Abstinence-only sex education: Teens who take "virginity pledges" 6 times more likely to engage in anal and oral sex

Conservative values in action

I heard Bill Maher say this in my previous post and had to fact check it. He's right.

"The conservatives don't really care about educating your children. What they care about is that teenagers don't fuck.... they've spent millions of your tax dollars to start abstinence clubs in the high schools."
-- Bill Maher

A spending bill before Congress for the Department of Health and Human Services would provide $141 million in assistance for abstinence-only sex education programs.

According to a study* published in the April issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health:

Those teens that take the "abstinence pledge:"

• were six times as likely to have engaged in oral sex as as those who did not pledge

• were four times as likely to have engaged in anal sex as those who did not pledge

• were much less likely to use contraception the first time they had sex

• were less likely to use condoms during their first sexual experience

• were less likely to get tested for STDs

• have similar rates of STDs as teens who have not made pledges.

Conclusions:

"Not only do virginity pledges not work to keep our young people safe, they are causing harm by undermining condom use, contraception and medical treatment," -- William Smith, policy director at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States

Another Study concurs:

"At present there does not exist any strong evidence that any abstinence program delays the initiation of sex, hastens the return to abstinence or reduces the number of sexual partners" among teenagers, the study by the nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

The study found that while abstinence-only efforts appear to have little positive impact, more comprehensive sex education programs were having "positive outcomes" including teenagers "delaying the initiation of sex, reducing the frequency of sex, reducing the number of sexual partners and increasing condom or contraceptive use.

More here....

UPDATE:
via TP

Where else but Fox News would you hear something like this?

Fox News guest: sex education proponents want kids to get STDs for financial gain

During the Dec. 31 broadcast of Fox News’ Special Report, Concerned Women for America President Wendy Wright claimed that proponents of comprehensive sex education are trying to “encourage” sex because “they benefit when kids end up having sexually transmitted diseases, unintended pregnancies and then they lead them into having abortions.” She then added, “You have to look at the financial motives behind those who are promoting comprehensive sex ed.” Watch it

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*Study co-authors Peter Bearman, sociology department chair at Columbia University, and Hannah Bruckner of Yale University used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which is funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and CDC, the AP/Long Island Newsday reports. The national study surveyed students nationwide in grades seven through 12 and followed up with interviews one, two and six years later. The Yale and Columbia report looked at data from 12,000 teenagers.

Bill Maher at Berklee

In case you missed it - Bill Maher performed at my alma mater - the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Bill talks about the issues - what a hoot!!

Bill on Katrina, Bill Clinton and the Bush legacy.



Bill on those that think they are the 'real Americans'



Bill on abstinence education



All parts here on youtube.

Funny stuff

Let's have some fried cheesecake! Only in America, the home of the obese

I couldn't believe it, I saw the commercial. Yes folks, fried cheesecake is now available at Sonic and Arby's. No wonder obesity is out of control in America!

I saw this 'food' discussed on a local blog.

Don't get me wrong, I love cheesecake. There is nothing as delicious as a cold dense NY style cheesecake with a hot cup of tea. But, now in my mid-40's, I recognize that such food is a recipe for a heart attack and clogged arteries. I almost never eat cheese cake... it is about the most unhealthy thing you can put in your mouth in terms of saturated fat and cholesterol.

So, how can we make an unhealthy food worse? Do what southerners do best ... deep fry it!! Yea, that's just what America needs - deep fried cheesecake to top off a healthy Sonic meal of a burger, side and shake:

*Super Sonic® Cheeseburger (w/ Mayonnaise) - 980 calories, 64 grams fat
*Tater Tots w/chili & cheese, Sonic Size - 720 calories, 50 grams fat
*Large Peanut butter shake - 1010 calories, 59 grams fat

Total - 2710 calories and 173 grams of fat ... and that's just one meal without dessert.
*(source: Sonic nutrition guide website)

Yea... that's what we need - fried cheesecake for dessert!

I've been a pescaterian for 16 years (vegetarian with occasional seafood) and I love the taste of dairy but for health reasons, I avoid it almost completely. I never buy dairy milk, and on the rare occasion that I use a small amount of butter, it is organic. (No bovine growth hormones for me, thanks). I just had my yearly physical. After taking up running a bit more seriously and modifying my diet slightly, I've lost 10 lbs. and my total cholesteral has dropped from 223 to 150, my PSA down from 2.8 to 1.7, my resting heart rate down from 72 to 58. My body weight puts me right in the optimum normal BMI range (22 - 23). You get what you pay for, and this good news from my blood work comes from alot of cold nights running down the road and a healthy diet. It's also given my mood a lift.

