Sunday on the Patio

It’s Sunday morning and I’m sitting on my patio getting ready to do my homework. Yesterday, I spent a good part of the day working on my chem lab drawing Lewis structures for 13 different molecules, now it’s time to do the online assignments and then get cracking on the math. I’ll probably be out of it tomorrow since I’m going to the dentist and know that there’s going to be pain.

On happier notes, my life is really sweet. We’ve been in the house for a year (Thanks Todd!) and we’ve now had Angus for a year. Tonight Jaime is going to give him a meat-cake for his ‘Gotcha day’.

Stand up for free speech

Lars Vilks, the cartoonist who drew Mohammed as a dog, has been attacked while lecturing on free speech. He was not seriously harmed. There is a video clip showing the attack, the chanting spectators, and the police quelling the mob.
The YouTube video is below.

I am a Liberal and so first and foremost, I have to stand up for free speech. If some folks are offended by the image of Mohammed with a dog’s body, then there are other ways to respond more in keeping the values of liberal democracy. Assaulting the cartoonist isn’t on that list. In further news, it turns out that an Al Qaeda front group is offering $100,000 for someone to murder Vilks!
Maybe not today, perhaps not tomorrow, but at *some* point we’re going to have take a stand and assert that free speech is valuable enough to US to risk offending the sensibilities of Muslims. If we can’t, if we do not value free speech even that much, how can we call ourselves liberal at all?