Scientists request end of Abstinence-Only

Letter to Reid & Pelosi

Dear Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and Senator Harry Reid,

As a group of leading scientists who have recently conducted research on adolescents, reproductive health, and abstinence-only education, we are writing to express our strong concern about increasing federal support for abstinence-only education (AOE) programs. This federal support includes monies going to states (Section 510 of the Social Security Act) and those going directly to community and faith-based organizations (the Community-Based Abstinence Education program). Recent reports in professional publications by the authors of this letter have highlighted multiple deficiencies in federal abstinence-only programs. As such, we are surprised and dismayed that the Congress is proposing to extend and even increase funding for these programs. In this letter we identify key problems with abstinence-only education. We also have attached recent scientific reports that are pertinent to the debate over these programs. We note that many of these studies have used nationally-representative data from surveys sponsored by the National Institutes of Health or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...

Virginity pledging, one aspect of abstinence programming, appears to have little long-term benefit in preventing outcomes such as sexually transmitted infections, although prevention of these infections is a stated goal of the programs. A spring 2005 longitudinal study by Bruckner and Bearman found that abstinence pledgers, when compared to non-pledgers, experienced similar rates of sexually transmitted infection. Pledgers did delay sexual intercourse for a limited period, but when they did start having sex, they were less likely to use condoms. They were also less likely to seek reproductive health care compared to non-pledgers.

By a Thread

Landmark study based on new "Middle Class Security Index" developed by Demos and Brandeis University

Fewer than one in three middle-class families in America is financially secure, and the remaining majority are either borderline or at high risk of falling out of the middle class altogether, according to a new study published this week by Demos and the Institute for Assets and Social Policy (IASP) at Brandeis University.

By a Thread: The New Experience of America's Middle Class is the first comprehensive report to measure economic stability across the American middle class. Based on national government data, By a Thread is the first in a series of reports and briefing papers that will utilize the new Middle Class Security Index developed by the non-partisan policy center Demos and IASP/Brandeis.

This Index measures the financial security of the middle class by rating household stability across five core economic factors: assets, educational achievement, housing costs, budget and healthcare.Based on how a family ranked in each of these factors, they were defined as financially "secure," "borderline" or "at risk"...

"If we look back at the public investments of the mid-twentieth century--the GI Bill, federal home loan guarantees, better funding for public education and college--we see that they were geared at two key benchmarks on the way to the middle-class: assets and education," said Henry Cisneros, Chairman of CityView and former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. "But the Middle Class Security Index provides a real measurement of where we are after years of seeing those investments whittled away. American families are at risk of falling out of the middle class and never getting back in, and many of those who were excluded from the initial public investment--Latinos and African Americans--are among those with the greatest vulnerability. It's time for a new public investment to stabilize the household economy and build the future middle class."

God coaching Richard Roberts on the fine points of American law

Maybe this is why he/she has no time to mend the hatred in the Sudan? From the AP

Richard Roberts told students at Oral Roberts University Wednesday that he did not want to resign as president of the scandal-plagued evangelical school, but that he did so because God insisted.

God told him on Thanksgiving that he should resign the next day, Roberts told students in the university's chapel.

"Every ounce of my flesh said 'no'" to the idea, Roberts said, but he prayed over the decision with his wife and his father, Oral Roberts, and decided to step down.

Roberts said he wanted to "strike out" against the people who were persecuting him, and considered countersuing, but "the Lord said, 'don't do that,'" he said...

Roberts spoke for only a few minutes and was applauded and cheered by students. He wiped away tears with a white handkerchief and his hands.

"This has nearly destroyed my family, and it's nearly destroyed ORU," Roberts said.

A lawsuit accuses Roberts of lavish spending at a time when the university faced more than $50 million in debt, including taking shopping sprees, buying a stable of horses and paying for a daughter to travel to the Bahamas aboard the university jet...

The week the lawsuit was filed, Richard Roberts said that God told him: "We live in a litigious society. Anyone can get mad and file a lawsuit against another person whether they have a legitimate case or not. This lawsuit ... is about intimidation, blackmail and extortion."

