On the Classification of Pipes

Bob Kasenchak, Factor Apart from the obvious health risks involved (one should not smoke too much!), pipe collecting (and occasionally: smoking) makes a wonderful hobby for taxonomists as it involves many types of classification schemes. This delightfully titled article about the classification of tobacco blends is an interesting primer; the classification of blends (comprising different types of tobacco) suffers from some of the same issues as the classification of different shapes of pipes: there is no standardized body governing these vocabularies, so nomenclature is driven by popular usage (similar in some ways to a folksonomy) and varies by region, time period, and similar factors. (Before proceeding, my first Google search result for “classification of tobacco pipes” produced–and, indeed, offered as the first result–an AI-driven answer: https://www.google.com/search?q=classifcation+of+tobacco+pipes, Accessed 26 June 2024.