From "Reinventing the Dinosaur 'Life on Our Planet,' a new Netflix nature documentary, renews our fascination with our most feared and loved precursors" (The New Yorker).
We watched the first episode of this series last night. I wasn't going to continue, but now that I know that moss and plankton will get their due — that it won't be all lumbering CGI dinosaurs and Morgan Freeman speaking ponderously about who's fighting and winning dominion over Earth — I might give another episode a chance.
Posts
32 comments:
“Morgan Freeman speaking ponderously…”
Lol.
Reminds me: About twenty years ago a woman we knew who'd been raised Catholic suddenly became an evangelical. It hurt her that we, as Jews, were going to hell and there was nothing she could do about it. One day I gave her my copy of Michener's The Source, amazing book the traces the history of the Jews. She brought it back the next day. I said, "You couldn't have read it all, it's 700 pages." She said, "It begins a hundred thousand years ago, and the earth is only 6,000 years old."
I love koans and other analogies which reinforce the incomprehensibility of time to the human animal. For instance, the time passed from Jesus to today is now greater than the time passed from Jesus to Abraham (believed to be anywhere from 1500 to 1900 years BCE, or roughly Mesolithic to Late Neolithic to Bronze Age I or II).
Another good one is multiplications of the minutes on a traditional clock. If each minute on a 12hr clock was 400 years ago, Alexander the Great was busting up Achaemenids 6 minutes ago, humans began forming permanent settlements 25 minutes ago, the dinosaurs lived 44 years ago, and Earth formed 937 years ago.
Linear time is trippy.
PBS had a recent Nova where they explained the Permian Die Off, the greatest mass extinction event in the planet's history, was caused by the buildup of CO2 from volcanic activity burning coal deposits over 300,000 years. Then there was the obligatory dig at modern life saying we are increasing CO2 at a faster rate. How much faster? Twice, so we'd have 150,000 years, or ten times, so we have 30,000 years to get the same place?
Pay attention for nonsense like that while watching this show.
Chaos, Inference, and Secular (CIS) faith.
Beyond dinosaurs, I want to see the world when it had giant dragonflies and ferns. Earth also had a very long frozen-ish "snowball" era. Not to mention Earth's early collision with the proto-moon that resulted in the current moon and a very long period of melt/volcanism. And then there were later eras of extreme volcanism (Siberian traps, Indian traps, Yellowstone super volcano), and routine ice ages (see the Columbia river Washington, etc.).
Human are living through a perfect spring day relative to Earth's numerous tough eras.
A history of the Jews goes back 100,000 years? Oy.
I remember being startled to learn that no dinosaur ever saw a flower. Some things I just imagined to have been around forever.
"plankton, by inventing photosynthesis and thereby giving off oxygen in the course of some two billion years, transformed Earth’s yellow methane-filled atmosphere into blue skies, and the lifeless landscape into forests of green?"
And since oxygen was poisonous to most life on earth, causing the first great extinction.
I've been tired of Morgan Freeman since the Jurassic Period.
There was also a time when the Kingdom of Fungi held dominion. Some were the size of trees.
They are genetically much more closely related to us, by the way, than they are to the trees under which they grow.
"But who knew (other than paleontologists) that there was a time in Earth’s history when it rained for a million years?"
I did. But then, I read about a lot of dinosaur stuff when I was a kid. I bet lots of other people did, too.
If only Al Gore, John Kerry, Joe Biden, James Hansen, et al had been present at the creation, most of this nastiness could have been avoided.
Here's one for RSM--we are closer in time to Cleopatra than she was to the first pharoahs.
As for moss and the like, Bill Bryson has a good line. "Life wants to be. It just doesn't want to be much."
I saw that NOVA episode too. Without fail, no matter the topic, politicized nonsense will be thrown in to 'splain.
My daughter and I are up to episode 5 or 6. So we have hit the beginning of the dinosaur eras. I think it is worth you giving it another episode or two.
One day, a jealous battle starts over a new life-form: a flower.
I say: a flower! And, out of the oblivion where my voice casts every contour, insofar as it is something other than the known bloom, there arises, musically, the very idea in its mellowness; in other words, what is absent from every bouquet.
Mallarme, Divagations, p.210
"Man gave names to all the animals
In the beginning, in the beginning
Man gave names to all the animals
In the beginning, long time ago"
"lumbering CGI dinosaurs and Morgan Freeman speaking ponderously"
Ann, you crack me up sometimes.
All of that decayed flora is what is now our glorious fossil fuels. We have mostly plankton to thank, but also plant/ferns and the remnant decay of other then-living organisms.
All of that decayed flora is what is now our glorious fossil fuels. We have mostly plankton to thank, but also plant/ferns and the remnant decay of other then-living organisms.
Wait, you mean global warming has happened before? What kind of SUVs were those mosses and flowers driving? And how - on Earth - did they get out of that terrible existential problem?
"Lumbering CGI dinosaurs." Trump was lumbering yesterday. People like Sedaris are frightened of him, as if he was a scary dinosaur. Just saying.
I’ve enjoyed this Netflix offering so far, but I did remark to my wife “I wonder who Hollyweird will use when Morgan Freeman dies?”
We have watched the 1st 2 episodes.
No opportunity missed to emphasize the danger of changing CO2 levels.
Morgan Freeman's ponderosity is nearly intolerable; I actually tried to find a way to increase the playback speed as on YouTube but no success.
Help?
"But who knew ..."
Anyone with a passing interest in Earth's history.
"They are genetically much more closely related to us, by the way, than they are to the trees under which they grow."
And thus you have the plot for The Last of Us.
M Jordan:
“Morgan Freeman speaking ponderously…”
Lol.
Yeah, that one got me too. I've heard him described as sonorous, but he devolved into ponderous for me years ago. Helps if you ever hear him speaking candidly. Different voice.
Morgan Freeman? Isn't James Earl Jones still around? Or to class it up more, Sir David Attenborough.
Tom T.:
I remember being startled to learn that no dinosaur ever saw a flower.
I would be too considering flowering plants emerged ~140Myr ago and dinosaurs lasted until 66Myr ago.
Angiosperms appeared in the late Jurassic/early Cretaceous and quickly replaced cycads and ferns as the dominant land plants in the Cretaceous.
Enigma:
Beyond dinosaurs, I want to see the world when it had giant dragonflies and ferns.
YouTube has some very good videos on exactly that topic.
re Pete:
Man gave names to all the animals
In the beginning, in the beginning ....
It's been shown that many birds and primates have names for other animals and even listen to and understand each other's vocalizations.
You can't fool me. It was all Trump's fault then, and it's all Trump's fault now.
It rained for a million years?
In temperate climates we all experience dew, when the air cools at night and water vapor condenses out of it. Ditto when we have a frost.
So how, one asks, would unceasing rain happen thermodynamically?
If the air was saturated with water vapor, which is what happens when it rains, how would evaporation from the seas and land occur to replenish the rain falling from the sky?
Makes no sense at all.
Post a Comment