Kids can help the environment

And no, I don’t just mean by recycling their coke cans! I still don’t like science much, but this story’s pretty cool:

Teen Finds Way to Decompose Plastic Bags in Just 3 Months!

by Kenny Luna, North Babylon, NY

If ordinary plastic bags would rot away like banana peels there’s no doubt a host of environmental problems would be solved, the fate of the turtle above included. And one 11th grader from Canada set out to make that dream come true as part of his school science project. A wildly successful endeavor he figures will make them decompose in just 3 months.

But how did this extraordinary young scientist named Daniel Burd pull it off?

Well, he decided the fact that they do, eventually, decompose after 1,000 years on their own meant there must be something out there causing it, and postulated that it might well be naturally occurring microorganisms behind it.

So he set about with the good old-fashioned scientific method as his guide, searching for the microorganisms, rarely found in nature, that actually do make plastic decompose.

Ultimately, he identified two strains of bacteria that work together to pull it off, with Sphingomonas serving as the primary decomposer with help from Pseudomonas.

And according to Burd, industrial application should be easy, “All you need is a fermenter . . . your growth medium, your microbes and your plastic bags.”

As many folks know, the simplest solutions are usually the ones that work best. And this kid has clearly come up with a potentially world changing idea.

So congrats from all of us here at TreeHugger, where we are inspired by your creativity!

See also:

The TH Interview with America’s Top Young Scientist of the Year!

 

Dress Codes and Hair

One of the very first posts I ever wrote for this blog was about dress codes. At the time, in Dress codes at school and at work, I asked people’s opinions about dress codes and was fairly comfortable with my school’s policy. I wrote about it again when a student (and her family) sued her school about Tigger and Winnie the Pooh socks.

Now I am glad that my school isn’t as restrictive as Desert Wind School in Socorro, TX. There, an 8th grader is missing prom and graduation because of highlights in her hair. Not purple highlights. Not 5 foot long extensions. Just highlights. And I think she looks pretty cute!

This is from a TV station in El Paso:

Desert Wind School student Denise Guerrero, 14, knew it was against school policy to highlight her hair and she also knew the consequences: if she didn’t remove the highlights, she would miss out on her prom, class field trip, graduation ceremony and soccer games.

“Because I couldn’t be with my friends. I missed out on a lot of things,” said Guerrero.As KFOX reported, Guerrero was assigned to in-school suspension or SAC a month before the end of the school year because she has blond highlights in her hair. She was also told she couldn’t participate in any school activities.Her parents filed a grievance with the Socorro Independent School District. They disagree with the school’s policy and they state other students and teachers color or highlight their hair at Desert Wind School.

But her family disagrees:

“According to their policy, highlights are a distraction. Why isn’t it a distraction by teachers, only by the students,” said Rafael Magallanes, Guerrero’s stepfather.

The principal responded to the grievance and echoed what district officials had told KFOX before. They say the dress code only applies to students and it is applied equally, fairly and thoroughly for all students.Just one week before the end of year activities at Desert Wind, Guerrero discovered the school would not amend the policy. She was told her hair had to go back to her natural color if she wanted to participate in school events. Guerrero said she stood her ground because she felt the policy is not fair. She knew she would be sacrificing events and memories she will never relive.”Soccer, my favorite sport, which I couldn’t get in because of a policy which couldn’t be changed, that’s what hurt me the most,” said Guerrero.Guerrero’s parents could have continued with the grievance process but this year was Denise’s last. Previous Stories:

• April 14, 2007: Student Gets In-School Suspension For Highlighted Hair

Slideshow: Eighth Grader Suspended For Hair Color

But the point is, what’s too much restriction for a public school? Banning profanity is one thing. Banning blond is just stupid.  It could be worse.  She could have hair like THIS:

 

NY Kids with Courage

I wish my friends and I had thought of this! Maybe next year. Time to kill the tests from the grassroots, and that means us in our classrooms. And I hope that the teacher gets OUT of trouble.

Published on Thursday, May 22, 2008 by New York Daily News

New York 8th-Graders Boycott Practice Exam But Teacher May Get Ax

by Juan Gonzalez

Students at a South Bronx middle school have pulled off a stunning boycott against standardized testing.

