Planet Narnia - a very readable academic book about Lewis' work, with a bold, brilliant unifying theory about the Narnia books (each book represents a medieval planet).

http://www.amazon.com/Planet-Narnia-Seven-Heavens-Imagination/dp/0195313879/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228570959&sr=8-1

It helps explain why Father Christmas is in there (he's jovial, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe is about Jupiter). It's a really convincing argument, one that understands and analyzes - and so is a great guide to - the religion without trying to forcefeed it.

Lewis' Christianity is about as far from modern American Christianity as it's possible to get. He says that you can't be a Christian and live in a republic, for one thing. So there you go, any Americans reading this, you're not Christians. Canadians, you're fine. But the evangelicals love him, presumably because the Narnia books are a gateway drug.

I don't see the Narnia books as Christian propaganda or polemic - they are more like a case for Christian values. It's a huge difference. Lewis is trying to persuade. I'm unpersuaded, but I think if we're going to start scrubbing our reading lists of Christians who think God's on the whole a good thing, we're cutting ourselves off from a lot of great literature.

Pullman doesn't say 'no God' - God's in the books, which are definitely set in a theistic universe. He says 'God's horrible and we need to find a way to take Him down'. Which, if He existed, wouldn't be a terribly controversial message, would it?

For anyone who doesn't get it, yet: Obama has now sworn to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution twiceover.

Whoever becomes RNC Chair should make it clear that the party's objection to the stimulus package means that no Republican politician will accept a single cent of stimulus money for the area they represent.

Seems only fair.

I'm not sure I understand the question - if you're seriously asking 'is there any good medical research outside the USA?' then ... er, yes.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2563047.ece

There's no one right answer with healthcare, and 'best of' lists are usually going to be either meaningless or self-serving. But, by definition, healthcare is always going to be 'socialist', in the sense that those of us who don't get sick are 'paying for' the people who get sick.

The American hospital system has a lot of money, attracts a lot of researchers, it's certainly the biggest player in the world. But it's not the only game in town, and the idea that it success is all because it's not a universal system is ... counterintuitive.

The people who cite 'the market' as an argument against universal healthcare are just looking at the wrong bottom line - a healthy workforce means better productivity and lower costs. In the UK, to take one example, car insurance costs don't have to include medical costs because that's all free at the point of delivery. You can insure a family car for three or four hundred dollars a year.

So you don't insure your car, presumably? Because that's a system where the 'safe' drivers support the 'dangerous' ones.

(More to the point, the biggest component is paying their medical bills - in the UK, you can insure a family car for four hundred dollars a year).

The only sane way to provide healthcare is on the basis of who needs healthcare. The people who need healthcare most are, by definition, at that moment the ones least able to afford it.

Seriously ... who do you think makes that decision now?

It's not a rugged individualist swaggering libertarian champion of freedom doin' what's right for his folks - it's the insurance company, after endless phone conversations with your doctor, deciding which pharma company product would be the most cost effective.

Assuming you've got health insurance. That covers the condition you have.

All that stuff about Ted Kennedy getting the best treatment while the ordinary guys get stiffed? That's an argument *against* your position, not for it.

Maddow is brilliant, an actual British-style political journalist, someone who challenges her interviewees and knows her stuff but seems genuinely to be there to listen and learn from her contributors.

I just wish she'd dial down some of the Colbert stuff - all the jokey intros and so on. Yeah, it's great to be entertaining, but the really entertaining stuff is the analysis and cutting-through-the-crap. It's also, tragically, an (almost) unique selling point on cable news.

... and a million GOP members remember where it is that Steele is today, slump in their seats, and wonder if the 'pro life' thing really is worth the cost.

In the UK, there's free universal healthcare, but also a private sector. And what happens there is *the same doctors* often work for both and private healthcare pays NHS hospitals for things like MRI scans.

Wait a minute ... you just said the government and public sector is able to provide the health care people want more efficiently than the private sector - and we should vote Republican to prevent that.

Let's accept your figure that *a third* of the money that we pay into private health care goes on profits and inefficiency.

How about we *don't* do that?