The chief operating officer of the National Children’s Museum was arrested Tuesday and is charged with distributing child pornography over the Internet, authorities said. Story here.
“Well, You Know Me. I Get To Thinking…”
Out-of-towners are traveling to New York City with the specific aim of killing themselves in a phenomenon researchers are calling "suicide tourism," a Manhattan public health expert reported Monday.
Just as people travel to specific cities for sightseeing or to remote regions of the world for complex, but low-cost surgeries, others are seeing New York City as their final destination — in life.
Research reported in Washington, D.C., at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association suggest that one in 10 suicides committed in Manhattan alone since 1990 have involved nonresidents.
***
Examining coroners’ reports, Vlahov and colleagues could determine that people had traveled from out of town, and had come from faraway states and elsewhere in the world.
What leapt surprisingly from the coroners’ files, like a recurrent theme, were specific places chosen to commit the act. The Empire State Building ranked high, as it has for decades among residents. But Times Square and the George Washington Bridge were commonly selected by nonresidents.
When live hand you lemons, you make lemonade. And if other’s lives are full of lemons, I say you should still make lemonade.
New York City could build an advertising campaign around the whole "suicide tourism" thing (since "I Heart New York" is soooo 1970s). Something like, "Come to New York! More tall buildings per square mile than any other place in the world!"
Tourist agencies could offer "suicide specials", i.e., "Before you off yourself, see an off-Broadway show! Special one-way airline ticket discounts available!"
C’mon, capitalists. Get crackin’!
Hugs Can Get You Detention
A little too PC if you ask me:
Two hugs equals two days of detention for 13-year-old Megan Coulter. The eighth-grader was punished for violating a school policy banning public displays of affection when she hugged two friends Friday.
"I feel it is crazy," said Megan, who was to serve her second detention Tuesday after classes at Mascoutah Middle School.
"I was just giving them a hug goodbye for the weekend," she said.
Megan’s mother, Melissa Coulter, said the embraces weren’t even real hugs — just an arm around the shoulder and slight squeeze.
"It’s hilarious to the point of ridicule," Coulter said. "I’m still dumbfounded that she’s having to do this."
District Superintendent Sam McGowen said that he thinks the penalty is fair and that administrators in the school east of St. Louis were following policy in the student handbook.
It states: "Displays of affection should not occur on the school campus at any time. It is in poor taste, reflects poor judgment, and brings discredit to the school and to the persons involved."
Coulter said she and her husband told their daughter to go ahead and serve her detentions because the only other option was a day of suspension for each skipped detention.
"We don’t agree with it, but I certainly don’t want her to get in more trouble," Coulter said.
The couple plan to attend the next school board meeting to ask board members to consider rewording the policy or be more specific in what is considered a display of affection.
"I’m just hoping the school board will open their eyes and just realize that maybe they shouldn’t be punishing us for hugs," Megan said.
And Once Again, The Evangelical Right Is Wrong
Abstinence-only programs fail to curb teen sex:
Programs that focus exclusively on abstinence have not been shown to affect teenager sexual behavior, although they are eligible for tens of millions of dollars in federal grants, according to a study released by a nonpartisan group that seeks to reduce teen pregnancies.
"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 concluded.
The report, which was based on a review of research into teenager sexual behavior, was being released Wednesday 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."
"Two-thirds of the 48 comprehensive programs that supported both abstinence and the use of condoms and contraceptives for sexually active teens had positive behavior effect," said the report.
This is hardly a surprise. Giving kids the facts enables them to make wise decisions. Hiding the facts and giving them moral lectures has the opposite effect.
Atomic Theory And Philosophy For Kids
Some questions just can’t be answered:
So, last night, we’re up in her bed, I’m reading A Bunny for All Seasons to her. She says to me, "Daddy, how do you know that when you shut the book the pictures don’t move all around and run around when you shut the book?"
…"Do you want the long answer or the short answer?"
"The long answer," is her reply.