More than 160 students in six different classes at Intermediate School 318 in the South Bronx – virtually the entire eighth grade – refused to take last Wednesday’s three-hour practice exam for next month’s statewide social studies test.

Instead, the students handed in blank exams.

Then they submitted signed petitions with a list of grievances to school Principal Maria Lopez and the Department of Education.

“We’ve had a whole bunch of these diagnostic tests all year,” Tatiana Nelson, 13, one of the protest leaders, said Tuesday outside the school. “They don’t even count toward our grades. The school system’s just treating us like test dummies for the companies that make the exams.”

According to the petition, they are sick and tired of the “constant, excessive and stressful testing” that causes them to “lose valuable instructional time with our teachers.”

School administrators blamed the boycott on a 30-year-old probationary social studies teacher, Douglas Avella.

The afternoon of the protest, the principal ordered Avella out of the classroom, reassigned him to an empty room in the school and ordered him to have no further contact with students.

A few days later, in a reprimand letter, Lopez accused Avella of initiating the boycott and taking “actions [that] caused a riot at the school.”

The students say their protest was entirely peaceful. In only one class, they say, was there some loud clapping after one exam proctor reacted angrily to their boycott.

This week, Lopez notified Avella in writing that he was to attend a meeting today for “your end of the year rating and my possible recommendation for the discontinuance of your probationary service.”

“They’re saying Mr. Avella made us do this,” said Johnny Cruz, 15, another boycott leader. “They don’t think we have brains of our own, like we’re robots. We students wanted to make this statement. The school is oppressing us too much with all these tests.”

Two days after the boycott, the students say, the principal held a meeting with all the students to find out how their protest was organized.

Avella on Tuesday denied that he urged the students to boycott tests.

Yes, he holds liberal views and is critical of the school system’s increased emphasis on standardized tests, Avella said, but the students decided to organize the protest after weeks of complaining about all the diagnostic tests the school was making them take.

“My students know they are welcome in my class to have open discussions,” Avella said. “I teach them critical thinking.”

“Some teachers implied our graduation ceremony would be in danger, that we didn’t have the right to protest against the test,” said Tia Rivera, 14. “Well, we did it.”

Lopez did not return calls for comment.

“This guy was far over the line in a lot of the ways he was running his classroom,” said Department of Education spokesman David Cantor. “He was pulled because he was inappropriate with the kids. He was giving them messages that were inappropriate.”

Several students defended Avella. They say he had made social studies an exciting subject for them.

“Now they’ve taken away the teacher we love only a few weeks before our real state exam for social studies,” Tatiana Nelson said. “How does that help us?”

jgonzalez@nydailynews.com

 

Miseducation

This is TAKS week here in the Texas schools. As a 10th grader, I take four tests this year. Some years we take two and other years three or four, but this is the big year that determines how well our school does compared to other schools. For us as students, every year matters because certain classes are open or closed for the following year depending on whether we pass or fail the tests. But for the school, 10th grade test scores are the ones that decide how well the whole school does. Some schools can even close if their scores are still low.

The Texas Education Agency has told the Austin school district that it needs to use the word “probable” — not “possible” — when referring to the closure of Johnston High School, district officials said.

The shift in verbiage was made at the suggestion of state officials who are part of Johnston’s oversight team because they wanted to underscore the urgency of the situation at the school in East Austin.

Agency officials have said the school, which has received “unacceptable” ratings for the past four years, will be closed or put under alternative management if it fails to achieve an acceptable rating this year.

Under the state’s accountability system, schools are rated “academically unacceptable” if they don’t meet target graduation rates and goals on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.

Are we being deliberately undereducated or miseducated? Is our whole generation being purposefully denied essential elements of a meaningful education as a byproduct of spending all of our schooling preparing for tests? Is that an accident?

Here’s the disturbing part. The bureaucrats don’t care if WE improve individually from year to year. They don’t care if our CLASS improves. They only care that we do better than last year’s 10th grade, even if they were a bunch of idiots or a bunch of screw-ups or a bunch of genii. By extension, BETTER doesn’t mean that our average is higher than last year’s class. It means that a larger percent of white kids pass (70%) than last year; a larger percent of black kids, a larger percent of immigrants, a larger percent of girls, a larger percent of poor kids, a larger percent of left-handed kids, and a larger percent of soccer players who only eat ice cream for breakfast.