While I'm at it, I might as well be politically incorrect and cite this correlation between education, politics, race and obesity. (Conservative voters tend to be fatter, whiter, and less educated... sorry - it's a statistical fact).

Life is about choices. Get smart, get active, live long and prosper.

You are what you eat. Listen to Jules:


Pulp Fiction: I Don't Dig On Swine -

Conservative ignorance on parade: Terry Frank calls the world's foremost climate lab models: "a fortune telling circus"

In an effort to educate, I posted a link to the following graph of global warming projections. Terry Frank responded:

"Get lost. And take your fortune telling circus with you. Oops. I mean your climate models."

Here they are, the world's foremost climate labs that produced the supercomputer climate models that Terry Frank calls "a fortune telling circus."

Who do you suppose knows more about climate science? The wingnut deniers like Terry Frank, or the world's foremost climate labs?

Center for Climate System Research - Japan
National Institute for Environmental Studies - Japan
Canadian Center for Climate Modelling and Analysis - Canada
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation - Australia
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research- England
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory- USA
Max Planck Institute für Meteorologie - Germany
National Center for Atmospheric Research- USA

Interestingly, current data shows these global warming projections to be conservative as many climate scientists stated in my last post on the subject.

I guess though, you’ll always have people like Terry Frank who obviously don’t understand the science and argue on the basis of energy industry agendas, lock step conservative ideology, or fear of gov’t control and sacrifice. What it's really about for these simple minded people is a perpetuation of the "war on Gore" or more specifically, the "war on liberals." The ironic thing is that I was agreeing with Terry, is so far as I believe that the climate change process is already underway and there is very little mankind can do about it, particularly in the short term.

(click graphs to enlarge)

Mike Huckabee fired State Police Chief who refused to help cover up his son's torture and killing of a dog

Compassionate Conservatism

This pig of a man, David Huckabee, son of the religious conservative Republican presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee, was fired from his job as Boy Scout counselor 9 yrs ago for torturing and killing a dog.

Utopia Animal Rescue:

(Miller County, Arkansas) Two boy scout counselors, [David Huckabee (18) and Clayton Frady (17)] ... admitted to catching a stray dog during their summer session at Camp Pioneer in Hatfield, AR, and hanging the dog by his neck, slitting his throat and stoning him to death.

How did Governor Huckabee respond? By getting his son off without an investigation.

According to NEWSWEEK, Huckabee fired Arkansas State Police director John Bailey who refused to help coverup this criminal act of cruelty. According to Bailey, Huckabee told him one of the reasons he was being fired was because - "I couldn't get you to help me with my son when I had that problem."

"Without question, [Huckabee] was making a conscious attempt to keep the state police from investigating his son," says I. C. Smith, the former FBI chief in Little Rock, who worked closely with Bailey and called him a "courageous" and "very solid" professional.

David Huckabee was also arrested on a gun charge and got off with a slap on the wrist.

Michael Vick, you should have a cell mate. This is one disgusting redneck asshole who has gone unpunished because of the 'moral compass' of his father. Typical Republican hypocrisy and corruption.

Remember, Huckabee claims his religion “defines” both him and his approach to his official duties. He touts his status as an ordained minister with a theology degree as part of his qualifications for the Presidency.

Why pop music today sucks

Frank Zappa nailed it -
h/t: C&L




The music we listened to between the ages of 13 and 16 is extremely influential. As a career musician, music educator with a music doctorate ... it is my qualified opinion that today's pop music sucks.

I was talking with Bill Kanengiser of the Grammy Award winning Los Angeles Guitar Quartet and he said exactly that. He said to one of my guitar students:

"the music me and Bill grew up listening to is SO much better than the crap you guys are listening to today."

One of the reasons for this is highlighted by the late great musical genius, Frank Zappa in the interview above.

When I was a kid, I was lucky. I had good musical influences. As a 8 yr old I was listening to R&B, but when I hit those formative years in my early teens, it was progressive rock, jazz-rock fusion, and ethnic music. I was introduced to Baroque music, my first love in the sphere of European classical music by an album called "Switched on Bach," that I got when I was 13. I've been hooked on contrapuntal music ever since.

