According to the New York Times:

At least nine states, by one count, have decided to give up the federal matching funds rather than submit to dictates that undermine sensible sex education. Now there is growing evidence that the programs have no effect on children’s sexual behavior.

Hooray for people finally waking up and realizing the morals have nothing to do with knowledge, and usually are quite opposed to it!

I will admit, though, I was surprised about the little snippet below from this article.

Teens in both groups were just as likely to use condoms or birth control, the report found — countering the fears of critics of abstinence-only education, who say children ignorant of how to protect themselves from pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases will simply have more unprotected sex.

If abstinence only education is at least not preventing kids from using birth control, I must admit that quells my fears substantially. However, I still believe that creating an environment where kids are afraid to talk about their bodies and actions is unhealthy and helps perpetuate the weird relationship our society has with sex. I’m honestly glad, though, that there’s “only” psychological damage at stake, rather than increasing risk of diseases et al that are sometimes impossible to heal.

I particularly liked this quote:

“We have been promoting ignorance in the era of AIDS, and that’s not just bad public health policy, its bad ethics,” added James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth.

More from the NYT article after the jump.

A Congressionally mandated report issued this month by the Mathematica Policy Research firm found that elementary and middle school students in four communities who received abstinence instruction — sometimes on a daily basis — were just as likely to have sex in the following years as students who did not get such instruction. Those who became sexually active — about half of each group — started at the same age (14.9 years on average) and had the same number of sexual partners. The chief caveat is that none of the four programs studied continued the abstinence instruction into high school, the most sexually active period for most teenagers, so it is not known whether more sustained abstinence education would show more effectiveness.

Supporters of abstinence-only education sometimes point to a sharp decline in teenage pregnancy rates in recent years as proof that the programs must be working. But a paper by researchers at Columbia University and the Guttmacher Institute, published in the January issue of The American Journal of Public Health, attributed 86 percent of the decline to greater and more effective use of contraceptives — and only 14 percent to teenagers’ deciding to wait longer to start having sex. At the very least, that suggests that the current policy of emphasizing abstinence and minimizing contraceptive use should be turned around.

An Earth-like planet spotted outside our solar system is the first found that could support liquid water and harbor life, scientists announced today.

Liquid water is a key ingredient for life as we know it. The newfound planet is located at the “Goldilocks” distance—not too close and not too far from its star to keep water on its surface from freezing or vaporizing away.

Oh yes. Life as we know it. I’m hoping someone can correct me here, but isn’t a bit egotistical to think that “life as we know it” is the only way life can evolve at all? Is water really the only thing that can lead to life? Considering the infinite possibilities available in the infinite timeline of the Universe, it really seems a bit naive to think that there could be one magic “key ingredient”.

I guess this particularly caught my eye because just two or three nights ago, Jason and I were trying to decide what will happen to our own blue sphere. I asked him if he thought we’d totally wipe ourselves and everything else out, or if perhaps we’d just wipe almost everything out and maybe something else would evolve and surpass us. He liked the first option; I’m pushing for the second. I like the imagine a world where the number of humans dramatically decrease, opening a possibility for a better life form to evolve and maybe even rule over us. Of course, once I start daydreaming that far, I can’t help but picture Jay and Silent Bob. “In this world gone mad, we won’t spank the monkey! The monkey will spank us!” But, yanno, I think it’d be an interesting way to curb our human ego.

Which brings us full circle to the discovery today. Human ego – telling you how life is made since 8000 BC!

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the ruling.

“It’s illegal for a man to marry a man and it should likewise be illegal for a man to pay alimony to a man,” said John McGuire, one of Roach’s attorneys.

Circuit Judge Jack R. St. Arnold, however, ruled that in the eyes of the law, nothing changed significantly enough to free Roach from his $1,250-a-month obligation.

The judge said since Florida courts have ruled sex-change surgery cannot legally change a person’s birth gender, Roach technically is not paying alimony to a man.

