Hope Rides Eternal is the deeply moving story of U.S. army Sergeant Eddie Jeffers, who was killed in Iraq on 19 September.
Eddie was the author of Freedom Feels Good, which started off as a letter to his father.
Both articles are worth reading and worth forwarding to your friends.
Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Professor of Nuclear Physics at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad Pakistan, has written an intensely insightful analysis of the problems of science in the Islamic world titled Science and the Islamic world — The Quest for Rapprochement.
The entire article is well worth reading. I will excerpt a few paragraphs which highlight the scope of the problem.
A useful, if imperfect, indicator of scientific output is the number of published scientific research papers, together with the citations to them. Table 1 shows the output of the seven most scientifically productive Muslim countries for physics papers, over the period from 1 January 1997 to 28 February 2007, together with the total number of publications in all scientific fields.
A comparison with Brazil, India, China, and the US reveals significantly smaller numbers. A study by academics at the International Islamic University Malaysia showed that OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference) countries have 8.5 scientists, engineers, and technicians per 1000 population, compared with a world average of 40.7, and 139.3 for countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Forty-six Muslim countries contributed 1.17% of the world’s science literature, whereas 1.66% came from India alone and 1.48% from Spain. Twenty Arab countries contributed 0.55%, compared with 0.89% by Israel alone. The US NSF records that of the 28 lowest producers of scientific articles in 2003, half belong to the OIC.
According to a recent survey, among the 57 member states of the OIC, there are approximately 1800 universities. Of those, only 312 publish journal articles. A ranking of the 50 most published among them yields these numbers: 26 are in Turkey, 9 in Iran, 3 each in Malaysia and Egypt, 2 in Pakistan, and 1 in each of Uganda, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, Jordan, and Azerbaijan. For the top 20 universities, the average yearly production of journal articles was about 1500, a small but reasonable number. However, the average citation per article is less than 1.0 (the survey report does not state whether self-citations were excluded). There are fewer data available for comparing against universities worldwide. Two Malaysian undergraduate institutions were in the top-200 list of the Times Higher Education Supplement in 2006. No OIC university made the top-500 “Academic Ranking of World Universities” compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
In most the United States, it’s a crime to kill yourself. This is a gross encroachment of government into individual rights.
As John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty, “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.”
Thirty thousand Americans successfully end their own lives every year. Three out of four of these Americans are men. The highest suicide rates are in men over 60 years of age.
These are not people who do not know what they are doing. These are not confused people who need government to tell them what to do. These are people who have made a conscious decision that they are done with life and it is their time to go. This is their choice and this is their right.
It’s time that we pushed the government out of our lives, and out of our deaths. The only thing a man can really own in this world is himself, and it’s time that we once again accept that we — not the government — own our own destinies.
Doing Business: Economy Rankings is a useful tool for the citizens of 175 nations to judge the efficiency and effectiveness of their governments.
Looking at the list, the most striking thing is how clear it is that the nations with governments which do not interfere with business enjoy the most economic success. Singapore, New Zealand, The United States, and Canada top the list. All of these countries provide very good standards of living for their citizens — because the government does less meddling with business.
On the other end of the list, the nations with governments which most meddle with business are dirt poor.
Think about this next time you vote. Are you voting for more government interference or less? Are you voting for prosperity for your children, or will your vote doom them to poverty?
On Monday, the U.N. released a report which announced that the United States “leads the world in labor productivity.” Thank you Captain Obvious!
While the complement certainly is nice, it’s also good to remember that the U.S. is largely funded by tax dollars which are extracted by force from those very same American workers.
Smarter AND Harder
Americans put in more hours and work and we accomplish more than our competitors with every hour we work.
Technically, we placed slightly behind the Norwegians for the amount of wealth we produce per hour. However, Norway’s figures are artificially inflated due to their huge oil wealth. If you separate out productivity due to dinosaurs who died millions of years ago, Americans are the most productive workers — per hour — on the the planet.
In numerical terms, the average American contributes $35.63 to the GNP (Gross National Product) for every hour they work. That adds up to $63,885 of productivity per year.
Americans devote an average of 1,804 hours of work per year. Our propensity for working harder, along with our ability to work smarter, makes us the most productive people on Earth.
Sure, the average Chinese put in 2,200 hours of work a year — but their productivity is still less than a sixth of ours - $9,817 per person per year. Why? We work with freedom and they work under bureaucracy!
You can download the entire report from the UN’s International Labor Organization.
We do so much business with China that we often forget just how bizarrely inhuman the Chinese government really is.
Luckily, the Chinese government figured out a way to remind us of their bureaucratic stupidity without actually murdering anyone this time.
The boys in Beijing have banned Buddhist Monks from the practice of reincarnation without government permission. You read that right, it is now illegal to be reincarnated without filling out the proper paperwork and getting government permission.
This bizarre move by the “State Administration for Religious Affairs” stems from an attempt by the communist Chinese to control Tibetan Buddhism. The current Dalai Lama is 72 years old and has stated that he will not be reborn in Tibet as long as it is under Chinese control.
The Dalai Lama is currently living in India and the next Dalai Lama will very likely be born there. The communist Chinese will refuse to recognize that Dalai Lama — setting up a showdown with the Tibetan Buddhists.
Can you imagine such stupidity happening in the United States, where we live under the protection of the First Amendment? Be careful how you cast your votes. Educated voters are the only thing which has thus far saved the United States from drifting into the morass of socialist bureaucracy.
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