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I usually talk more about science and history and such here at GlobeLens, but having had an opportunity to watch the latest film version of C.S. Lewis' second Narnia book, I feel compelled to share my impression. I promise to be honest, and to be fair. The final reaction you feel after viewing a movie of which you knew the entire story before you began, depends largely on what you expected to see. Low expectations are like to produce, in the end, great thrill. High (too high) expectations, on the other hand, will always disappoint. I'm afraid I fell for the second option. For although director Andrew Adamson's (a coincidental surname) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has clear merits and stays true to Lewis' novels in form, I felt cheated at the loss of what it could have been. Let me get right to my objections:

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In time for the winter season, I've published a Biofile about emperor penguins, the stars of the film March of the Penguins, released on video for the Christmas season.  If your copy of the popular documentary is wrapped under a tree somewhere, get a sneak preview on the lives of emperors and their penguin cousins in the new Biofile.  --You'll learn many things that the film didn't even cover.

Ever wonder what kinds of wildlife are in your neighborhood, and how they interact with one another?  One day you might be able to find out through a single website. The World Conservation Union reports on a project (pdf) they call the "digital globe," an open, real-time database of both geographic and taxonomic information, all integrated into one grid system that can be accessed on demand.  Imagine a sort of Google Earth in which you can pinpoint the location of a rare species, or view the biodiversity of a certain U.S. county.  From the executive summary (pdf):

 This initiative intends to demonstrate an effective means of storing and accessing all spatial data records, auto aggregation, decomposition, and generalization. The PYXIS approach is fully scalable: from bits of a point feature to terabytes of satellite imagery, from whole continents down to a microbe, from mass environmental supercomputing to hand held devices. The method has been designed to compliment and support traditional encoding techniques and spatial applications, not replace them. PYXIS provides a scientifically valid solution for a much sought after capability – on-demand geospatial data integration.

Animal eyes, particularly the compound eyes of insects, are giving camera designers more inspiration for developing state-of-the-art surveillance.  Compound eyes provide many insects with a sort of 360-degree view.  By mimicking this concept, surveillance systems can be rigged to see in any direction.  Whales are also great models for better cameras.  A fluid system in the whale's eye allows it to move its lens, adjusting focus from near to far, or vice versa.  By creating a camera with one flexible, polymer lens, hydraulics or mechanics could be used to change the focus--or perhaps the magnification.  Unfortunately, far from giving the glory to God, National Geographic attributes the marvels of animal vision to "billions of years" of random evolution.  Real credit goes the one and only Designer.

A 45-year breeding experiment in Russia has resulted in tame foxes.  These cute little guys don't run when you pet them; instead they bark and wag their tails, like dogs.  Russian scientists produced these offspring by selecting foxes that showed signs of non-aggression towards humans and interbreeding them.  They also claim these foxes, like dogs, are much smarter, or exhibit more "social intelligence," than normal foxes.  This is interesting because it seems to indicate that tameness and perhaps temperament are genetic traits.  (Such traits could of course be further influenced by environment or training.)  If so, then, from a creationist standpoint, Genesis 9:2 is referring to a genetic alteration or degradation.  It reads:  "The fear and dread of you [Noah and descendants] will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hands."  Wouldn't be bad having a fox for a pet . . .

Drought blamed for the deaths of millions of piñon pine trees in New Mexico.  Global warming blamed for drought.

 The latest beautiful image from the Hubble Space Telescope is a giant mosaic of the Crab Nebula.  If you like putting wallpaper on your computer desktop (why don't they call it deskpaper?) follow my example and download yours here.

Someone's toying with the idea of car-finish paint that can change colors as the temperature changes.  How cool is that? 