Remember those bands? Music that refused to fit into a neat little 3 minute pop radio spots. Music that was through-composed, suite-like, orchestral, experimental, used virtuoso musicians, and stretched the boundaries. Starting in the 60's with the Beatles Sgt Pepper, then Abby Road, and the White Album. Then those crazy experimental albums by Zappa and the Mothers, like Uncle Meat that were improvisational and used experimental electronics. The epic Dark Side of the Moon album of Pink Floyd. The band Yes, with Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman. On the Fragile album we heard a classical guitar solo from Steve Howe - "Mood for a Day, " a transcription of a movement of a Brahms Symphony, and later Wakeman releasing his epic "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" with the London Sympony. Emerson Lake and Palmer, recorded their Trilogy, Brain Salad Surgery, Pictures at an Exhibition albums with rock transcriptions of classical music composers Aaron Copeland, Alberto Ginastera and Modesto Mussorgsky. Their Works album had Keith Emerson's piano concerto recorded with the London Symphony.

On the Jazz Rock fusion side there was John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, his albums with Shakti - virtuoso Indian raga music, Chick Corea, Al Dimeola, and the best instrumental (no vocals) rock guitar album of the era, Jeff Beck's Blow by Blow. Steely Dan's Aja was a revelation, using mostly jazz virtuosos like Wayne Shorter, Phil Woods, Larry Carleton on an album marketed as 'rock'... what a trick! I could go on and on.

Compare this music to what 15 yr olds listen to today, I was very lucky.

Stunning new data shows global warming accelerating - exceeding computer model predictions

Look at the facts:

• The top 11 warmest years all occurred in the last 13 years. The provisional global figure for 2007 using data from January to November, currently places the year as the seventh warmest on records dating back to 1850. [story]

• The Arctic Ocean reached record high temperatures, arctic ice diminished to a record low, and ice melted on Greenland for a record number of days. [story]

• The Arctic Sea ice dropped from 7.8 million square kilometers to 4.2 million square kilometers. For comparison, the area of ice is the same as all the states east of the Mississippi River and a broad swath of those to its west. [story]

• 552 billion tons of ice melted this summer from the Greenland ice sheet, according to preliminary satellite data to be released by NASA Wednesday. That's 15 percent more than the annual average summer melt, beating 2005's record. [story]

• A record amount of surface ice was lost over Greenland this year, 12 percent more than the previous worst year, 2005, according to data the University of Colorado released Monday. That's nearly quadruple the amount that melted just 15 years ago. [story]

• The surface area of summer sea ice floating in the Arctic Ocean this summer was nearly 23 percent below the previous record. The dwindling sea ice already has affected wildlife, with 6,000 walruses coming ashore in northwest Alaska in October for the first time in recorded history. [story]

• The Northwest Passage was open to navigation, for the first time in recorded history, ships sailed across water that had been part of the polar ice cap. [story]

• It is the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels that produces carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, responsible for man-made global warming. [story]

• Greenland, in particular, is a significant bellwether. Most of its surface is covered by ice. If it completely melted — something key scientists think would likely take centuries, not decades — it could add more than 22 feet to the world's sea level. [story]

Quotes from scientists:

"In 2007 we had off-the-charts warming"
--Michael Steele, a University of Washington oceanographer with the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington.

"The Arctic is often cited as 'the canary in the coal mine' for climate warming. Now as a sign of climate warming, 'the canary has died.' ... At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012."
--NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally

"I don't pay much attention to one year ... but this year the change is so big, particularly in the Arctic sea ice, that you've got to stop and say, 'What is going on here?' You can't look away from what's happening here, this is going to be a watershed year."
-- Waleed Abdalati, NASA's chief of cyrospheric sciences.

"The Arctic is screaming"
-- Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government's snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo

"2007 set a new record, with melting [in Greenland] occurring for 25 to 30 days longer than the average of 1980 to 2006."
--Marco Tedesco, University of Maryland.

UPDATE:

Question:
What is different now than in the previous 4 Milankovitch ice age cycles?
THIS DOES NOT APPEAR TO BE PART OF A NATURAL CYCLE:
(click to enlarge)

Answer?


THIS:

Resulting in this: