Lee Poulsen wrote: "New Zealand's climate is even more unique (I hope Jim McKenney doesn't shoot me for writing "more unique") " Lee, believe me, I've been on the receiving end of such sniping all of my life. The role of grammar police does not appeal to me at all. I'm not interested in correcting other people's usage; what does interest me are the reasons people give for what they do. Sometimes I learn from those reasons. Every day now when I read the morning newspaper I see so many mistakes that if I wanted to write letters to the editor about them it would take most of the day. It sometimes seems as if most of the editors have retired. Our language is in the throes of huge changes. I'm more interested in keeping up; keeping the current crop of young writers on the straight and narrow strikes me as a waste of time - they are building their own road to their own destination according to their own plans. Here's something vaguely related to the above and to our usual topics: the Washington Post recently ran an article about a fossil reptile; the article had been gleaned from a news service, and the Post reprinted it without editing it. The article claimed that the fossil reptile had been named for a male-female couple who had worked as volunteers with the scientists who eventually named the beast. They gave it the specific name funkei based on the family name Funke. Does anyone else see the problem? Jim McKenney