Okay, half the office is out today (people are using up vacation days, I guess), so we are entertaining ourselves with the following Very Important Question:

Which superhero is best suited to be painted on black velvet?

My vote: Thor. ("This medium, it suits me!" t light glints off Mjolnir t and Thor's golden tresses )

Which superhero is best suited to be painted on black velvet?

Dazzler!

Silver Surfer could be resplendent also.

Disco-era Nightwing.

Disco-era Nightwing.

Man, he *would* be swanky.

Oooh, apparently there may be "talent" at our holiday party tonight. But we're not supposed to bother them or ask for pictures so I assume it will just be a lot of people very casually just happening to walk up to the bar at the same time as Matt Smith and pretending it's a coincidence.

chocolates are resolved and I have handed off the poster to someone with plotter expertise.

Now to make the labels and then run buy gift cards for big boss.

Doctor Strange.

Those lions are supposed to be a genetically distinct population which is not the same thing as a new species. The original articles I read stuck to population and didn't say species (well, until IO9 and its ilk got their hands on the story), and now the articles say both, but in no way indicate why or how this is a new species. Not being pantherus leo is a huge deal--being another subspecies of pantherus leo (there are like 5, 10?) is still big, but--if you're not the same species of lion, are you still a lion?

Billytea, where are you? We need your adjudication.

There is not complete agreement in biology about how best to define a species. The definition that people use is driven by the methods that they use. A field biologist might focus on breeding potential; an anatomist on morphology; a quantitative genetic researcher on evidence of genetic separation.

Within that mess, these lions can be considered a new species or just a sub-species.

Are all the lions now one species?