Eco-Friendly is GOOD

You can save every penny you want, but if the planet is not here for you to enjoy it, what is the point? While eco-friendly products may not yet be cost-efficient, they are extremely necessary to the survival of the planet. Why anyone would not want to save the planet is beyond me.
Across the market, nearly any product that you can think of has an eco-friendly alternative. For instance, Seventh Generation laundry products, which cost only a couple of dollars more, are very environmentally friendly. According to the Seventh Generation website, “if every household in America replaced just one box of 48oz petroleum-based powder laundry detergent, we could save 96,000 barrels of oil each year, enough to heat and cool 5500 homes in the U.S. each year.”
Changing laundry detergents is only one part of the battle. Why not change to a more fuel-efficient vehicle, or even a hybrid for you more adventurous folks? Or you could change to environmentally friendlier mouth care products. The Tom’s of Maine company boasts more than 10 toothpastes that contain only natural products that works just like regular toothpastes.
Money should not be an issue when the planet that you call home is in jeopardy of survival. At the very least, we as humans, owe the planet a little consideration when living out our lives here.

Why Smoke?

There are over 400,00 deaths in the United Stated every year from smoking related illnesses. Then why in the world would anyone want to do it? 400,000 is nearly .14 percent of the population of the U.S., and while that does not sound like much, it’s a lot considering it’s a conscience choice to smoke.
I would have written this article with a million statistics and facts about smoking like that according to the American Heart Association, each cigarette that you smoke takes and average of 8 minutes off of your life span, but instead I’ve decided to just give you my opinion.
Smoking is dumb, period. I fully support the many local governments that have begun to enact smoke-free ordinances. In the end, it is a personal choice for whether or not one wants to smoke, but when you look at it, what is good about smoking? You look cool to your peers? Smoking is so not cool.
What is worse is that when you smoke, if you smoke around people, you are breathing out secondhand smoke for other people to inhale. Secondhand smoke is just as bad as puffing on a cigarette.
Why would you want to shorten your life as well as other people’s lives to do something stupid?

Definition of Terrorism

Osama bin Laden is generally accepted as a terrorist by people in the United States. But, to much of the al-Qaida organization, he is considered to be a hero. According to many of their beliefs, bin Laden did the world a favor when he organized terrorist bombings across America, and therefore from al-Qaida he is praised for his heroism. To them, Americans are considered the devil. To us they are considered the devil. But wait, this brings up a new question.
Is George Bush a terrorist? Political views aside, certainly by the logic that we have established, members of al-Qaida, more importantly their families, must believe that President Bush is no better than we think bin Laden is. But wait a second, the leader of the apple-pie-loving, bald-eagle-protecting, flag-waving, in-God-we-trust United States of America cannot be a terrorist…
Now stop right there. I am not saying that George W. is a terrorist; I am just trying to show you how confused many Americans are about the definition of the word terrorist.
According to Webster’s dictionary, a terrorist is a person who terrorizes or frightens others. By that definition, my own loving dad is a terrorist: I was definitely frightened from ages four to six just because of the stories that he told me about the boogey monster. I think we can safely agree that this definition may be just a little too broad.
If you break it down, the word terrorist has two parts, ‘terror’ and ‘ist’. Traditionally we add the suffix ‘ist’ to adjectives that we want to turn into a type of person. Whether or not that is the accepted way of creating words is another debate entirely; we can use slang however we want. The word terror means an intense fear, according to the American Heritage Dictionary. That is still very broad, but maybe it is not wrong. Maybe terror, like most adjectives, is in the eye of the beholder.
Maybe calling someone a terrorist is saying that in your opinion, that person frightens you. When Fox News calls someone a terrorist, it means that the producer or the writer is afraid of this person. When President Bush calls Saddam Hussein a terrorist it is because he is frightened by the thoughts that his father instilled in him about Hussein.
Maybe as Americans, we should be better people and not throw the title terrorist around so loosely.