The Future is Wild

Aren't the 'experts' not the funniest ever???!!!! sorta twitchy guys that havn't seen daylight for years and can't even look straight at the camera!!! hehehe :lol:
 
Just like every lab prof. I ever had though...I had one that was a supposed expert on mycology, and had never been in the woods. Ever. Hey, I mean, books are great, but really!
Greg
 
Perhaps I'm simply an uncharitable fellow, but the experts seem more than just a little twitchy. I suspect their fantasy lives involve braziers of incense and animal minions. "Praetorian Squibbons, fetch me a sassy new oracle." That sort of thing.

:roll:
 
wouldnt surpirse me...i thouhgt i saw an ad for it on animal planet....ive never been a fan of them... is it me or has scientific tv (discovery, nat'l geo., discovery, etc) gotten a tad preachy? unfortunately i do have something to compare it to... a couple of years ago i lived with 2 bio majors and my then girlfriend..... my partner in crime (one of the bio majors not my gf) and i were subjected to all kinds of inane animal oriented programing but never really preached at..... the past two or three months when ive been flipping channels and beeen taken aback at their attitudes (plus the idiotic home video shows on animal planet)...

is knowledge available anymore without a perspective?

clem - its not only the "experts" but probably the animators too...
 
Well, the Big Calamari (a retired high school biology teacher) agrees with y'all about TFIW. Though he enjoys the show immensely, he considers it "info-tainment" with not much basis in evolutionary science. F'rinstance, when it was mentioned that insects would grow larger because "there will be more oxygen in Earth's atmosphere", he immediately questioned why there would be more oxygen (it was never explained). He also doubted that Cephs would move onto the land ( :cry: ~ snif ~)

I don't care, I enjoy it anyway. (Besides, on that show about the Moon, a geologist speculated that if there were no Moon the dominant life form on Earth would probably be Cephs. Deal with that, O ye of little faith!)

Still the dominant life form on this PC (about 50% of the time),
Me
 
I think the "Great Blue Windrunner" was the animal what lost me. Talk about conceptual bloat: a blue bird with a staggered wing configuration, canard foreplanes, nictitating eye membranes and unique individual markings invisible to all but members of the species. Most any geek with an interest in Russian aviation would see the "Windrunner" for what it is: an organic iteration of the Sukhoi "Flanker" family of interceptor/strike aircraft. Neato, up to a point, but I don't expect birds to start emulating aircraft anytime in the distant future.
 
Clem,

Excellent observation! I know nothing about aircraft, so I would never have picked up on that.

Still in all, though they may be the stuff of s.f., the TFIW critters are at very least imaginative and at very best breathtaking. Who could deny the beauty of the Windrunner, the Rainbow Squid, or (sorry, Clem!) the Ocean Phantom? If there ever is such a thing as a Great Blue Windrunner, I would like to be reincarnated as one.... :smile:

Besides, if aliens observed our planet during the pre-Cambrian era, how likely is it that they would have envisioned dinosaurs millions of years thence? Truth is far stranger than fiction.

BTW, this leads me to a potentially sensitive subject, as I would be naïve to assume that every person who visits this site is necessarily an Evolutionist. Speaking as a believing Christian who finds no conflict between evolutionary science and the Genesis creation accounts (presuming the latter are interpreted metaphorically), it really irks me to see "Scientific Creationists" and other fundamentalists use THE FUTURE IS WILD as fodder for their arguments against evolution. I've seen lots of this lately on fundamentalist message boards, and it strikes me as the same sort of "selective logic" of which Biblical fundamentalists habitually accuse liberal believers. IMHO, one of the flaws of TFIW is juxtaposing the speculative creatures against proven evolutionary accounts of present-day animals. The Creationists apparently see this as a perfect example of the "spurious" reasoning of Evolutionists, and have a field day with it on their message boards. Accordingly, I really wish that there were more caveats on TFIW about purely speculative nature of the show.

I'm not here to debate theology with anyone, but I would be interested to hear if anyone else has encountered this misuse of the show by "Scientific Creationists", either online or in person.

Just curious,
Tani
 
TaningiaDanae said:
I'm not here to debate theology with anyone, but I would be interested to hear if anyone else has encountered this misuse of the show by "Scientific Creationists", either online or in person.

Taningia,

This is the first I've heard of Creationists appropriating TFIW ideas, for purposes of argument. To be fair (and to gift the curious) I've embedded a link to an outfit doing just that sort of work.

Give the Fundamentalists their due, however: they should be recognized for the forthright clarity of their beliefs, so unlike the "Intelligent Design" proponents seeking to re-introduce Genesis into classrooms by stealth.

Clem
 
I tried to watch another episode last night but I gave up after 10mins.. It was the one with a sub-species of rattleback.. so their imagination was so dry that they had to do the same animal again?! And the burrowing birds, what was it? Spinks?

Anyway, utter crap and that's my view on the programme, the narator has nothing to say and he's saying it too loud!

