I wandered over to the Daily Howler today to see what he's dishing out, and lo and behold,
he talks about March of the Penguins, and how the Emperor Penguin is a terrific counterexample to the notion of Intelligent Design.
Sure, ID deserves heavy criticism, but to my bird-sensitive ears, his paragraph seemed marinated in contempt for this remarkable animal. I guess that's what it takes to get me going, so I wrote this short missive telling him to lay off my penguin homies (below the flip):
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Hey, if you want to rag on March of the Penguins, that's fine (even though I enjoyed it immensely). But lay off the Emperor Penguin, and its reproductive cycle. Yes, it is byzantine, but it is also very successful. They certainly have fared much better than their northern hemisphere counterpart, the Great Auk, with whom they shared similar characteristics. Not having to reproduce near hungry human sailors (not to mention other land predators) has been a valuable trait.
"Hapless", those penguins are not, if you understand the meaning of the word. I think you exercise a bit too much zeal in denigrating their system, in your effort to discredit ID. ID certainly deserves derision, but not at the expense of making it seem that there is no method to the penguin's madness. Randomness is indeed a part of evolution, but the penguins continue to propagate not simply due to blind luck, as you insinuate.
Respectfully,
Eric
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Don't diss the penguin!