Comments on: You know what? They’re just birds

By: Pandamonium | Cosmic Variance

Pandamonium | Cosmic Variance — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 05:56:14 +0000

[...] What can I say? Black and white animals can be ridiculously cute. Especially if they’re baby ones. Spotted* in the LA Times was an article about Tai Shan (pictured in my lunchbox above), the 4 and a half month old Giant Panda cub (photo is from earlier) which gave its first official press conference to the national media yesterday in Washington DC. [...]

By: janet

janet — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 17:47:13 +0000

Also on this topic, a post about this movie by a blogger friend of mine, a couple of months ago:

http://badgerbag.typepad.com/badgerbag/2005/07/waddling.html

She uses pseudonyms on her blog — “Moomin” is her son.

By: janet

janet — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 17:30:58 +0000

It looks to me as though the Guardian story draws heavily on this NY Times story of 9/13:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/13/science/13peng.html

By: Fabien Besnard

Fabien Besnard — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 16:35:47 +0000

Just to correct. The first movie of this kind was “Microcosmos”, and “le peuple de l’herbe” was the sequel.

By: Fabien Besnard

Fabien Besnard — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 09:03:10 +0000

You said that “the march of the penguins” is a documentary, but is it really one ? These last years there have been a lot of movies about wildlife that have a kind of “mystic” tone. The first one was “le peuple de l’herbe”, I don’t know if it has had the same success overseas that “la marche de l’empereur”. In this one there were absoulutely no commentary. I think the audience was supposed to be just in awe before the grand work of mother nature. In the original version of “la marche de l’empereur” there are no voiceover. Instead the penguins are talking themselves ! This tendency to semtimentalism, anthropomorphism and sometimes religious-like admiration is also more and more present in “science’ TV shows, at least the ones I get to see in France. The scientific content of these sort of shows is more and more emtpy and I’m afraid real scientific popularization is seen as outdated. The problem is, as you pointed out, that it makes the task easier for all sorts of obscurantists.

By: Matt B.

Matt B. — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 08:57:13 +0000

Interesting point Maynard…

It’s ironic that the ability to argue that the whole made the parts evidently comes from the parts making the whole.

By: Maynard Handley

Maynard Handley — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 07:10:49 +0000

Surely there has to be a way to contrast the ID issue with the “invisible hand”? Something along the lines of:
Well if you don’t think vast numbers of small things can add up to remarkable results, I assume you don’t believe that economies should be run as the sum of a vast number of small decisions, but should be guided by a single “Intelligent Planner” who describes in exact detail everything that should happen.

It seems to me that this is as useful a way as any of countering this nonsense.

By: Sean

Sean — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 04:39:11 +0000

I think we can all agree that Republicans have a lot to learn from the penguins. But what are we going to do about the gay ones?