Do this at home:  Researchers have stumbled upon a unique state of matter by dropping a marble into sand.  The impact of the marble against a dense arrangement of particles produced a "jet" of sand into the air like a tall, thin spike--as if the sand were fluid.  These scientists have determined that air in between the tiny sand particles is compressed upon impact, creating an active, fluid-like state.  Two photo sequences show the experiment when tested in a vacuum, and when tested without one.  The jet in the vacuum is almost non-existent.  The researchers say you can conduct a small version of this yourself by dropping your own marble into a loosely-filled cup of powdered sugar.  There's no way no one has ever observed this phenomenon before.  Don't you wish you had helped your mom out more in the kitchen?

Saddam Hussein's Baghdad trial sounds better than reality TV.  Today Mr. Hussein and his seven fellow defendants ranted, raved, and generally disrupted trial proceedings, several times disrespecting Judge Rizgar Muhammad Amin, to whom Mr. Hussein at one point angrily shouted, "Don't interrupt me!"  At another point, the entire defense team--not the defendants--walked out of the courtroom, protesting Judge Amin's refusal to allow them to "verbally challenge the legitimacy of the court."  Mr. Hussein and the other defendants expressed their disapproval by shouting at the judge.

Judge Amin eventually caved to the demands of the defense, giving them a chance to argue against the trial's legitimacy.  Passivity, in fact, seemed to be a characteristic of the court in today's proceedings, where "throughout the day," reports the New York Times, "the unarmed court officers seemed reluctant to discipline the defendants as they stood up, shouted, and interrupted the judge, the witnesses, and their own lawyers."  Defendant Barzan al Tikriti, Saddam's half-brother, did his share of shouting, and at one point began spitting and yelling at a man in the gallery, whom he accused of threatening him.  Saddam and al Tikriti also interrupted Ahmad Hassan Muhammad, who gave riveting testimony of the torture he witnessed when he, along with many of his brothers who he never again saw alive, was arrested during the Dujail massacre of 1982.  At several points during Mr. Muhammad's testimony, Hussein laughed.

Hussein and his fellow defendants seem to be forgetting they are war captives.  Hussein is very lucky to be getting a trial at all, and frankly it's more than he deserves.  He has no right to be shouting down his judge, for whatever reason, though it appears that these trial disruptions are simply an addition to the delay tactics that the defense has been employing.  The sick thing about these sorts of trials is that the defendants have to cooperate to a certain extent in order to get sentenced--and Mr. Hussein clearly just wants to raise a ruckus.  His crimes have been obvious enough for the U.S. to declare war against him twice.  Why does this tyrant need a trial?

Defendant Al Tikriti today, seemed to agree:  "Why don't you just execute us?"  If we must have a trial, someone shut these guys up so it can proceed.

Christian Conservative Cal Thomas discusses the teaching of Intelligent Design in public schools with Bob Beckel, a liberal Democrat.  What fun.

This post is in response to a question asked of me about American Founder James Madison and his view of abortion--a tricky subject since abortion is an issue of modern times, where medical procedure has made it affordable and accessible, and judicial opinion made it permissible.  This situation requires us to extrapolate what Madison would have thought, had he been in our shoes, given his beliefs as we know them.

First of all, it's clear that abortion wasn't a major problem in 18th-century America.  I'm unaware of whether there were any recorded, isolated incidents of mothers who had somehow killed, or attempted to kill, the children in their wombs.   I'm also unaware of cases of infanticide (there probably were some), which is only a half-step away from abortion.  In the eyes of 18th-century America, and in the eyes of the Founders, the difference between being in the womb, and being 15 minutes out of it, would be irrelevant; so the question to ask is:  Did the Founders consider it murder to kill a fetus or a baby?  Did they consider the murder of a fetus or a baby to be as equally reprehensible as the murder of an adult?

If English Common Law is our guide, the answers are "Yes."

The Early American Colonies were governed largely by English Common Law, which was inherited from England and which influenced later law in America.  English Common Law originally distinguished between two periods of embryonic development: The first period was before the mother had felt "quickening," or signs of life, inside her, and the second period was after.  Abortion that occurred before any signs of life were noticed was a misdemeanor, and abortion that occurred after quickening was a felony.  These crimes were punishable by jail time.  There is no record of anyone being executed, or of any woman being punished for an abortion.  Given the importation of Common Law into the New World, we can presume that the illegality of abortion was considered acceptable in Early America.

