The numbers don't lie. Trying to pretend teenagers will not have sex does not have sex. Teaching abstinence only and restricting access to birth control methods such as is often seen in fundamentally religious communities leads to more teenage pregnancies, abortions and STD's transmitted, not less.
Sorry to reply a second time right away, I missed this the first time. According to this study ( http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0202/Abstinence-only-study-could-alter-sex-education-landscape ) you are wrong. This study took kids and randomly assigned them to four groups, each of which received different types of sex education. The abstinence only kids had the lowest rate of beginning sexual activity. It is not in this article, but the study also found that the rate of condom use by those who had sex was statistically similar across all four groups.
I would agree that restricting access to contraceptives is counterproductive. However, there is a difference between not restricting access to contraceptives and providing contraceptives.
Uhuh...or just pop down to the local clinic, have some blood and urine samples taken and wait a few days.
Unless of course your prospective partner picked it up too recently for it to show up on the tests. HIV, for example, takes 3-6 months to show up in blood tests, there are other STDs that take time to show up in tests as well.
Sorry, but you are mistaken. I do not remember which ones they are, but there are several STD's that can be transmitted even if the male is wearing a condom and it works as designed. This does not factor in the risk of failure of the device.
Simple rule, the more sexual partners you have, the greater your risk of catching something no matter what other actions you take. If you and your sexual partner are monogamous your chance of catching an STD approaches zero (however since many STDs have alternative transmission vectors--e.g. blood transfusion--that chance will always be greater than zero).
Those "confounding variables were already causing driving fatalities and injuries to be on a downward trend when cellphones were developed. If cellphones are a major hazard, we should see that downward trend flatten out with their introduction, but we don't.
My point is that if talking on cellphones is such a serious impact on driving safety, we would see a change in the steady downward trend of driving fatalities when cellphones were introduced. However, there was no noticeable change in the downward trend of accident fatalities with the increasing usage of cellphones.
I cannot now find the reference and I don't even remember my source. However, the number that sticks in my head was that seatbelts added between $100 and $500 to the cost of a car, the average cost of a new car in 1963 a little over $3,000.
But people talking on the phone is something that is so easily fixed with just a few bucks, that I find it really annoying that people still keep holding onto their phones.
Except that most studies show that the majority of the problem is talking on the phone, not holding the phone. So, what is the inexpensive fix of yours that will address the problem?
The problem with you theory is that accident statistics show that traffic injuries and fatalities have been falling steadily for the last 30 years or so. There is not some major problem with Americans' driving habits that needs some major rework of the way things are done to fix.
I'm sorry, but in the U.S. it has been decided that not only don't you have the right to decide whether or not you wear a seat belt. Not only that, it was decided that you have to pay for a seatbelt to be installed in your car even though at the time the majority of people did not believe it was worth the additional cost (at the time it was made mandatory the cost of installing seatbelts was over 10% of the cost of an average new car).
Yes, we must pass a law to address this pressing problem. Just look at the accident rates since cell phones came out, you can clearly see a correlation between cell phone use and increasing fatalities and injuries from accidents while driving.
Wait, what's that you say? Fatalities and injuries in automobile accidents have been falling steadily since the 60s or 70s with no change in the slope when cell phones came out. How can that be? Talking on cell phones while driving is a serious threat to public health and requires new laws to address.
The answer is that there is no "problem" that requires a law to address. While it is a good idea to continue the steady drumbeat to educate the public that talking on the cellphone or texting while driving are hazardous behaviors, the evidence of actual accident statistics does not indicate it is a problem that requires new laws and intrusive technologies to fix.
Yeah, since all the studies show that talking on a hands-free cell phone is just as distracting as talking on a handheld cellphone that's a great idea. As for your idea, why don't we put a device in cars that detects if you're smoking pot, then it shuts down the car, locks the doors and calls the police.
I am sick and tired of people wanting to pass laws/implement solutions to problems that don't address the whole problem and are redundant (that is they make specific things illegal that are already covered under more general laws).
You are right that most people aren't paying attention to DRM. However, when a game you wanted comes out with DRM that makes it a pain in the ass to play the way you intended (if it is possible at all), you will be less likely to buy the next game from that vendor. The average person won't think, "Oh, DRM sucks." They will think, "The last game I bought from Ubisoft sucked, everytime I lost Internet connection the game crashed."