"Okay, I know the pictures don’t run around on the page when we close the book because I know how paper is made. I know what paper is made of. And I know how ink is made and I know what ink is made of. Both things are made up of little tiny, tiny pieces called atoms. These are so so sooooo tiny you can’t even see them, not even with a telescope. But, atoms behave in certain ways that we can predict because they follow what are called scientific laws. These laws say that if you roll a ball, it’ll always roll forever unless something stops it and things like that. And the way these laws work, once you put ink on a page and it dries, it almost never ever moves again. So when you see a cartoon, which is a drawing, it’s actually a bunch of drawings and they flip them very very fast, like those flip books of Mickey Mouse you have, only they flip them a lot, lot faster. So fast you can’t even see that it’s a bunch of nonmoving pictures that just look like they’re moving. So that’s how I know the pictures in a book don’t move when we close it."
"Okay, now the short answer," she says. She likes to get both answers all the time.
"Well, the short answer is, I don’t know that the pictures don’t move when I close the book. I can only guess that they don’t because of everything I said in the long answer. You know your dresser in your room where your clothes are kept?" She nodded. "Well, without getting up and taking me over there, prove to me that it exists right now. Prove that it is real….See, you can’t. You can only say that things you can’t see probably are real and probably behave in certain ways."
She reached up to her face and I thought she was going to philosophically stroke her chin. Instead, she grabbed her bottom lip and brought her other hand up to grip her top lip. Then she pulled both lips out into a beak shape.
"Quack quack quack, quack quack quack," she told me.
Instant Replay In Baseball
Well, why not?
For the first time Tuesday, baseball general managers recommended instant replay be used to help umpires make difficult decisions.
The recommendation, by a 25-5 vote, was limited to boundary calls — whether potential home runs are fair or foul, whether balls go over fences or hit the top and bounce back, and whether fans interfere with possible homers.
I think that’s a reasonable use of instant replays. I don’t think it should be used for balls/strikes. That would make the game even slower.
Bush Breaks Nixon’s Record
For the first time in the history of the Gallup Poll, 50% say they "strongly disapprove" of the president. Richard Nixon had reached the previous high, 48%, just before an impeachment inquiry was launched in 1974.
When It Hits Home
It seems that Rudy Guiliani was against universal health care in his early political career. Then he was in favor of universal health care once he was stricken with prostate cancer. But once that cancer went in to remission, he was against universal health care again. Read more.
“Think Of The Children!!!”
Carol Platt Liebau is concerned about morals, particularly those of young girls. The sky is falling. Seriously, it is.
Before we get to her column, let’s first look at something written a few years ago in the San Fran Chronicle:
Teen suicide is more than a personal tragedy; it’s a powerful reminder of adults’ own fear of the future. Ninety years ago, commentators led by Stanford University psychologist Lewis Terman and Literary Digest’s editors variously blamed the "appalling rate of child suicide" on salacious media, Prohibition, women’s suffrage, harsh schooling, success anxiety and loss of innocence. In the 1950s, it was horror comics, rock ‘n’ roll, the Bomb. Today, experts blame the "epidemic of teenage suicides" on commercialism, drugs, bullying, academic demands, homosexuality, homophobia, lax parenting, tough parenting, post-Reagan coldness, liberal permissiveness, absentee moms, depressing media — in short, whatever the commentator deplores about modern society.
(Empahses mine). And as if to prove that thesis, here comes Carol Platt Liebau:
Tila Tequila has been Playboy’s Cyber Girl of the Week. She has self-published singles titled “F— Ya Man,” and “Playgirl Central,” where she proclaims “I don’t want no love, I just wanna get screwed!"
One advantage of being my age is that I don’t know who Tila Tequila is. The second advantage is that I don’t care. Right off the bat, I have to say that it sounds like a fake name. "Tila Tequila"? Sounds like Pepe LePeu’s girlfriend.
She’s got more “friends” than anyone in the history of MySpace.
Except Jon. That guy is wicked popular.
She recently announced her bisexuality, and stars on a popular new MTV reality show. Tila has become a sign of the times.
Really? If Tila is such an icon, why did Carol have to explain who she was?
Tila Tequila and her career have prompted ruminations on the nature of celebrity in The New York Times, and she’s been profiled in TIME magazine.
O.K. I get it. She’s biiiig.
But more than anything, the Tila phenomenon highlights a pernicious trend in American culture: Celebrating young women only for their “sexiness” and their willingness to flaunt it — rather than for character, intelligence, or talent.