Perhaps Richard Roberts could just hire a lawyer (as though he hasn't got a phalanx already) to explain the intricacies of American civil law to him and that would free up god to help those dying today of dehydration and AK-47 wounds.

Just a thought.

Progress: Nose at the Grindstone or Mouths at the Union Meeting?

From The Nation a wonderful review of a new social Darwinism screed that argues that the wealthy are wealthy as a result of good breeding.

[Gregory] Clark tries to explain why England, of all the world's nations, industrialized first. And his answer is this: certain reproduction patterns among medieval Britons allowed England to breed a hardworking population with bourgeois values.

most of Britain's population was descended from rich people after several generations. Not all the descendants of the rich were rich themselves: the medieval economy couldn't provide all the talented sons of the rich with equivalent forms of employment; thus, there was constant downward social mobility. But after several generations, most of Britain's population--rich and poor--was descended from the rich. And from these wealthy ancestors, Clark argues, nearly all Britons inherited the virtuous qualities that make people rich, like the ability to delay gratification ("low time preference rates," in econ-speak). As he writes, "The attributes that would ensure later economic dynamism--patience, hard work, ingenuity, innovativeness, education--were thus spreading biologically throughout the population."

Seems there are a few problems with the theory. Like if the children of the rich were "downward"ly mobile, how did their (supposedly superior) burgeois genes continue to survive? And,

Clark does not even attempt to address the paradox of Spain, which, though it never developed a Protestant work ethic--workers there have national nap time every afternoon--remains wealthier than every one of its former colonies.

Further, the wealthy shouldn't even try to help the poor:

Despite his book's provocative thesis, Clark's recommendations are exceedingly modest. He suggests that the usual medicine the West ships to underdeveloped countries--humanitarian aid and neoliberal economic reforms--will not succeed, for none of it addresses the root cause of poverty: laziness. No array of policies will work on Third World peoples because the peoples simply won't work.

Seems there're no end of authors attempting to explain that the poor somehow deserve it and any attempt to help will NOT help as they're just bred to be lazy and poor.

Brings to mind this quote from Gilbraith:

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. - John Kenneth Galbraith

Daniel Brook (the author of the review) argues that workers' time is better spent organizing than worrying about any made-up lack of burgeois time-preference genes:

If "worker discipline," by which Clark means showing up on time (without children in tow) and working diligently through the day without breaking for snacks or cigarettes, is the key to development, workers should just buckle down and do as they're told. But to the extent that developed nations have been able to build fairer economies, it has been because workers didn't sit back and take it--they organized, in politics and in the workplace. When Clark mentions that in modern-day England "the lowest-paid [tenth of the population] still gets about 40 percent of the average wage," this is largely because Britain's minimum wage is about twice the US minimum wage. In the deregulated United States, the working poor are common; one in six Americans makes less than 35 percent of the average wage, compared with just one in twenty Brits.

T. Boone Pickens Reneges

Surprise, surprise, surprise: 2.5 Billion-Dollar-Net-Worth Texan T. Boone Pickens boasted that he would give $1 million to anyone who can disprove “even a single charge” leveled by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who he funded to the tune of $3 milion. Sen. John Kerry offered to meet with Pickens and do so, with the million dollars going to veterans’ charities.

But now Pickens is reneging

Apparently Mr. Pickens bravado only works when it's in front of a rabid-right crowd. When Kerry agrees to prove that he can disprove the swift-boaters, all of a sudden T. Boone has more conditions on the deal. How very republican of him. How very slimy to later sheepishly add in the conditions of Kerry turning over all his movies, journals and records relating to his service. Hmmm, I don't think that was what you originally stated T. Boone.

Why does this matter? Because it's part and parcel of the way the rabid-right works. Bluster and bravado in front of your troops and then lots of semantics-hunting and caveats after your troops go home to brag to their friends what a strong leader you are.

