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If you believe in evolution, there is nothing wrong with rape. In fact, you can’t really call it rape. Whoopi Goldberg dismissed Roman Polanski’s rape conviction by declaring that it “wasn’t rape-rape” (see her comments on The View.) As a firm believer in evolution, she should have said, “There’s nothing wrong with rape or sexual aggression. That’s how we all got here!” Here’s the premise: Whatever animals do in nature is natural. What’s natural is normal. What’s normal is moral. So if penguins engage in homosexual behavior, then that behavior must be natural, normal, and moral. How can we mere...

David Attenborough is 80 in May, but he has been such a steady, visible presence in our lives .............................. .................................................... It is a brusqueness reflected in his views about the natural world. Attenborough refers to the "irrational romanticism" which dominates so much natural history coverage, including, he suggests, the films March of the Penguins and Born Free. "I mean, Elsa the lioness is a story which is entirely based on violence. George Adamson shot Elsa's mother in the first place; they sustained the cub by killing antelope themselves and giving her half-dead antelope so that she could toy with them...

King Kong and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe have taken away technical honours at the Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles. The Peter Jackson-directed King Kong has won three of the four Academy Awards it was nominated for: visual effects, sound mixing and sound editing. Andrew Adamson's The Chronicles of Narnia has won an Oscar for make-up, but lost out to King Kong for its other two nominations in visual effects and sound mixing. Philip Syemour Hoffman has won the Best Actor award for his portrayal of the waspish gay author Truman Capote, in...

If the bell tolls for the demise of the evil or the stupid, it is the voice of God's Law, evolution. Forms which are fit, survive. The others are -- we'll call it -- recycled. March, 2006 -- It was on the evening of February 25th. One of the Dish network channels aired it. The L.A. Film Criitics and Robert Redford’s Sundance festival raved, as did Ebert and whoever replaced Gene Siskel. Two thumbs way up, they said about this piece of videographic crap. Remember that word. Crap. We’ll get beyond the metaphor later. Timothy Treadwell, not his real name,...

Opening today, the documentary Grizzly Man revisits the life and violent death of Timothy Treadwell, a controversial wildlife activist who spent 13 summers living among bears in the Alaskan wilderness. Treadwell was discovered dead and partially eaten by one of his beloved grizzlies at his campsite in Katmai National Park in the fall of 2003. His girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, was also killed. Using Treadwell's own dramatic video footage, the film tells the story of a controversial figure who put a history of drug and alcohol abuse behind him to devote his life to grizzlies. It was an obsession that cost...

Opening today, the documentary Grizzly Man revisits the life and violent death of Timothy Treadwell, a controversial wildlife activist who spent 13 summers living among bears in the Alaskan wilderness. Treadwell was discovered dead and partially eaten by one of his beloved grizzlies at his campsite in Katmai National Park in the fall of 2003. His girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, was also killed. Using Treadwell's own dramatic video footage, the film tells the story of a controversial figure who put a history of drug and alcohol abuse behind him to devote his life to grizzlies. It was an obsession that cost...