This is our generation.
This is our time.

SOPA is not a bill about preventing piracy like it says it to be. It is a sad attempt to preserve an archaic business model incompatible with the Internet and growing technology. The time is for THEM to progress. Not for our young generations to regress.

Please look at these links and sign. Please call your congressmen and Senators. Please spread the message through Xanga, Facebook, and Twitter.

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/
http://sopastrike.com/strike/

I wrote a 10 page paper and turned it in Monday to the online assignment drop box my class has been using the entire semester, under the pre-made heading of course. Tuesday morning I receive an email that it was not supposed to be turned in there and it needed to emailed and that I would get a late deduction.

Excuse me, than why MAKE a heading for it on the drop box in the first place? Doesn’t the TA think that would be horribly misleading? The very fact that she only received two papers in her email makes me certain that the other 150 students in the class turned in the paper the same way I did seeing how we've done it that way FOR THE WHOLE SEMESTER. If she wanted them emailed to her then she shouldn’t have made a link available to turn it in online in the first place.

What an idiot. Excuse me while I rage.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/11/15/369252/gop-pizza-vegetable-school-lunch/
(article above)

So to summarize, as per usual, some group of people (this time the USDA) was trying to push for improved nutritional requirements in school lunches. Okay, so let's have a conversation. Well, the GOP says no. We're not having this. The suggestion wasn't too overreaching. Just, limit starchy vegetables to being served once a week and that pizza sauce could no longer count towards the fruit and vegetable requirement.

Well, the GOP did away with the changes.
And I quote,

"The spending bill also would allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. The department's proposed guidelines would have attempted to prevent that.

The changes had been requested by food companies that produce frozen pizzas, the salt industry, and potato growers."

The reasoning of course being that they thought it would be a burdensome regulation. Right, because carrots are a burden. You know what else is a burden? Health care costs. I think putting some vegetables/fruit and laying off the cheesy and starchy dishes in school lunches could save a fuck ton of money in the future. I don't want anything regulated to heck and there are probably things we can lay off, but many times a fixed cost like that will be significantly less than the event it's trying to regulate.

They also thought is was wrong to tell school children what to eat.

You know, maybe it isn't the best idea to TELL children what to eat but why is it so wrong to educate them about eating well and giving them the OPTION to eat better? By not allowing them the choice to eat a better school lunch you ARE telling them what to eat.

Should parents pack lunches? Absolutely. That's the best thing to do with this awful school "nutrition" program. But will every child be able to? No.

I, as with many other children, depended on school breakfast and lunches for subsistence. And yes, I got them for free. There was either not enough money to pack lunches or there wasn't enough for me to have dinner when I got home. But, I don't think children have to even be half as poor as I was to depend on school lunches.

We're not asking for home cooked vegan lunches here. We're asking for modest changes. At least that's what I'm asking for.

So now the GOP is bought out by pizza sauce? Remember the time they wanted ketchup to count as a vegetable?
Thoughts?