Here's some more of Pickens' slimy operating

Pickens has recently begun buying up subsurface water rights in Texas. Pickens' new company, Mesa Water, bought ground water rights for 200,000 acres (800 km²) in Roberts County, Texas for $75 million and over a 30-year period expects to make more than $1 billion on his investment. Pickens wants to take the water from the Ogallala Aquifer and pump it to El Paso, Lubbock, San Antonio or Dallas-Fort Worth. [11] On November 6, 2007 voters will go to the polls to seat a five-member board of supervisors and to approve $101 million in revenue bonds to acquire rights-of-way for delivering water and wind-generated electricity. Just two people, Pickens' ranch manager Alton Boone and his wife Lu, will cast ballots to confirm the creation of a Fresh Water Supply District in Roberts County as they are the only residents who live within the eight-acre water district and are its only eligible voters.

Kindle Me Not

Future of Reading

Act I: The act of buying

When someone buys a book, they are also buying the right to resell that book, to loan it out, or to even give it away if they want. Everyone understands this.

Jeff Bezos, Open letter to Author’s Guild, 2002

You may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content. In addition, you may not, and you will not encourage, assist or authorize any other person to, bypass, modify, defeat or circumvent security features that protect the Digital Content.

Amazon, Kindle Terms of Service, 2007

Amazon is pushing hard on the Kindle e-reader. Count me out. Give me a nice old beat-up book anyday. You know, where I can bring it into the bathroom, loan it out, use it as a coaster; not be all wrapped up in yet another layer of DRM management software and user agreements that no one reads but everyone agrees to.

Poem of the Day in Honor of the Gender Gap Index Report

In honor of the Bee Movie posting and the release of the Gender Gap Index, I found this little poem from a Peter Alsop song, "It's Only A Wee-Wee":

As soon as you’re born grown-ups check where you pee
And then they decide just how you’re s'posed t'be
Girls pink and quiet, boys noisy and blue
Seems like a dumb way to choose what you’ll do...

Oh, and the Gender Gap Index for 2007 has been released:

NORDIC COUNTRIES TOP THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM'S GENDER GAP INDEX
World makes progress on economic, political and education gaps; loses ground on health gaps.
"Geneva, Switzerland, Thursday 8 November – Four Nordic countries, Sweden (1), Norway (2), Finland (3) and Iceland (4) once again top the latest Gender Gap Index released today by the World Economic Forum. All countries in the top 20 made progress relative to their scores last year – some more so than others. Latvia (13) and Lithuania (14) made the biggest advances among the top 20, gaining six and seven places respectively, driven by smaller gender gaps in labour force participation and wages.

The performance of the United States (31) was mixed over the last year – its scores on political empowerment improved but this was offset by a bigger gap on economic participation – causing the United States to lose 6 places relative to its rank in 2006."

Yup, that's our lovely United States of America down at position 31. Below Cuba, Lesotho, Namibia and Estonia. Woo-hoo. We're number (thirty-)one, We're number (thirty-)one. I wonder, do they make those giant foam hands showing 31 fingers anywhere? I gotta get me one of those. I'm so proud I could just bust (something).

Medicare Queens (and Kings)

AP

The panel's top Republican, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, urged the officials to "put your heads together" and find a solution.

The subcommittee was taking up a report which found that more than 30,000 Medicaid providers _ doctors and others in the health care field _ owe at least $1 billion in federal taxes, yet still receive payments for their services.

The report, by the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, said that some of the worst offenders live in luxury, residing in million-dollar homes and driving high-dollar vehicles. Photos of some of those possessions were displayed at the hearing.

Remember the old Reagan myth of the "welfare queen", the real welfare, medicare, medicaid and tax cheats are the wealthiest among us who know how to game the system. Sure every so often some individual might cheat at one of these systems, but the bulk of the scamming is done by the providers, not the receivers. Read Nadar's Corporate Welfare if you really want your blood up about the cheating and outright stealing that happens by corporations against the government.

For some reason, people have an easier time hearing about and remembering a fake, black, Cadillac-driving mama than realizing the truth and giving a damn about the real life big-time cheaters.

