Phylogeny of Elves

Monday, December 28th, 2015

A recent phylogenetic study confirms what I’ve long contended:

This study reconstructs the evolutionary tree of elves using 26 life history, morphological, behavioral, and magical characters. Notably, we include Christmas elves, J.K. Rowling’s elves, and the elves of The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit. Our findings suggest that Christmas elves should not be classified as elves but are actually more closely related to dwarves.

Posted in Media, Science | 2 Comments »

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Bob Sykes says:

December 28, 2015 at 4:16 pm

Now, we need a phylogeny of the reindeer.
Slovenian Guest says:

December 29, 2015 at 4:47 pm

No problem, Warwick Davis can play both!

Fun fact from Rod in the article comments:

The difference between faeries and pixies is largely good intent vs evil intent rather than a difference in morphology. Pixies will hide cups or forks until just after you have set the dishwasher going or hide your reading glasses. Faeries will put your car keys where you can find them or place a coin down the side of a sofa when you desperately need it.

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McChuck: Anybody who has ever played a wargame can tell you that your defenses can handle a certain amount of opposition, but when enemy numbers, regardless of quality, exceed that number, you get overrun. The mobs in Mogadishu back in 1993 weren’t well organized, weren’t well equipped, weren’t well trained, and weren’t well led. But there sure were a whole lot of them shooting at the Rangers.
Russell: New article about Thorp https://archive.ph/fq5JC
Phileas Frogg: The class divide in the US is as deep and wide as any as has existed in history, but instead of acknowledging the divide, much less trying to bridge it, we have chosen moralization and mutual animosity, which will be the death of us.
Freddo: https://www.zerohedge.co m/geopolitical/us-drones -are-expensive-and-error -prone-so-ukraine-turns- china
Jim: The principle applies whatever the source of the wall-penetrating radio waves in question.
Phileas Frogg: In conjunction with the Rob Henderson excerpt one can safely conclude that neither drug use, nor sexual immorality, can be meaningfully correlated with class. “But poverty causes crime!” Does it?
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Bruce: Very glad to see @TerraformIndies here. This could be really big. For example, why not put a Terrform Indies converter on every nuclear power plant in front of those electric heaters in the cooling towers? Closer to where people need natural gas than oil wells where they just burn the natural gas off because it’s not worth transport costs. And if CO2 is bad, like the climate change people say, it’s great to have a way to turn CO2 to something useful. And worse case, it’s a...
Namur: Well, it’s all about EROI (Energy Returned on Invested). Can this machine produce more energy in the form of natural gas than it consumes in the first place? Also, the energy to build and operate it also counts. Now, let’s say that it works: we are still far away for something like it that works for Diesel, the holy grail of our energy society.
Wawa: Misery causes drug abuse, whether rich or poor. Junkies and drunks are just self medicating in a self destructive way. When thousands of American soldiers, who were hooked on heroin, returned from Vietman the vast majority quickly kicked the habit. With the reason for their misery gone they stopped using. I noticed this first hand, when a buddy moved in with his girlfriend. Before she moved in he was a social drinker, after a few months with her he was an alcoholic. When she moved out he fully...
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Freddo: The armies of Ukraine and Russia are showing what can be done if it needs to be ready tomorrow and everything is expandable. Boeing is showing what happens when the procurement channel is filled with DEI hires.
Jim: Fun! https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=bIVzK-h6qao
McChuck: Laser designators also use a coded pulse system. That avoids spoofing and also enables multiple projectiles to be inbound to separate targets simultaneously.

Isegoria

Phylogeny of Elves

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