Entries in Life

One can choose to view chance selection as obvious evidence that there is no God, as Dr. Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and uncompromising atheist, might argue, or to conclude instead that God chooses to work through natural means. In the latter case, the overwhelming evidence that natural selection has determined the evolution of life on earth would simply imply that God is “the cause of causes,” as Cardinal Ratzinger’s document describes it. The very fact that two such diametrically opposed views can be applied to the same scientific theory demonstrates that the fact of evolution need not dictate theology.

School Boards Want to ‘Teach the Controversy.’ What Controversy? (Ok, I realize I’m posting a lot of excerpts today…. forgive me.)

… it takes a vulgarian genius such as Lucas to create a landscape in which actions can carry vast importance but no discernible meaning, in which style is strangled at birth by design, and in which the intimate and the ironic, not the Sith, are the principal foes to be suppressed.

–Anthony Lane reviews Episode III

So, you’re riding down the highway in Australia and hit a kangaroo. The poor animal is suffering. It’s going to die. What to do? Here’s what Andrew Pollock did:

I decided that the best thing I could do was put it out of its misery, which was not something I was really happy about doing, as if you haven’t already figured out, I’m a bit of an animal lover. I returned to the car to find something to do the deed with, and the only thing I could think of was the steering wheel lock. So I grabbed that and went back to the kangaroo. Problem was, I just couldn’t do it. I raised it a few times to take a swing at the back of the head, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I ended up going back to get the car to try and finish it off with that. I ran over it once, and as I was turning the car around to head back off in the right direction again, I noticed it was still moving, so I ran over it again. I couldn’t bring myself to check again after that. It was the first kangaroo I’ve ever hit, and Sarah and I were both a bit traumatised from the experience.