Petty Piper's blog

First, a brief insight into my life.

My boyfriend smokes a cigarette a day, or thereabouts. He says it won't hurt him, since one's lung tissue recoveres from spread-out smoking habits. But still, he realizes the potential to become dangerously addicted, and so has been trying to cut back. The other day, I was driving my car with he and two other friends. When we stopped to take a walk, he pulled out a ciggy. When I tried to remind him of his attempt to cut back, the two other friends jumped to his defense. They rammed themselves down my throat, calling me everything from a hypocrite to overbearing.  Read More »

It's kind of a long one, but here's a quote of Blair covering our American hiney:

"A large part of the perspective with which we look at this is to see every act of terrorism in Iraq, every piece of ghastly carnage on our television screens, every tragic loss of our own forces -- we see that as a setback and as a failure when we should be seeing that as a renewed urgency for us to rise to the challenge of defeating these people who are -- who are committing this carnage, because over these past three years, at every stage, the reason they have been fighting is not, as we can see, because Iraqi people don't believe in democracy, Iraqi people don't want liberty. It is precisely because they fear Iraqi people do want democracy, Iraqi people do want liberty. And if the idea became implanted in the minds of people in the Arab and Muslim world that democracy was as much their right as our right, where do these terrorists go, what do they do, how do they recruit? How do they say America is the evil Satan?"  Read More »

A little weirded out by the omnipresence of our favorite latte-stop? Here are a few facts regarding Starbucks:

-77% of Starbucks have recycling progams. Yay!

-A whopping 3.7% of their coffee sold was purchased as certified Fair Trade. The "whopping" part was sarcasm.

-There are more than 100x the amount of people working at Starbucks than that live in the Vatican City.  Read More »

A suggestion to the current Administration in office.

Our current priorities for dealing with terrorism are as follows:
-make no concessions
-prosecute known terrorists
-place economic sanctions on countries harboring terrorists
-use military force against such countries
-defend, defend, defend

These policies are each effective and intelligent in their own ways of dealing with the problem. But, if I may be so bold, perhaps we are not thinking fully of the situation. Now, I am not one to defend these people who cause such harm to so many innocents. But their violent tendancies do stem from something. They aren't acting out of stupidity. They are acting out of hate. And perhaps if that hate can be lessened, the threat can be lessened.  Read More »

A suggestion to the current Administration in office.

Our current priorities for dealing with terrorism are as follows:
-make no concessions
-prosecute known terrorists
-place economic sanctions on countries harboring terrorists
-use military force against such countries
-defend, defend, defend

These policies are each effective and intelligent in their own ways of dealing with the problem. But, if I may be so bold, perhaps we are not thinking fully of the situation. Now, I am not one to defend these people who cause such harm to so many innocents. But their violent tendancies do stem from something. They aren't acting out of stupidity. They are acting out of hate. And perhaps if that hate can be lessened, the threat can be lessened.  Read More »

"One of the best questions you can ever ask is 'why?'"
-Theresa Pool, Sociology Professor

"Discomfort can be your salvation."
-Jason Webley, Musical Artist

"Don't die wondering."
-bumper sticker

"What return shall be made to the man who has never had the wit to be idle during his entire life..."  Read More »

In my Social Problems class today, my professor gave the following fact:

A poll of Americans showed that, when asked the question: "[would you] favor the internment of legal immigrants from unfriendly countries,' 57% answered no, but that leaves a good 43% who said yes. Meaning that 43% of Americans would be alright with taking any American citizen of Iraqi decent and coralling them in a camp; freezing their assets, probably selling what they own.  Read More »

There is a clash going on over the WWW right now. As of last week, a bill was introduced to the House of Represenatives to attempt to preserve the internet as a single unit. The bill would attempt to discourage attempts and plans being made and drawn to fragment the 'net into different services.

The internet's creator, Sir (he was knighted for his achievements) Tim Berners-Lee, spoke at a conference in defense of the neutral internet, "You get this tremendous serendipity where I can search the internet and come across a site that I did not set out to look for." He remains optimistic about the internet's future. "I think it is one and will remain as one," he is quoted as saying.  Read More »