The problem with your whole comment is that repeated studies have shown that people who pirate music spend a lot more money on music bought from the rights holder than people in general. I am not sure if similar studies have been done for games or movies, but I would bet that it is true for them as well. I suspect that if companies were to succeed in making a major dent in pirated content they would see an even larger reduction in sales. I am very confident that that would be true of music, not as confident it would be true of games or movies. I know that many times people pirate music of a group they have heard of but not actually heard, if they like it, they then go and buy more of that group's music.
There was an authorization to use force against Iraq passed by Congress. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Resolution
In my opinion, this resolution meets the Constitutional requirement that Congress declare war.
The Constitution does not specify what a declaration of war looks like. It merely says that Congress shall have power to declare war. What is the authorization to use force against Iraq except for a declaration of war?
I believe that Congress met the Constitutional mandate for declaring war against Iraq. Congress overwhelmingly passed the bill authorizing the use of force. The Constitution never says what Congress must do in order to declare war.
Nothing in what you said talks to whether or not it actually works, all you do is give an explanation that you believe explains why Americans don't support nationalized health care. The problem with your theory is that every study I have seen indicates that Americans give more money out of their own pocket per capita to help others when disasters strike around the world.
Most nations have a government run health care system because the people of those countries think of the government is somehow better than the people it is composed of. Americans for the most part recognize that the government is no better than the people it is composed of. If those people want to take care of each other they will. If those people don't want to take care of each other, pretending that the government will in their place is stupid.
These TV station smart-asses have been openly advocating for Chavez to be assassinated. I'm sure if some 'independent' TV station started calling for President Obama's assassination, there would be some arrests over that too.
The problem is that Chavez is trying to implement some real social reforms, but the capitalists would very much prefer that not to happen. One of their weapons in the battle is these 'independent' TV stations, that are about as independent as Fox News.
Good riddance I say. There are enough far-right freak-shows with access to mass media already. Time to claw things back and give Chavez a chance to reform the country, like a majority of the population say they want.
You mean the way that the people who called for George W. Bush's assassination were arrested? Oh that's right, they weren't. Of course that was different because Bush was a bad guy. You appear to be saying that it is ok for Chavez to arrest these guys because you don't like what they were saying.
I don't really care what Colbert said. Here is how the distribution of Congressional seats happens. There are 435 seats in the House of Representatives. These seats are divided up among the various states according to the relative populations of the states. Every 10 years we have a census and based on changes in relative populations, some states gain seats and some states lose seats.
Those states that have lost seats must redistrict in order to reflect the reduced number of seats. However, there have been numerous court cases which have established that all of their congressional districts must have similar population sizes. So, if Minnesota loses a seat as a result of this census, it will have to decide how to reapportion its seats (this is usually done by the state legislature). If the Minnesota legislature is controlled by Republicans when this happens, Michele Bachmann is unlikely to lose her seat, if it is controlled by Democrats on the other hand, it is much more likely that she will lose her seat.
However, it is impossible that her district "barely had enough people to have one in the first place". Her district had, as of the last census, essentially the same number of people as every other congressional district in Minnesota.
It is not a matter of "solidarity", it is a matter that people of different ethnic, social and economic backgrounds have completely different health care needs. Spain has a population of 45 million, the U.S. has a population of 300 million. It is quite possible that if a health care system similar to Spain's was implemented on a state by state basis it would work in those U.S. states that chose to adopt it. It is not likely that it would scale up well to the entire U.S. with its greater population and greater heterogeneity.
At the end of the summary it says something very profound, "we would be better off putting off the teaching of theory". I could not agree more. Elementary schools should not teach theory of anything. They should teach the basics: 1+1=2, 1+2=3...1x2=2,2x2=4, etc.. Maybe in 4th or 5th grade you could start teaching more complicated things like, "If 1+1=2, then 2=1+1" and "If 2+2=4 and 3+1=4, then 2+2=3+1".
Slashdot Mirror
Except that in actual scientific tests it has been http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0202/Abstinence-only-study-could-alter-sex-education-landscape
See another of my posts for more details.
