I have a new geeky Christmas card design available in my store. The Christmas Tree of Life:
And don’t forget my Darwinian design from last year:
If you’re going to send Christmas cards to scientists or freethinkers, why not do it with a biological twist? Discounts are available if you order in bulk, so go check them out!
Blag Hag
Atheism, feminism, geekery
Oh so that’s what the “Santa” one looked like. I saw your cup, but couldn’t see the reverse so couldn’t see the whole design. Cute!
OK… not that I’m complaining, since I speak spanish, but the comments here seem to be listing the time posted in … spanish?
How confident are you in the clade with Santa and Elves with Reindeer as the outgroup? I need some bootstrap values, please.
Jesus Christ this is brilliant. This is one of those ideas that makes me angry I didn’t think of it myself.
I actually wasted way too much time looking up the evolutionary relationship between firs, poinsettias, holly, and mistletoe. Though I ended up having to effectively estimate the branch lengths, which bothered me for a while until I realized no one would probably care :P
Nice! I wonder how we could fit /Homo toymakerus/ into the homonid family tree, and how we could reconcile its small size, pointy ears, and other characteristics with its apparent polar habtat? Santa at least has an unusually large surface area to volume ratio for a hominid, which would be useful in that climate, but elves’ ratios are abnormally small. And their ears would be susceptible to frostbite.However, I can’t resist the urge to nitpick: your reindeer appear to have horse-like hooves, and your first proto-reindeer appears to have three toes. Reindeer are cervids, which are /even-toed/ ungulates!
Bah. Santa has a /small/ surface area to volume ratio; the elves have a large one.
“Homo toymakerus”Oh, come on. Surely, Homo ludicrifex (ludicrum = toy, -fex = maker) would have worked!All still cute, though.
Shouldn’t Santa be “Hoho” sapiens?
WHY DIDN’T I DO THIS O.O
Irrefutable Proof! Evolution impossible!Congressman John Shimkus Quoted the Bible to prove that there is no global warming.”The Earth will end only when God declares it’s time to be over. Man will not destroy this Earth..” I’m not sure what this says about global warming, but it does prove that evolution never happened.As created by God 6,000 years ago his brain has never ‘evolved’.Congressman J. Shimkus is never left the Garden of Eden.
it’s why we blog. stealing from the comments = almost as good as “stealing from the Masters.”
Actually, according to “Twas the Night Before Christmas”, Santa is an elf too.