Category: World

Thinking Without a License is Prohibited

This story pretty much epitomizes the end result of statism. When you allow, and then expect, the government to take care of you, the government will inevitably criminalize taking care of yourself (emphasis mine):

David N. Cox says he was merely exercising his right to petition the government, but a state Department of Transportation official has raised allegations that Cox committed a misdemeanor: practicing engineering without a license.

David N. Cox and his North Raleigh neighbors are lobbying city and state officials to add traffic signals at two intersections as part of a planned widening of Falls of Neuse Road.

After an engineering consultant hired by the city said that the signals were not needed, Cox and the North Raleigh Coalition of Homeowners’ Associations responded with a sophisticated analysis of their own.

…

Cox has not been accused of claiming that he is an engineer. But [chief traffic engineer] Lacy says he filed the complaint because the report “appears to be engineering-level work” by someone who is not licensed as a professional engineer.

We’re from the government, and we know better than you.

The Solution to the Child/Career Debate for Women

An inspiring article about women in the Afghan army contains the ideal solution to the problem of deciding between children and career — polygamy:

[It was] Laila Ibrahimi[‘s] husband, himself an officer in the ANA, who encouraged her to apply. ‘I always wanted to be strong and serve the country,’ she says. Now 31, she was married at 18 and has had three children, but she is pragmatic about their arrangements: ‘My husband’s first wife looks after them.’

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day

I am not interested in living in a world where people feel they are justified in killing others simply because they’re offended.

Therefore, I am participating in Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. If you are offended by depictions of your prophet, I apologize, but I feel that the principle of freedom of religion is more important than not offending you. If you say that it’s only a few extremists who would want to kill people over this, then I say to you: clean your own house, then we’ll talk. If you’ll stand up in your mosque tomorrow and condemn violence against blasphemers, then we’ll talk.

The picture below is a miniature illustration on vellum from the book Jami’ al-Tawarikh (literally “Compendium of Chronicles” but often referred to as The Universal History or History of the World), by Rashid al-Din, published in Tabriz, Persia, 1307 A.D. It depicts Mohammed supervising the rebuilding of the Kaaba.

In other words, it’s an image of Mohammed drawn by a devout Muslim. There are many such images.