The influence of Christianity in general, and the Bible specifically, upon English Common Law and our nation's founders is clear and obvious.  It is never disputed by serious historians.  The Ten Commandments which forbade murder, besides theft and sexual immorality, were cornerstones to Common Law and the American legislature.  For example, sodomy--homosexual sex--was outlawed in Early American colonies, and later, states, many of which still have laws against sodomy and bestiality.  Murder, like sodomy, was considered wrong not only because of its nature, but because it violated the Law of God.

When science gave evidence that life began at fertilization, not at the arbitrary "quickening," British Parliament updated Common Law by passed the 1869 "Offenses Against the Persons Act," which made abortion a felony during any period of development.  (Note that they considered a fetus to be a "Person.")  Many American states did the same.

But what would James Madison himself think of our modern penchant for abortion?  Undoubtedly it would be shocking to him, simply because it wasn't a common practice in his day.  Madison was the fourth President of the United States, and is called "The Father of the Constitution" because of how much his views on government influenced that document.  He had a very strong belief against government making laws that would promote a certain faith practice or "Religion," as he calls it in his "Memorial and Remonstrance."  In spite of this, Madison called religions outside of Christianity "false Religions," and said "The first wish of those who enjoy this precious gift [Christianity] ought to be that it may be imparted to the whole race of mankind."  When you understand the abuses of religious beliefs by tyrants in England and Europe, you understand the Founders' concern.  Yet they didn't have a problem with a criminal law system that supported Biblical injunctions against such things as sodomy.  I wrote about Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance" last February.

 Madison took a soft-spoken and restrained approach to many issues, particularly that of slavery.  While Madison disliked the institution of slavery himself, and was "ashamed" at the pro-slavery arguments from the southern delegates, he didn't think Congress ought to take any steps of action to outlaw the slave trade.  He thought it was too volatile an issue, and he hoped, as many others did, that slavery would die out over time. 

However, the topic of slavery is very relevant to abortion.  The argument for abortion is based on the premise that an unborn baby is not a legal citizen and does not have same rights and protection of the state that a born baby has.  During slavery days, many states had this same view of blacks:  South Carolina law stated that a slave "is not a citizen, and he is not in that character entitled to [the state's] protection."  Only if a slave was killed "in a sudden heat or passion" could the killer be punished by a $500 fine and six months in prison, and only if the murder was witnessed by another white man (See From Sea to Shining Sea, Peter Marshall & David Manuel, pg. 247).  Other slave states had more severe laws against the murder of slaves, but all allowed the killing of slaves who had broken the law, or who in any way resisted their masters.  In practice, slaves were routinely beaten, sold, mutilated, raped, and killed without any legal recourse.  Slaves were not allowed to testify in a trial.  The law did not consider them to be entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as other white men were, and while men like Madison were opposed to the abuses of the institution, it appears they did little to stop them.  If Madison was so slow to oppose black slavery, it raises the question as to how slow he would be to oppose abortion, had the practice been in vogue.

However, as Madison demonstrated with the slavery issue and in his "Memorial and Remonstrance," he believed a clear majority of the people should be in favor of decisions "of such singular magnitude and delicacy" before Congress enacted them.  In that case he would likely have opposed the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision--which ruled that abortion is protected by the U.S. constitution--not only because the constitution does not address abortion, but because no clear majority of U.S. citizens supported it.  Roe vs. Wade was imposed across the board without respect to the laws of individual states, where elected legislators acted on behalf of the people.

Given his views of a republic government, and given his Christian beliefs concerning life and murder, it is very probable that James Madison would oppose abortion today, though how outspoken he would be seems uncertain.

See also "Aborting History" a National Review article that deals with the attempt of certain historians to twist history into a support of legalized abortion.  For more on Madison's view of government and religious practice, see his letter to Rev. Adams.