cladistically, aren’t bananas also Krullian pipefish? 
I now I don’t know jack, and possibly. . . .
Prachettian evolution is something quite different from both Darwinian and Lamarkian evolution. On the Diskworld, it’s quite possible forbananafish to evolve.
This opens up an opportunity to use my favourite not-entirely-serious definition of a clade. >_>
‘Reptiles’ (aka Sauropsids) include ‘all amniotes closer to snakes than to St. Patrick’.
I disagree. Not all useful groupings must be clades.
I mean, “Members of the SDMB” is not a clade, but it’s still useful to distinguish the smartest, hippest people on the planet (plus a few dipsticks) from the rest of the world. “Bugs”, in the general sense, is not a clade, but it still conveys useful information when someone says “I don’t like bugs”.
Cladistically speaking, birds are a subset of dinosaurs, but we all understand that if a kid wants a dinosaur model for her birthday, she’ll be disappointed if she gets a chicken.
There are times when it’s important to correct common usages that are scientifically incorrect (human “races” for instance), but not always.
If someone requests fish for dinner, they should reasonably expect shark steaks, but not beef, and that’s the way it should be.
So essentially, you’re saying a tomato isn’t a fruit?
The ancients pretty much had it “swam in the ocean= fish” which is why we get “Jellyfish” etc. 
I think Linnaeus should have just skipped the term.
What sort of evolutionary magic would it take to allow dolphins to live on land and sea? They wouldnt be amphibians, right?
If we’re talking about salad, a tomato is NOT a fruit. Nor is an eggplant or peppercorn a fruit. But a blackberry is a berry.
If we’re talking about plant morphology, in a way that has made it clear we’re using common English words in the narrow technical meanings somewhat arbitrarily imposed by plant morphologists, then a tomato is a fruit, while a blackberry in not a berry. (IMHO, the technical and common meanings of ‘fruit’ are close enough that it’s OK, but they really should create a new word to take over the technical meaning of ‘berry’; there’s just too much gap between the common and technical use. And the common use was here first).
A tomato is scientifically a fruit, while culinary a vegetable. It’s a fruit, eaten as a vegetable.