I think I have worked out the recipe... take any two animals and make one evolve into the other... and that's it. There is nothing clever or wild about that...

The Future is Kinda Backwards
 
Clem said:
Taningia,

This is the first I've heard of Creationists appropriating TFIW ideas, for purposes of argument. To be fair (and to gift the curious) I've embedded a link to an outfit doing just that sort of work.

Give the Fundamentalists their due, however: they should be recognized for the forthright clarity of their beliefs, so unlike the "Intelligent Design" proponents seeking to re-introduce Genesis into classrooms by stealth.

Clem

Very interesting link, and I was surprised to see it was sponsored by Muslims rather than Fundamentalist Christians.

I do credit Scientific Creationists for clarity of beliefs, but not for logic. Did you know, for instance, that many of them explain away fossils by contending they were placed in the earth by "satan" to test the faith of "true Christians"? I know this because I have a traditionalist Catholic netpal -- otherwise a brilliant and well-educated man -- who stands by that argument. (I am BTW a liberal-progressive Catholic.)

I also agree with you about the Intelligent Design movement. It especially bothers me that they have co-opted the term "intelligent design" for their own. Like many liberal Christians, I accept the original concept of intelligent design to support what is already known about evolution -- i.e., I believe that the "big bang" and evolution (including the recent concept of punctuated equilibrium) are the mechanisms by which the Deity effected the creation of the present-day universe and present-day life on Earth, respectively. I also fully accept the time-frame given by cosmologists and evolutionary scientists for the age of the universe and of our planet.

I would of course respectfully disagree with Stephen Hawking and the late Stephen Jay Gould (both of whom I respect profoundly) about their philosophical interpretations of the "big bang" and evolution / punctuated equilibrium -- i.e., that these facts necessarily imply a random and mindless universe. So yes, I believe in intelligent design, but in the literal sense, not as a thinly-concealed re-packaging of "Creation Science".

BTW, as you might know, in Hinduism -- and Theosophy, the western esoteric movement which incorporates many esoteric Hindu and Buddhist concepts -- there exists the idea of the "day of Brahman" and "night of Brahman", which is the much earlier predecessor of the "pulsation theory" of the universe, i.e., an endless, beginningless universe alternately expanding and contracting throughout eternity. (Implying that the "big bang" is a non-unique event.) Considering that as far as I know no one has determined exactly what preceded the "big bang", there may indeed be room for the Hindu concept of creation in modern cosmology as well.

Fascinating stuff!

:!:
Taningia
 
I not only think that in the future, birds and fish will resemble current fighter aircraft design, but will also carry rolling airframe missiles...easier to take out prey items that way! :biggrin2:
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I am more of a paradigm-shift person myself...I don't really believe in steady evolution. Any one out there read Greg Bear's stuff on the evolution/Pshift in humans???
Greg
 
cthulhu77 said:
I am more of a paradigm-shift person myself...I don't really believe in steady evolution. Any one out there read Greg Bear's stuff on the evolution/Pshift in humans???
Greg

Hi Greg --

I hadn't heard of Greg Bear before (my s.f. fandom goes back to the days of Sturgeon, Bradbury, and Asimov), but I found this site via a search and skimmed some of the material:

Greg Bear

If my superficial reading is right, it appears that he believes the action of viruses can result in abrupt changes to species. Quite an interesting concept.

Nowadays, from what I gather, the standard scientific view is no longer pure Darwinism, but Darwinism with the additional concept of Punctuated Equilibrium (proposed by the late, great Stephen Jay Gould) -- i.e., slow change punctuated by abrupt mutations resulting in periodic evolutionary "leaps" by species:

Punctuated Equilibrium

Punctuated equilibrium - Wikipedia

http://www.nature.com/nsu/020520/020520-3.html
[scroll down to mid-page -- or better yet, read entire obit for this remarkable man]

Of course, viruses are not postulated as the cause of Punctuated Equilibrium, and I don't know what SJG would've thought of that concept, but certainly there is no reason to dismiss the concept completely.

It would be interesting to see what the fossil records say about this in relation to Cephs -- Phil, feel free to jump in here! -- though it's obvious that they have changed far less radically in the course of aeons than primates and their/our ancestors.

Tani
(a SJG fan in all but metaphysics)
 
Oh, do yourself a big favour and pick up "blood music" or "darwin's children"...you will be a fan in no time!!!
Fascinating theories abound...who can say????


Only Cthulhu Knows.

hehe.
Greg
 
Okay, so its not great science...

So "The Future is Wild" is not great science and the animation is a bit limited and the narration goes on a bit long, but at least its fun! Its nice to see a bit of imagination in an animal program.

Australian cable is about half way through the series, saw the swampus episode on Tuesday.

Hey, its cute and it just might spark a child's imagination to look further.

KRin
 
Oh, all in all, it is way better than the trash that is on normally...just grousing about the repetition of some stuff...
I do like the squibbons...very funny/cool!
 

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