But She Wouldn't Even Get The Joke...

A quick bit of current affairs in case you missed it.

A biotech firm, Colossal Biosciences, claims to have resurrected an extinct species.  

The Dire Wolf roamed North and South America during the last ice age but went extinct long before Europeans landed here.  They also happens to be a key species in the Game of Thrones novels and tv series.

The link to the story is here.

All of that is pretty cool, with a side order of ethical concern.  Should we be bringing back species that Mother Nature took off the table thousands of years ago?  What about species wiped out by human action?  If nothing else, you do have to ask the Jurassic Park question:  Just because we can, should we?

None of that prompted this article. 

CNN has a feature called "Five Good Things" that comes from their audio side.  Here is the link to the transcript for this week.

This week it featured this exchange between the CEO of Colossal Biosciences and the host, Krista Bo:

Krista Bo
By using genes from their closest living relative, the gray wolf, they've created three pups. And maybe you can guess what their names are.

Ben Lamm
'The first are now six-months-old, that's Romulus and Remus.

Krista Bo
Now, in case you're like me and didn't watch "Game of Thrones," those are characters from the series. HBO, by the way, shares a parent company with CNN.

No Krista, they aren't.  Romulus and Remus do not appear anywhere in the Game of Thrones books or television show.  The third pup, a female, was named "Khaleesi" after the title given to  Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones.

Romulus and Remus are the mythological founders of ancient Rome, famously and (I thought) universally known to have been raised by a she-wolf as depicted below in one of the most famous statues on the planet:

 

Yeah, Romans had some weird ideas...

 

Back in the way, way back I used to have a bit of a reputation for being a sarcastic so-and-so when I ran up against people confidently proclaiming stupid shit.  Lord knows I've had it done to me more than once!  I might fancy myself something of a wordsmith, but I was once fully and rightly burned on the use of "penultimate" in an article I wrote and it still stings.  If you put it out there, someone will call you on it.

I wrote all this without knowing that the third pup was indeed named after a Game of Thrones character.  Sadly that makes all this slightly less sarcastically perfect, but I'm gonna go for it anyhow, since it's not clear from the transcript and I still like the gag...

In this case the obvious and perfect rejoinder would have been:

"How does a CNN host not know that Romulus and Remus come from Roman Mythology?  What, were you raised by wolves?" 

You can see the problem.