Right. It’s only a recent trend. Not like it was in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Marilyn Monroe, as you recall, was celebrated for her character, intelligence and talent. Not — repeat not — her "sexiness". </sarcasm>
On “A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila,” both straight men and lesbians vie for Tila’s affections. To do so, they engage in a variety of sexually explicit activities features lewd behavior among the contestants, encouraged and applauded by Tila herself, including group sleepovers and raunchy rounds of “Truth or Dare.”
Sounds dreadful.
It is the most popular show in its time period among people 18-34, and no doubt has many younger viewers.
Ooops. Sorry, Carol Platt LIEbau. It’s premiere show was ranked number one "across all cable competition". But cable viewers are still meager compared to the networks.
Certainly most young people understand that what they’re watching is more than a little over the top. But seeing the behavior also normalizes it – and allows women like Tila to set standards for young people all across the United States. When the culture tells girls that sexual decision making comes down to nothing more than “if it feels good, do it,” they become pressured to conform to a sexy ideal that’s as unwholesome as it is difficult to attain.
I think Carol is giving Tila waaaaay too much credit. And haven’t we heard this before? In my day (and indeed, in Carol’s day — she was born in 1967), it was Madonna.
And look how Carol turned out. The woman serves as her own antithesis.
That’s quite a contrast from the days when American society (and media of all sorts) reflected a consensus that took into account the dangers – not only physical, but also emotional, psychological and even spiritual – of giving too much too soon.
That’s just silly. A lot of old culture was about sex, and everyone then knew it. How about, say, the popular 1940s song "Goodnight Irene" with lyrics like "Sometimes she sleeps in pajamas, Sometimes she wears a nightgown, But when they’re both at the laundry, Irene is the talk of the town"? Hello??? What do you think that was about?
Now, girls have lost much of the social support that once buttressed decisions to abstain from sex, and parents and clergy are left trying to protect them from a culture that glamorizes sexual promiscuity and exhibitionism. Because of the example set by “celebrities” ranging from Tila Tequila to Paris Hilton (who came to prominence after the release of a sex tape) —
I think Paris Hilton was prominent before the sex tape. Let me put it this way: if I released a sex tape, nobody would care.
Okay, bad example. The point is that merely "releasing" a sex tape does not make one prominent.
— it seems more difficult to resist the advances of boys interested in nothing more than sex…
How Carol knows this, we don’t know.
…appropriate to wear revealing clothes, and acceptable to behave in suggestive ways that would have been unthinkable even twenty years ago.
Really? Let’s take a side excursion to "twenty years ago", when things were oh so much more Ozzie and Harriet.
Here’s a Time Magazine cover from 1987:
Cosmo 1987:
In 1987, People magazine (a pretty good barometer of culture) listed it’s 25 most intriguing people. 4 of the top 5 were involved in sex scandals (Donald Trump, Donna Rice, Gary Hart, Jessica Hahn) and the fifth was a looker (Fawn Hall).
What planet was Carol Liebau living on back then?
The point is that with every generation, there is the older generation decrying how life, culture, etc. are all going to hell in a handbasket. And yet, we seem to forge on ahead.
And now Carol pulls out the ugga-bugga scare tactics. Yup. The decrease in our society’s morals leads to … death!
The results are devastating. Giving too much, too soon can result in girls confronting emotions including regret, anxiety, guilt, shame, and lack of trust in males. In fact, recent academic research has suggested that even modest sexual experimentation increases the risk of depression for girls…
Well, yes and no. Recent academic research suggests that risky behavior (which includes sexual experimentation, drug use and alcohol use) leads to depression for both girls AND boys. The confluence of all these factors and the degree to which they cause depression, and the degree of depression itself, are not known. Carol presents these findings in such a way as to suggest that if a girl, any girl, has her boob touched, she will become suicidal. That’s simply taking the data too far.
… so it’s worth asking: Does the widespread sexual behavior celebrated by teen culture explain in part the CDC’s latest report finding that suicide rates among preteen and young teen girls had spiked by a whopping 76%?
76% sounds like a lot. A "whopping" lot. Unfortunately for miss LIEbau, it’s misleading. It rose eight percent for 10-24 year olds. And ifor many ages ranges, it’s still down from what it was 17 years ago.
But accurate facts aside, Carol support her assertion that widespread sexual behavior among teens leads to increased teen suicide. You know that she can’t, because she asks the question ("Is it possible that….?"). That’s rightwing speak for "I have a theory, but I can’t support it…..