Bee Movie Lead should be Female - It's BEES, Remember?

Amanda Marcotte has a wonderful thought about the male lead in Bee Movie

The invisibility of women and girls in children’s entertainment has a new twist on it, according to this [NY Times] article by a beekeeper about the new DreamWorks film Bee Movie. As is standard with children’s movies, all functions that aren’t being in love with and/or mothering a male character are performed by male characters, but the twist in this case is that it’s the exact opposite in real life, where female bees do most of the non-sexual work.

In Hollywood’s version, there are more than three times the number of male roles than female ones, but a cartoon of my own hive would have thousands of leading ladies and only a handful of male extras.

The nurses that tend the young and the workers that forage for pollen; the guards that keep predators like skunks away and the undertaker bees that unceremoniously haul out the dead: they’re all female. And whereas the movie’s protagonist is repeatedly told he must choose just one job and stick with it, my honeybees rotate through all of the available duties…..

That’s because non-animated drones don’t collect pollen, or make beeswax, or even have stingers. If Mr. Seinfeld wanted realism (and an R rating), his male bees would be sex workers who do little more than mate with the queen — after which their genitals snap off. Worse: when winter comes, worker bees shove the freeloading males out into the cold. If drones are required in the spring, the queen will simply make more of them.

Regendering an entire species to make sure that male primacy is preserved? The common wisdom is that boys won’t be interested in watching or reading about female characters, due apparently to some inborn understanding that women are just boring, horrible, and inferior, but I’m not buying that. If boys were brought up to believe that women were equal to men, they’d be as open to movies and books with female leads as girls are to movies and books with male leads. I remember when I was a kid, boys would often hide it if they played Barbies, for fear of getting bitched out by their parents. While there are a lot of liberal parents out there who wouldn’t do that, I imagine there are still huge numbers of parents that won’t allow their boys to get invested in female characters because they fear that it’s feminizing and not teaching the boys the “right” lessons about their place in the world relative to women’s. Blaming the boys themselves is a way of shifting responsibility off the parents, and allowing parents to indulge their sexist phobias without having to face up to their own issues.

Why is it that girls are expected to read about male characters in 90% of the children's stories I read to Catharine? Lion? Male. Chipmunk? Male. Train? Male. Spider? Male. Princess? Oooh, ooh, female, yeay!!!! WTF!?!?!?!?!?

I am sick to death of having to read to her about male heroes and only about 10% of the time reading about females, most of whom I would NOT call heroines as they just sit around looking pretty. Yes, I DO seek out female characters. Yes, I know there are SOME out there. But by and large, the characters are either boys or non-human characters which are inevitably referred to as "he." I AM SICK OF IT!!!!!

Wake the fuck up industry. Start addressing the other half of children out there. Stop making me have to read "he" as "she". Stop making the character animations obviously male. And while I'm near the subject, can't a car, a frog or a dinosaur be a female without long eyelashes? For crap's sake. Why are girls supposed to just "shut up and take it" when male characters are foisted upon them, but boys are "not going to watch/listen/read about a female lead?" Says who? Is that the children talking? or the patriarchy?

[/end rant]

Privacy is for Suckas

From Good Will Hinton:

Off the AP wire this morning:

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people's private communications and financial information.

So let me get this straight. We can't expect to have privacy anymore, but that's ok because it is going to be the government and business entrusted with information about us.

Aren't most privacy issues centered around the government checking up on us?

I place the blame squarely on Republicans for making everything about terrorism and being willing to sacrifice anything including our freedom for the sake of the "War On Terrorism".

No folks, this isn't from The Onion. Would that it were. This is for real. This is YOUR GOVERNMENT - the deputy director of National Intelligence stating baldly that there is no more right to privacy. You cannot be anonymous in your walk down the street; in your trip to the park; in your blog comments. Every move you make must be monitored, tracked, tied to personal information such as your retinal pattern and/or social security number. The government MUST be able to profile you, because, after all, as we've heard a hundred thousand times, only the "bad guys" mind if you get into their business. We good law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear by being cataloged, evaluated, analyzed, data-mined, profiled and other-wise kept tabs on, right? I mean, if we're not doing anything wrong, why not just let the feds into our homes and files anytime, day or night? What do we have to hide?

