Indeed a Wonderful World

Tigger and I just watched disc one of the BBC documentary "Planet Earth", with narration by David Attenborough last night.

Point one: netflix is fantastic. I know, I know, 2003 called and wants its revelation back. I just finally gave in and started netflixing things, and am sheepishly compelled to admit that it is pretty damn nice. Now let's just leave that be.

The thing that really struck me was, well, how lousy the life of a Panda is... they have too mediocre and marginal a diet to be able to put on enough fat to hibernate. They have to stay up all winter, eating bamboo, simply because they can't manage to eat anything else up there...

It also means that the milk they feed their young is "tremendously poor", and makes the young Panda cubs develop woefully slowly, taking months before even opening their eyes.

The scene segued to a group of monkeys in China, who live at the same high altitudes as the Pandas, and are the only primates to live in that cold an environment in the world. All I could think, with this bolt from above, was:

"My God. They're Chinese Blue-Faced Freezer Monkeys!"

All of this is evidence to me that there is no such thing as intelligent design, even if I had believed in it before (I didn't, I don't, I don't think you have a brain if you do), as it's all just too strange and sometimes silly to be designed.

Hell, if there were intelligent design, why not just have the Pandas eat...






monkeys.




So, long story short, get Planet Earth on DVD, go forth and get it NOW. Get the one with David Attenborough, he's just brilliant and soothing, and I remember him from documentaries that were great even as far back as my childhood. This one also has footage that will have you pretty much constantly asking yourself "How could they have possibly gotten those shots? HOW?" (This would include underwater, paw level action scenes of bears fishing literally within arms length of a camera lens, occasionally bumping it.)

I'm serious.

It seemed like a constant thought, but it may have been interrupted with a second or two of "WOW!" here and there.

I'm going to be checking your queues to find out who's been listening to me, people (all one to three of you.)