The numbers don't lie. Trying to pretend teenagers will not have sex does not have sex. Teaching abstinence only and restricting access to birth control methods such as is often seen in fundamentally religious communities leads to more teenage pregnancies, abortions and STD's transmitted, not less.
Sorry to reply a second time right away, I missed this the first time. According to this study ( http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0202/Abstinence-only-study-could-alter-sex-education-landscape ) you are wrong. This study took kids and randomly assigned them to four groups, each of which received different types of sex education. The abstinence only kids had the lowest rate of beginning sexual activity. It is not in this article, but the study also found that the rate of condom use by those who had sex was statistically similar across all four groups.
I would agree that restricting access to contraceptives is counterproductive. However, there is a difference between not restricting access to contraceptives and providing contraceptives.
Uhuh...or just pop down to the local clinic, have some blood and urine samples taken and wait a few days.
Unless of course your prospective partner picked it up too recently for it to show up on the tests. HIV, for example, takes 3-6 months to show up in blood tests, there are other STDs that take time to show up in tests as well.
Sorry, but you are mistaken. I do not remember which ones they are, but there are several STD's that can be transmitted even if the male is wearing a condom and it works as designed. This does not factor in the risk of failure of the device.
Simple rule, the more sexual partners you have, the greater your risk of catching something no matter what other actions you take. If you and your sexual partner are monogamous your chance of catching an STD approaches zero (however since many STDs have alternative transmission vectors--e.g. blood transfusion--that chance will always be greater than zero).
Those "confounding variables were already causing driving fatalities and injuries to be on a downward trend when cellphones were developed. If cellphones are a major hazard, we should see that downward trend flatten out with their introduction, but we don't.
Thank you, that is the sort of relevant statistics that allow one to get some sort of valid comparison of driving risks between the two countries.
This isn't the New York Times.
So, there is at least a chance that it is true.
My point is that if talking on cellphones is such a serious impact on driving safety, we would see a change in the steady downward trend of driving fatalities when cellphones were introduced. However, there was no noticeable change in the downward trend of accident fatalities with the increasing usage of cellphones.
I cannot now find the reference and I don't even remember my source. However, the number that sticks in my head was that seatbelts added between $100 and $500 to the cost of a car, the average cost of a new car in 1963 a little over $3,000.
But people talking on the phone is something that is so easily fixed with just a few bucks, that I find it really annoying that people still keep holding onto their phones.
Except that most studies show that the majority of the problem is talking on the phone, not holding the phone. So, what is the inexpensive fix of yours that will address the problem?
The problem with you theory is that accident statistics show that traffic injuries and fatalities have been falling steadily for the last 30 years or so. There is not some major problem with Americans' driving habits that needs some major rework of the way things are done to fix.
I'm sorry, but in the U.S. it has been decided that not only don't you have the right to decide whether or not you wear a seat belt. Not only that, it was decided that you have to pay for a seatbelt to be installed in your car even though at the time the majority of people did not believe it was worth the additional cost (at the time it was made mandatory the cost of installing seatbelts was over 10% of the cost of an average new car).
Yes, we must pass a law to address this pressing problem. Just look at the accident rates since cell phones came out, you can clearly see a correlation between cell phone use and increasing fatalities and injuries from accidents while driving.
Wait, what's that you say? Fatalities and injuries in automobile accidents have been falling steadily since the 60s or 70s with no change in the slope when cell phones came out. How can that be? Talking on cell phones while driving is a serious threat to public health and requires new laws to address.
The answer is that there is no "problem" that requires a law to address. While it is a good idea to continue the steady drumbeat to educate the public that talking on the cellphone or texting while driving are hazardous behaviors, the evidence of actual accident statistics does not indicate it is a problem that requires new laws and intrusive technologies to fix.
Yeah, since all the studies show that talking on a hands-free cell phone is just as distracting as talking on a handheld cellphone that's a great idea. As for your idea, why don't we put a device in cars that detects if you're smoking pot, then it shuts down the car, locks the doors and calls the police.
I am sick and tired of people wanting to pass laws/implement solutions to problems that don't address the whole problem and are redundant (that is they make specific things illegal that are already covered under more general laws).