This means that kids like me who get 90% or 99% every time only spend a THIRD of our school time learning how to answer the test questions and regurgitate essays. The poor kids, meanwhile, who got ONLY 60%-80% spend ALL their time on nothing but test practice. Kids in honors or pre-AP or advanced classes learn some other material and get interesting projects from time to time, like in-class debates, short story assignments and geometry construction projects, but the kids in academic or regular classes have every single test look like a TAKS question. That is not an exaggeration.

Last year, my test scores were all above 92%. I could go down by 10 points in every single subject and no one would care. If I went down 20 points, my brother would wring my neck and I’d probably have to drop some honors classes and possibly lose the chance for AP US History, but the state and the government STILL wouldn’t care. I would be within acceptable parameters.

Our school would still show improvement even if every single kid in honors right now dropped to 71% as long as one kid whose older sibling failed last year passed this year. That’s crazy!

Clearly they don’t care whether we as individuals pass as long as the scenario I have presented makes my high school look good. What’s the point? Could it be that the point really is to dumb down yet another generation; to keep us from learning about the Constitution and our rights. Only in understanding them both may we learn when our republic is at its BEST.

 

This week’s political cartoons

 

Why Hillary?

Dan Solis from ThinkYouth sent me this video along with this note:

If this doesn’t get you motivated to endorse Hillary on your blog, I don’t know what will.
I gotta admit, this video made me tear up a bit. Have you seen it already?

I’ve seen the video, and I am well convinced that Hillary should make a statement with her hairstyle. So why does her hair look so flat on the video? And why should any of that mean that people should vote for her?

Vote for the candidate who will be the best president! Vote for the one who will be able to fix all the things that Bush and the Republicans broke. Don’t vote based on gender or race.

Here is my tribute to Ann Richards the week that she died.

 

Obama

So far, Barack Obama has already won Washington State and Nebraska caucuses this weekend, as well as Louisiana and the Virgin Islands. Maine’s caucus results are not yet complete, but this is what MSNBC has so far:

NBC projects Obama will win Maine caucuses

With 59 percent of votes counted, he had 57 percent to Clinton’s 42 percent

NBC News and news services

AUGUSTA, Maine – NBC News projected that Barack Obama has defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic Party’s Maine caucuses on Sunday, a day after sweeping three other states.

Democrats in 420 Maine towns and cities decided how the state’s 24 delegates would be allotted at the party’s national presidential convention in August. Despite the weather, turnout was “incredible,” party executive director Arden Manning said.

With 59 percent of precints reporting, Obama had 57 percent to Clinton’s 42 percent.

And this is from his campaign website:

Obama sweeps three states

Sen. Barack Obama swept the Louisiana primary and caucuses in Nebraska and Washington state Saturday night… The Illinois senator also won caucuses in the Virgin Islands, completing his best night of the campaign.

 

8th graders and abortion

I just saw this and I think it is really warped. 

Kids: The New Voice In The Abortion Debate

by The Huffington Post

The bell rang and the eighth graders jumped up, eager to compare notes.

“I named my baby Kyle Patrick,” one shouted.

“Mine is Antonio!”

At the urging of an antiabortion activist, they had each pledged to “spiritually adopt” a fetus developing in an unknown woman — to name it, love it from afar and above all, pray daily that the mother-to-be would not choose abortion.

“Maybe one day you’ll get to heaven and these people will come running to you . . . and say, ‘We’re all the little children you saved,’ ” activist Cristina Barba said. She smiled at the students in their Catholic school uniforms. “Maybe you really can make a difference.”

Thirty-five years after Roe vs. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, opponents are pouring resources into building new generations of activists. Young people are responding with passion.

Today’s students and young adults have grown up in a time when abortion was widely accessible and acceptable, and a striking number are determined to end that era.

Pew Research Center polls dating back a decade show that 18- to 29-year-olds are consistently more likely than the general adult population to favor strict limits on abortion. A Pew survey over the summer found 22% of young adults support a total ban on abortion, compared with 15% of their parents’ generation.

