Some curious details of the Shrub's
military
career have come out. In particular, he was suspended from
flying with two years left on duty, because he didn't show up for his
annual physical. Democrats.com suggests that he may have been
avoiding random drug testing. His campaign says he couldn't get
home to see his family doctor--but those physicals can be administered
only by certified Air Force flight surgeons, and there were plenty
at the base he was assigned to.
What was that about honesty and character, Governor? [via Q Daily News]
A detailed new survey confirms that most American parents
are unhappy with the sex education their children receive in
school:
it
doesn't cover enough.
The survey uncovered a gap between what parents say they want and what schools deliver. Nearly two-thirds of parents said sex education should last half a semester or more, and 54 percent said boys and girls should be taught in separate classes. The typical class, though, includes boys and girls and consumes just one or two periods of a more general course in health education. Almost all classes teach children about the dangers of contracting AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, along with the basics of reproduction and some discussion of abstinence.But most parents want sex education to cover much more. Some 84 percent want sex education to e xplain how to obtain and use birth control. Even more parents want schools to teach children how to be tested for H.I.V. or AIDS, how to respond to pressure to have sex, discuss birth control with a partner and deal with the emotional consequences of sex. They want schools to tell students what to do if they are raped. Four out of five parents want teachers to discuss abortion with their children, and three out of four want their children to learn about homosexuality and sexual orientation in the classroom.
A spokeswoman for a conservative organization responded by saying that the parents have been "duped" into wanting these things. It's charming to see how much faith they actually have in the American people. If only they realized that high school students will be adults soon, and their education--in any subject--shouldn't be designed to expire on their eighteenth birthdays.
Great is Diana of the Ephesians! Her
temple
is only one of the stops on the time travel tour of the Seven
Wonders of the World. You can even send a postcard.
Basil the
killer
deer?!
Savethemarslander.org
is self-explanatory: NASA has an almost-completed Mars lander
that it's not planning to launch, and this site is dedicated
to changing their minds. The vehicle in question is similar to
but not the same as the Mars Polar Lander, which failed last year.
There's a lot of information here and, if you're convinced,
a petition you can sign. (Many of the petition comments are,
to put it kindly, more slogans than rational arguments.)
A Little
Bit of Inquisition points out that, majority or no majority,
the First Amendment guarantees that you don't have to look
at the Witches' Rede in every classroom. The author takes pains
to be moderate: she doesn't object to it being available,
she just doesn't think it belongs on the wall. Oh, and can
we do something about the huge floodlit ankh on the largest
hill in town?
A Usenet posting from Joel Rosenberg serves
as a reminder to be in the room if
your child
is having any kind of medical test, especially one where
the pediatrician promised she'd get a sedative.
Never mind failure, what happens if this proposal succeeds?:
This article on a project to breed and release a fungus that destroys opium poppies notes the political problems--spraying Afghanistan without permission would be illegal biological warfare, and most heroin comes from Afghanistan. It quotes one of the researchers pointing out that the fungus doesn't harm any of the other plants they've tested it on. Nobody seems to have noticed the real problem: would you want to run a hospital without morphine or any other opium-derived painkillers? That poppy is the source of an addictive drug--it is also, not so coincidentally, one of the most medically important plants known to humanity. There's no good way to test, in the lab, for our ability to stop a new pathogen from spreading.
You
too can
Get Out of Hell Free
with these handy wallet cards.
In memoriam, Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
Hubert Bauch, writing in The Montreal Gazette, sums up Trudeau's life and career, and some of how Canadians felt, and feel, about Trudeau and his policies. This obituary summarizes the historical record, and lets Trudeau speak for himself:
I do not doubt for one instant that they would be capable of making Quebec an independent country. But I have always believed that they have the stature to face a more difficult and nobler challenge -- that of participating in the construction of a Canadian nation founded on democratic pluralism, institutional bilingualism and the sense of sharing.
The Progressive considers reasons why the
US government and media, so enthusiastic at any possibility
of peace in the Middle East, seem to be
ignoring
peace in Korea. The analysis seems pretty solid--in
particular, the Pentagon needs a credible threat in order to justify
lots of expensive weapons, and North
Korea was their best candidate. One aspect they don't mention
is a possible ego factor: no Americans jetted off to Panmunjon for
tense, late-night meetings to bring this about, and no American
politician can claim credit for the results.
[via the
Guardian
Weblog]
The envelope, please!
The Digital Freedom Network has announced the winners of its Foil the Filters Contest. The grand prize goes to Joe H., whose high school library wouldn't let him access the school's own Web site, because it contains the word "high".
The Sherril Babcock Award goes to the German Webmaster of
Teendate, an international penpal site promoting communication and understanding among teenagers. When he tried to submit the site to web.de, it was blocked as an adult-entry site. The Webmaster explained that "the word 'teen' would be reserved for adult sites."
The Twilight Zone Award goes to the program that blocked all information about the Fibonacci sequence.
If slime mold, a single-celled organism, can
solve
a maze, does that mean it's intelligent in some meaningful,
or at least definable, sense?
Esoterica: a discussion of the
meaning
of the Mapuche name Yepun, which has been given to one of
the four new 8.2 meter telescopes at Paranal, Chile. Note: while
the main text is in English, much of the supporting information is
in Spanish.
Meredith Dixon has translated a number of
popular
songs into Latin. It's enough to make me wish I'd taken more
than a semester of Latin. "Ubi flores abeunt?"
Ah, the beauty of an airship floating overhead!
The Russian Federation is planning to launch a series of
blimps
to provide television and cell phone services: solar
powered, they will hover 50 kilometers above the ground,
and return to Earth periodically for inspection and repairs.
Since it seems that half the people I know are
investing in the stock market, here's a warning:
your brokerage probably is a member of the SIPC,
but that
doesn't
mean you'll be protected if it fails, or if the president
of the brokerage steals your money. Not only are there a long
list of things they don't cover, but it's difficult to convince the
trustees to pay out: they're likely to argue that money sent in
to buy bonds (which would be covered) was a loan to the brokerage,
which they don't repay. The SIPC has paid considerably more to
the trustees--many of whom worked for the failed brokerages--than
it has paid out to the investors it is supposed to protect.
I think I'm going to buy another CD instead. Follies, anyone?
A new book claims that an anthropologist
deliberately
caused a measles epidemic among the Yanomami in
the 1960s, in order to test theories of eugenics.
Once the epidemic was under way, according to the book, the research team "refused to provide any medical assistance to the sick and dying Yanomami, on explicit orders from Neel. He insisted to his colleagues that they were only there to observe and record the epidemic, and that they must stick strictly to their roles as scientists, not provide medical help".
Neel himself will escape a trial for crimes against humanity--he died last February--but it will be interesting, to put it mildly, to see how his colleagues defend themselves at the next meeting of the American Anthropological Society.
One of the most controversial aspects of the research which allegedly culminated in the epidemic is that it was funded by the US atomic energy commission, which was anxious to discover what might happen to communities when large numbers were wiped out by nuclear war.
The AEC could have saved a lot of money, and a lot of lives, by investing in a few history books, and reading about the aftermath of the Black Death.
Copyright 2000 Vicki Rosenzweig. Comments welcome at vr@redbird.org.
If you like this, you might also like my home page.