You are right that most people aren't paying attention to DRM. However, when a game you wanted comes out with DRM that makes it a pain in the ass to play the way you intended (if it is possible at all), you will be less likely to buy the next game from that vendor. The average person won't think, "Oh, DRM sucks." They will think, "The last game I bought from Ubisoft sucked, everytime I lost Internet connection the game crashed."
The problem with your whole comment is that repeated studies have shown that people who pirate music spend a lot more money on music bought from the rights holder than people in general. I am not sure if similar studies have been done for games or movies, but I would bet that it is true for them as well. I suspect that if companies were to succeed in making a major dent in pirated content they would see an even larger reduction in sales. I am very confident that that would be true of music, not as confident it would be true of games or movies. I know that many times people pirate music of a group they have heard of but not actually heard, if they like it, they then go and buy more of that group's music.
There was an authorization to use force against Iraq passed by Congress. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Resolution In my opinion, this resolution meets the Constitutional requirement that Congress declare war.
The Constitution does not specify what a declaration of war looks like. It merely says that Congress shall have power to declare war. What is the authorization to use force against Iraq except for a declaration of war?
I believe that Congress met the Constitutional mandate for declaring war against Iraq. Congress overwhelmingly passed the bill authorizing the use of force. The Constitution never says what Congress must do in order to declare war.
Nothing in what you said talks to whether or not it actually works, all you do is give an explanation that you believe explains why Americans don't support nationalized health care. The problem with your theory is that every study I have seen indicates that Americans give more money out of their own pocket per capita to help others when disasters strike around the world.
Most nations have a government run health care system because the people of those countries think of the government is somehow better than the people it is composed of. Americans for the most part recognize that the government is no better than the people it is composed of. If those people want to take care of each other they will. If those people don't want to take care of each other, pretending that the government will in their place is stupid.
No, he means like the health care takeover the Democrats just passed.
These TV station smart-asses have been openly advocating for Chavez to be assassinated. I'm sure if some 'independent' TV station started calling for President Obama's assassination, there would be some arrests over that too.
The problem is that Chavez is trying to implement some real social reforms, but the capitalists would very much prefer that not to happen. One of their weapons in the battle is these 'independent' TV stations, that are about as independent as Fox News.
Good riddance I say. There are enough far-right freak-shows with access to mass media already. Time to claw things back and give Chavez a chance to reform the country, like a majority of the population say they want.
You mean the way that the people who called for George W. Bush's assassination were arrested? Oh that's right, they weren't. Of course that was different because Bush was a bad guy.
You appear to be saying that it is ok for Chavez to arrest these guys because you don't like what they were saying.
I don't really care what Colbert said. Here is how the distribution of Congressional seats happens. There are 435 seats in the House of Representatives. These seats are divided up among the various states according to the relative populations of the states. Every 10 years we have a census and based on changes in relative populations, some states gain seats and some states lose seats.
Those states that have lost seats must redistrict in order to reflect the reduced number of seats. However, there have been numerous court cases which have established that all of their congressional districts must have similar population sizes. So, if Minnesota loses a seat as a result of this census, it will have to decide how to reapportion its seats (this is usually done by the state legislature). If the Minnesota legislature is controlled by Republicans when this happens, Michele Bachmann is unlikely to lose her seat, if it is controlled by Democrats on the other hand, it is much more likely that she will lose her seat.
However, it is impossible that her district "barely had enough people to have one in the first place". Her district had, as of the last census, essentially the same number of people as every other congressional district in Minnesota.
It is not a matter of "solidarity", it is a matter that people of different ethnic, social and economic backgrounds have completely different health care needs. Spain has a population of 45 million, the U.S. has a population of 300 million. It is quite possible that if a health care system similar to Spain's was implemented on a state by state basis it would work in those U.S. states that chose to adopt it. It is not likely that it would scale up well to the entire U.S. with its greater population and greater heterogeneity.
At the end of the summary it says something very profound, "we would be better off putting off the teaching of theory". I could not agree more. Elementary schools should not teach theory of anything. They should teach the basics: 1+1=2, 1+2=3...1x2=2,2x2=4, etc.. Maybe in 4th or 5th grade you could start teaching more complicated things like, "If 1+1=2, then 2=1+1" and "If 2+2=4 and 3+1=4, then 2+2=3+1".