No mention in this article that at 100 years old, this is one of those great old books that has entered the public domain. It was of my favorite books as a child.

You can read it online (and print it if you prefer dead trees) at the following locations, among others:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/289

http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/GraWind.html

Happy reading. And remember, if Congress doesn't keep extending copyright indefinitely, none of those great books from the '20s and '30s will ever enter the public domain. Will we all be dead before we see a Dover Thrift edition of The Great Gatsby? It's worth writing your congressman/MP/legislator about. Not to mention all the more obscure out-of-print books going extinct from that era due to copyright.

You find Rat and Mole merely boring. I find C.S. Lewis (and to an extent, his buddy Tolkien) to be excessively moralizing and oversimplifying. As a kid I liked the first couple Narnia books although the whole black/white good-v-evil Christian metaphor is oppressive and grating. And talk about boring, the Space Trilogy? Unreadable. Don't even get me started on his Christian nonfiction works.

That said, you might love the Space Trilogy and entire churches have been founded on Lewis's writings. Your mileage may vary.

h_lance, actually, we do have a right to protest Iran's actions in this case, because what they are doing is an internationally-recognized human rights violation that no state can legitimize under the cloak of 'sovereignty.' I would argue the same with regards to capital punishment in the United States, and I welcome Europeans and others who protest American executions. However it can be said that there is not the same kind of international consensus, outside of Europe, with regards to capital punishment as there is with regards to torture as cruel and unusual punishment, which is specifically forbidden by the UN Declaration of Human Rights and numerous conventions.

Whether nonlethal torture is 'worse' than an execution performed in a manner minimizing physical pain is a philosophical question that depends on your perspective and values.

Obviously going to war against Iran is completely the wrong approach, and you clearly misread reader's responses because nobody is suggesting it and I'm seeing far more sympathetic responses to Iran in this case.

uberboy, your 'ruminations' illustrate exactly why victims should have no say in punishment of criminals.

Torture always degrades humanity and is always wrong, whether it is an individual criminal doing it to his victim or the state doing it to a criminal. It has no place in the civilized world.

The link you supply says nothing of the sort, and I doubt that is true. As I understand it the liver has lobes and it is possible to transplant a single lobe, and in fact living donor transplantation of a lobe (that grows right back!) is becoming common.

by asking for his campaign contributions back. He had the right to express regret for donating, but a gift is a gift--unconditional.

I am also extremely disappointed by the Rick Warren choice. He may be regarded as a positive, moderate or even "liberal" (hardly!) voice in evangelical movement, but to use a recently popular turn of phrase, he's the lipstick on the pig.

I already sent the Dan Savage "postcard" in the form of a letter asking him to abide by his promises to repeal DOMA and DADT. Now this! I agree that having this man by his side at inauguration is more a slap in the face than an outreach. He's choosing this man to put the blessing on his presidency, and believe me Rick Warren is going to milk it for all it's worth, not just for the legitimacy it gives him, but to exercise some kind of moral authority and influence over Obama, whether or not it was Obama's intention.

Disappointing and poor judgment on Obama's end, for sure. Can't say I'm all that surprised, given Obama politic(al) stance on marriage and faith-based initiatives.

Hopefully his daughters will pick up some good Quaker values at Sidwell and bring them home.

I'm sick of reading about parents who don't "believe" in vaccinations or checkups. That's not your "parenting style," that is neglect and failure to provide adequate care, plain and simple.

I would not consider that adequate care for even a dog or a cat, much less a human child. Any number of things can go wrong that could easily be prevented with early diagnosis, and she's putting everyone else (child or adult) that the kid comes into contact with at risk for infection.

So even if what she's doing is not punishable at law, at least getting a social worker to visit could be a wake-up call to this woman. The kid is years overdue from seeing a doctor. Even if he's not autistic, with those symptoms something is terribly wrong and the mother is in denial.