Where did America go and how did we let it get away? I hope that our children never forgive us and never let us forget how we sat by as the America of the Constitution was flushed away.

Leadious George

MSNBC

About 175,000 Curious George Plush Dolls were recalled Thursday, becoming the latest popular toy made in China found to be contaminated with dangerous levels of lead.

Manufactured by Marvel Toys, of New York, N.Y., the Curious George dolls contain excessive levels of lead in their surface paint, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

What more is there to say other than please do NOT buy us ANY toys ANYMORE. We will get along just fine with made-up toys. This is getting absurd.

Sick system

Gee, can it really be true that health insurers pay bonuses to employees who dump customers after they have been diagnosed with expensive medical needs? Really? Isn't that illegal, at least in California (where they have a modicum of care for their citiznes?) Hmmm. Let's find out:

One of the state's largest health insurers set goals and paid bonuses based in part on how many individual policyholders were dropped and how much money was saved.

Woodland Hills-based Health Net Inc. avoided paying $35.5 million in medical expenses by rescinding about 1,600 policies between 2000 and 2006. During that period, it paid its senior analyst in charge of cancellations more than $20,000 in bonuses based in part on her meeting or exceeding annual targets for revoking policies, documents disclosed Thursday showed.

The revelation that the health plan had cancellation goals and bonuses comes amid a storm of controversy over the industry-wide but long-hidden practice of rescinding coverage after expensive medical treatments have been authorized...

The bonuses were disclosed at an arbitration hearing in a lawsuit brought by Patsy Bates, a Gardena hairdresser whose coverage was rescinded by Health Net in the middle of chemotherapy treatments for breast cancer. She is seeking $6 million in compensation, plus damages.

Insurers maintain that cancellations are necessary to root out fraud and keep premiums affordable. Individual coverage is issued to only the healthiest applicants, who must disclose preexisting conditions.

Which is why we need government-provided single-payer health-care. If only the most healthy can get insurance, aren't we just connning ourselves? Where do the poor who get diagnosed with cancer go do you think? To Mars for medical coverage? Oh, right, right back to government funded state-run systems. Why not cut out the duplicative profit-taking middle-man and go straight to a government-run system with no advertising costs, no marketing costs, no claims adjusters? Sure, we can't insure everyone for everything. That's fine. I'd rather we insured 100% of the population for 80% of the illnesses than 50% of the population for some indeterminate percentage of illnesses and only to be kicked out when they get really sick.

This is really sick.

The rainmaker

How come it's funny when the Nepalese sacrifice goats to ask god to fix an airplane, but it's sacred when Sonny Perdue decides to hold a prayer service to pray Atlanta out of a drought? And is god really unaware that Georgie is in the midst of a terrible drought (while simultaneously in the middle of uncontrolled sprawl?) Will a prayer from loyal child Perdue really awaken god to something that god is not aware of as an omniscient being?

What to do when the rain won't come? If you're Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, you pray.
more stories like this

The governor will host a prayer service next week to ask for relief from the drought gripping the Southeast.

"The only solution is rain, and the only place we get that is from a higher power," Perdue spokesman Bert Brantley said on Wednesday.

Perdue's office has sent out invitations to leaders from several faiths for the service, set for Tuesday.

Maybe instead of praying you should be figuring out how to do more MANDATORY (not voluntary) water conservation.

And whatdya wanna bet that Perdue has scheduled this "ceremony" for Tuesday because the weather service is calling for rain on Tuesday?

"Hallelujah. God has answered our prayers." Maybe god did need to be told about the drought after all? Or is it that god already knows about the drought but needs some major ass-kissing to relieve it?

Age-old beliefs or a healthy child?

