Everyone seems to be “pivoting to video”, including the creationists, so I might as well join in the fun. The Discovery Institute put out a quasi-animated video with a young hipster narrator to promote science denialism — they want to claim that the whale transitional series is bogus, and that all those fossils are just a random jumble of unconnected species that somehow just appeared, and none of them are really intermediates. So I had to expose the flaws in their thinking. Unstylishly, of course.
If I look a little bit squinky-eyed, it’s because I only noticed after recording it that the sun was glaring in through the window to one side. Next time I do one of these, I’d better draw the blinds.
Actually, the grandmother joke is the high point of the Discovery Institute’s video because it has the highest truth content: Grandmothers like to feed their grandchildren. That’s usually correct!
I’m sure Captain Ahab had a similar malevolent squint when he chased down Moby Dick. Harpoon the blighters.
The mildly deranged penguin claims Captain Ahab was actually a very nice guy, laughing all the time, a practical joker, but with similarities to Falstaff. Melville, she says, took considerable literary liberties in his story, for instance claiming his leg was bitten off by Moby Dick, when in actual fact, he was gored by a amorous walrus disguised as a vase of petunias. Moby Dick did drag him to his death, she confirms, but that was only because he refused to let go of the water ski towrope and missed the rendezvous with the prestationed undersea flying (rescue) saucer. (He was a practical joker, albeit with Falstaff’s organisational & drinking skills.)
Someone at the Discovery Institute must have watched When Whales Walked: Journeys into Deep Time on PBS recently and was scandalised.