There are others who have better ideas about the cause for the spike in teen suicides, but that’s for another day. Back to Carol….
It’s not easy to fight the pernicious messages being purveyed by the culture – but making the effort is important for the mental, physical and spiritual health of America’s girls. And as difficult as it may seem to bring about change, it is possible to create a more wholesome teen culture if people realize that their objections to the status quo are hardly idiosyncratic.
There are, however, two ways to approach this problem. One is to work with America’s girls — particularly your own. The other is to fight culture. The second is a losing battle, and becomes Stalinist and Maoist. Not very sporting for a woman who writes a blog devoted to (among other things) free enterprise.
After all, concerted effort and dedication on the part of environmentalists have brought us to a point where retailers are beginning to package detergents in smaller, more “earth-friendly” bottles and businesses brag about how “green” they are. Government involvement is unnecessary (and, when it comes to free expression, unwise) when Americans themselves are willing to confront the sexual saturation of the culture and demand something better.
But obviously Carol, Americans are demanding sex. That’s why the shows you complain about have high ratings.
It’s high time for a change. After all, a culture in which someone like Tila Tequila can be vaulted even to the outermost rings of the celebrity galaxy isn’t anywhere that America’s girls belong.
Ms. Tequila has been vaulted to the "outermost rings of the celebrity galaxy"? Again, I think Carol is overstating the Tila Tequila "problem". But to a hammer, everything is a nail, right?
Lincoln Freed The Slaves…
…but some of them "didn’t get the memo". Or more accurately, some of them were never told about the memo.
I wasn’t aware of this, but in the deepest regions of the South, African-Americans were kept as slaves until as late as — wait for it — 1961.
Porn For Soldiers
I’m with Steve Benen — if you are fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and risk get shot at or blown up at any moment, then by God you really should be entitled to read whatever the hell you want.
Yes, including Penthouse.
But the American Prude Family Association isn’t all that concerned about the soldier’s dying. Nope, what bothers the AFA is that our soldiers are reading smut.
Dozens of religious and anti-pornography groups have complained to Congress and Defense Secretary Robert Gates that a Pentagon board set up to review magazines and films is allowing sales of material that Congress intended to ban.
"They’re saying ‘we’re not selling stuff that’s sexually explicit’ … and we say it’s pornography," says Donald Wildmon, head of the American Family Association, a Christian anti-pornography group. A letter-writing campaign launched Friday by opponents of the policy aims to convince Congress to "get the Pentagon to obey the law," he adds.
Well, obeying the law is nice, but it’s a dumb law. And you would think that a group named American Family Association would be more concerned about returning the men and women fighting overseas back home to their families, rather than get all hot and bothered about nudie magazines.
The Skipping Crowd
I didn’t see the Patriots-Colts game this weekend, but aside from it not being a Patriots blowout, there was another strange anomoly.
Check out this YouTube video, and in particular the noise of the crowd:
What’s that about? This:
In the past, teams that have visited the RCA Dome have questioned whether the Colts pipe in artificial crowd noise in an effort to disrupt the road team’s offense. Though the Colts have denied any such chicanery (thanks, Tiki), the suspicions remain.
And the suspicions will only grow stronger after Sunday’s game against New England. During the first play of the fourth quarter, the noise from the crowd contained a strange effect. It almost sounded like my kid was working the "Whammy Bar" while playing Guitar Hero.
We don’t know whether that noise could be heard in the stadium, but it was obvious on CBS’ broadcast. And it invites speculation as to whether the Colts are indeed piping in phony music — and whether there was a malfunction of some sort on Sunday that offered proof of it.
Bad Day At The Office
Don’t let it get you down:
Kentucky To Become As Gay As San Francisco
That’s what Pat Boone is worried about.
Seriously.
With the Democrat ahead in the governer’s race in that state, and with election day being tomorrow, the GOP is playing the "gay paranoia" card that worked in 2004. Pat Boone has been solicited to make robo-phone calls to Kentucky voters.
Full story (and the Pat Boone recording) here.
Today Is Guy Fawkes Day
On November 5, 1605, Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the Parliament.
Read what happened and the lessons from the whole event that are relevant to today.