AP

BANGALORE, India - Doctors in southern India completed a grueling 24-hour operation Wednesday on a girl born with four arms and four legs that surgeons said will give the 2-year-old a chance at a normal life.

The surgery went "wonderfully well," said Dr. Sharan Patil, who led a team of more than 30 surgeons in performing the marathon procedure to remove Lakshmi's extra limbs, salvage her organs and rebuild her pelvis area.

"This girl can now lead as good a life as anyone else," Patil said from a hospital in the southern Indian city of Bangalore.

Lakshmi, who has been revered by some in her village as the reincarnation of a Hindu goddess, was born joined at the pelvis to a "parasitic twin" that stopped developing in her mother's womb. The surviving fetus absorbed the limbs, kidneys and other body parts of the undeveloped fetus.

"This is a very rare occurrence," said Dr. Doug Miniati a pediatric surgeon at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the surgery. Miniati said the surgery was extremely complicated but her chances of survival were greater because she was not joined at the heart or brain.

The doctors worked through the night to remove the extra limbs and organs. By midnight, a team of neurologists had separated the fused spines while orthopedic surgeons removed most of the "parasite," carefully identifying which organs and internal structures belonged to the girl, said Patil.

My second favorite part about this surgery is that the doctors/hospital did it pro-bono. Lakshmi's parents live in rural India and would have lived and died working without ever being able to afford the $625,000 for the surgery and care.

My favorite part about this story is that earlier articles quote the mom as saying something to the effect of some don't want Lakshmi to have this surgery because they believe she is a reincarnation of Vishnu (the Hindu god w/all the extra limbs), but I just want her to have a good life. How like a good mom to put aside age-old superstitions and just look out for the best for her child.

I'm gonna get me some free edumacasion

This is pretty cool

MIT is one of 28 colleges that have posted courses, campus speeches and other events on a section of iTunes known as iTunes U. Since the site was launched last spring with 16 institutions, material from it has been downloaded more than 4 million times.

Unlike other offerings from Apple's music store, where songs cost 99 cents, everything on iTunes U is free. Penn State University offers instruction on information management. Users can download a general chemistry class from Seattle Pacific University, a lecture on the psychosocial aspects of health care from Northeastern University or a class on Ben Franklin from Stanford University. (No universities in the Washington area participate.)

I love the idea of being able to listen to a University lecture while I'm waiting for the dentist, the checkout line, a haircut, etc. Thank you Internet.

"It's MY hobby and you can't participate Fat Ass"

Salon has an utterly impossible-to-believe article about the ruination of the marathon by all the fat, out-of-shape, 12-minute-milers out there. Here's a sample:

f Frank Shorter inspired the first running boom, Oprah inspired the second, by running the Marine Corps Marathon. And it was a much bigger boom. This was not a spindly 24-year-old Yalie gliding through Old World Munich. This was a middle-aged woman hauling her flab around the District of Columbia. If Oprah could run a marathon, shame on anyone who couldn't.

When Oprah expanded the sport, she also lowered the bar for excellence. For the previous generation of marathoners, the goal had been qualifying for Boston. Now, it was beating Oprah. Her time of four hours and 29 minutes -- the Oprah Line -- became the new benchmark for a respectable race.

Once the supreme test for hardened runners, the marathon became a gateway into the sport. Soon, gravel paths were crowded with 5-mile-an-hour joggers out to check "26.2 miles" off their life lists. Team in Training, which raises money for leukemia research, promised to turn loafers into marathoners in 20 weeks. I met a lawyer who started running because, "They say if you can run a marathon, you can do anything!" The marathon was no longer a competition. It was a self-improvement exercise.

Well boo-frickin-hoo you pampered elitist man, Edward McClelland. The fact that a large African-American woman could finish a marathon diminishes you in what way exactly? The fact that people run as a self-improvement exercise is bad how? Would you prefer that the fat-asses just sat on the couch spaced out on TV? No, I suppose you'd complain about that too. Just shows to go you that elitism is alive and well and living in upper-middle class white male America. I'm sure it exists elsewhere, but it seems to thrive there.