I guess in the end, it was a good decision, although I don’t like the judge’s reason behind it (that Silverwolf, the ex-wife, isn’t really a man). That, to me, seems to pretty clearly invalidate an individual’s ability to determine their own gender. I think it’s kind of funny that they referred to it as “birth gender”, since there’s really not such a thing. You have a birth sex, but gender is a social construct.

I wonder what would happen if a F2M transexual and a birth-sexed female tried to marry. Would they rule that it’s a gay marriage? This seems to set the precedent that it could be construed as such. If that’s the case, it’s pretty not-fair that no matter what you do, you are forever locked into your DNA, even down to who the state allows you to love.

Alimony, though, is a weird subject for it to be about though, because I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it either. I think it was created in a time to help women who couldn’t feasibly take care of themselves if they didn’t have a man to support them. That’s not entirely the case anymore, so isn’t alimony somewhat of an outdated, patriarchal concept? At the same time, with the glass ceiling et al, I guess we can’t really get rid of alimony until women are actually earning as much as men. But since Silverwolf in the above case will be living as a man, and therefore receiving the financial benefits of it, wouldn’t that make the alimony no longer relevant?

I’m wondering what other people are thinking about this.

The recent turmoil in financial markets coupled with the run-up in gasoline prices may have contributed to consumers” heightened sense of uncertainty and concern.

I realize that it would be a stretch to assert that our Powers That Be somehow orchestrated the dip in the Chinese stock markets that triggered the avalanche of terror in the stock market. (Although, at this point, I will believe that they can and do control almost everything.) But the increase in gas prices certainly makes me raise an eyebrow. Seeing that the market was going crazy and that oil would likely skyrocket as a result, you’d think that the Powers would step in and perhaps provide some sort of relief so that we didn’t get hit hard at the gas pump. Just something to hold our hands and tell us everything is okay. The sky isn’t falling, the damage in the market will be controlled, etc.

Instead, they let oil do what it does best: panic and skyrocket. And I realize that government intervention in markets is down-right ill-advised, but you’d think that with the way the Reps are losing the popularity contest right now, they’d want to do everything they could to make people think they’re safe and sound with the old GOP.

But then I started thinking. Maybe this is exactly what the White House and the poor, outnumbered Republican Congressmen want. Maybe they want the economy to go to shit the minute that the Dems take over. Let’s ignore the fact that the economy has been teetering on the brink for quite some time. Let’s ignore the fact that the housing bubble basically burst while the Reps were still in power. Let’s just focus on who’s in power when we’re actually feeling the effects of past decisions.

If we could just focus on the shit-tastic economy, maybe we’ll forget about Scooter Libby, the Attorney General’s mishaps, Jack Abramoff, and all the other bad stuff that’s gone down. Heck, maybe we’ll be so worried about our own economy that we’ll stop bitching about our troops in Iraq! Hey, America, how can you possibly worry about foreign policy when your wallets are being deflated?

And then, I calm down and realize that I’m officially a conspiracy-theory spouting loony.

Kids should definitely be educated about the physical and emotional consequences of sexual activity. However, it’s been proven repeatedly that abstinence education just doesn’t work. You can scare kids however much you want, but unless you give them the proper knowledge in how to deal with what their bodies want them to do (be it smoking, sex, reckless behavior, etc), then you’re really doing nothing but creating a bunch of guilt-ridden, at-risk teens.

Rather than spending so much money telling them to not do what feels good, why don’t we invest that money into providing them with the materials they need to do it safely? Instead of making kids scared to death to talk about what they’re doing anyway, why don’t we create open forums where they can get information without being ashamed or scared? I’m glad that Gov. Strickland realizes that. I hope that in all the backlash that is sure to follow, he will come up with a plan that better utilizes a method of teaching safe sex and creating an environment of knowledge rather than fear.

The student, covered in grape seed oil and wearing nothing but a long beard and shoulder length hair, entered the lunchroom area and began yelling and flailing his arms, police said.

Mostly, I just think this is amazing. Also, do people really “wear” beards? I mean, if you called a phone sex line and say “Hey baby, watcha wearing?” would “A beard” ever be an acceptable answer? (Pretend the phone sex line is staffed by men…or hairy women….shut up.)