{"id":31286,"date":"2015-05-10T03:00:41","date_gmt":"2015-05-10T07:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=31286"},"modified":"2015-10-11T13:52:42","modified_gmt":"2015-10-11T17:52:42","slug":"the-venn-diagram-circles-of-scientists-and-lord-of-the-rings-fans-have-a-large-overlap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/05\/10\/the-venn-diagram-circles-of-scientists-and-lord-of-the-rings-fans-have-a-large-overlap\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;&#8230;the Venn diagram circles of &#8216;scientists&#8217; and &#8216;<em>Lord of the Rings<\/em> fans&#8217; have a large overlap&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <em>The Atlantic<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/health\/archive\/2015\/05\/sciences-love-affair-with-the-lord-of-the-rings\/392216\/\" target=\"_blank\">Julie Beck<\/a> wonders &#8220;What has it got in its academic journals, precious?&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Though at first glance, science and fantasy seem to be polar opposites, the Venn diagram circles of \u201cscientists\u201d and \u201c<em>Lord of the Rings<\/em> fans\u201d have a large overlap. One could (lovingly!) label that region \u201cnerds.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fight me on that if you want, but there\u2019s plenty of evidence that suggests scientists love J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s epic. Several newly discovered animal species have been named after characters from the books \u2014 a genus of wasps in New Zealand is now called <em>Shireplitis<\/em>, with species <em>S. bilboi<\/em>, <em>S. frodoi<\/em>, <em>S. meriadoci<\/em>, <em>S. peregrini<\/em>, <em>S. samwisei<\/em> and <em>S. tolkieni<\/em>. The wasps bear the names of the hobbits because they too are \u201csmall, short, and stout,\u201d according to a press release. On the other side of the size spectrum, paleontologists named a 900-pound ancient crocodile <em>Anthracosuchus balrogus<\/em>, after the Balrog, a giant whip-wielding fire monster from <em>The Lord of the Rings<\/em>. There is also a dinosaur named after Sauron, which seems kinda harsh to me. And many, many more, if the website \u201cCurious Taxonomy\u201d is to be believed.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGiven Tolkien\u2019s passion for nomenclature, his coinage, over decades, of enormous numbers of euphonious names \u2014 not to mention scientists\u2019 fondness for Tolkien \u2014 it is perhaps inevitable that Tolkien has been accorded formal taxonomic commemoration like no other author,\u201d writes Henry Gee in his book <em>The Science of Middle Earth<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In The Atlantic, Julie Beck wonders &#8220;What has it got in its academic journals, precious?&#8221; Though at first glance, science and fantasy seem to be polar opposites, the Venn diagram circles of \u201cscientists\u201d and \u201cLord of the Rings fans\u201d have a large overlap. One could (lovingly!) label that region \u201cnerds.\u201d Fight me on that if [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,16,15],"tags":[868,122],"class_list":["post-31286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-science","category-technology","tag-jrrtolkien","tag-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-88C","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31286"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31287,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31286\/revisions\/31287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}