Click here to continue reading

Here are some suggestions for those kids that might actually be more helpful than what they are doing:

1. Learn more about how to NOT become pregnant.  This is called sex education.  The real stuff that includes contraceptives and how to use them.  Prayer might be less effective than condoms.  Just sayin’.
2. Help change this country so that women who want to have babies can get daycare and healthcare and jobs that pay them enough to raise the babies.
3. Spend your time opposing war, capital punishment, drunk driving, cancer, heart disease, child abuse and all of the other things that kill people.
   
4. Help get national health care for the United States so that women who know their fetus will be a baby with health problems will be more likely to choose to have the baby.
5. Focus on the choices you want to make for yourselves, but let the rest of us make OUR own choices.

By the way, this is my “blogging for choice” post. 

 

Babies in prison

 

Victoria Jaramillo, 40, holding her 3-month-old daughter, Frida, at Santa Martha Acatitla, a women’s prison in Mexico City. (Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times)

My mom is in prison and has been for more than years. I have thought a lot about what it would be like if she had never been arrested and how different my life would be if she was out and if she was still my guardian. (My life is WAY WAY better now! I wish she could be in a hospital or a drug rehab, but not here in my house.)

But until I read the article below, I never thought of what it would be like to be in prison with her. (I don’t even like going for an hour to visit.)  The kids in the article are a lot younger than I was when my mom was arrested, and the prison they’re talking about is in Mexico and not in the U.S., but still it has me thinking.

Behind prison bars, toddlers serve time with mom

By James C. Mckinley Jr. MEXICO CITY:
Beyond the high concrete walls and menacing guard towers of the Santa Martha Acatitla prison, past the barbed wire, past the iron gates, past the armed guards in black commando garb, sits a nursery school with brightly painted walls, piles of toys and a jungle gym.

Fifty-three children under the age of 6 live inside the prison with their mothers, who are serving sentences for crimes from drug dealing to kidnapping to homicide. Mothers dressed in prison blue, many with tattoos, carry babies on their hips around the exercise yard. Others lead toddlers and kindergartners by the hand, play with them in the dust or bounce them on their knees on prison benches.

 

On the one hand, maybe these moms learn to be better parents than my mother was, and maybe there’s less abuse when there are guards and other people around. Also, I am glad the children there have toys to play with and a nursery school. On the other hand, they don’t have any freedom. What an experience!

 

censorship in the classroom

This case is just wrong. Kids should be able to choose their books at school and at the library. The parents and the administrators here are in the wrong. Let the kids read, especially if it’s a book that has won awards and can teach things and not just a book that is violent for no reason.

Teacher put on leave after book complaint

from Star-Telegram

By ANGELA K. BROWN

TUSCOLA
— A popular English teacher has been placed on paid leave — and faces possible criminal charges — after a student’s parents complained to police that a ninth-grade class reading list contained a book about a murderer who has sex with his victims’ bodies.

Kaleb Tierce, 25, is being investigated for allegedly distributing harmful material to a minor after the student selected Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God off the list and read it.

Tierce, a third-year teacher and assistant football coach at Jim Ned High School, has not been arrested, but his case has caused an uproar in this West Texas town of 700 people. Last week, more than 120 parents and students crowded into a meeting where the school board voted to keep Tierce on paid leave.

Most parents say Tierce should be reinstated, regardless of whether the book is too graphic for teens.

“He’s a great teacher and coach and motivates the kids like no one else can,” said Chris Garcia, whose daughter was in one of Tierce’s classes. “If you’re trying to protect your kids from things in books, you may as well turn off the TV and video games. You try to protect them as much as you can, but these days kids are just exposed to so much.”

Tierce, who has not been charged with any wrongdoing, declined to comment when
asked by The Associated Press about the allegations.

Some students and athletes have worn armbands to school and football games
emblazoned with Tierce’s initials, hiding them under clothing. Others said teens were meeting secretly to decide how to help the teacher they believe did nothing wrong.

“He was the only one who understood us,” said Patrisha Ramirez, 15. “He would joke around. He would make English interesting, for once.”

In Tuscola, south of Abilene, Child of God was on a list of titles compiled by all the high school English teachers for a pre-Advanced Placement class.

Although administrators’ approval was not required for the list, school officials have since removed the book because they deemed it inappropriate for ninth-graders.

The book tells the story of a town’s outsider who is falsely accused of rape, then begins killing people. The character ends up living in a cave with his victims’
decomposing bodies. The 1974 novel “plumbs the depths of human degradation,” according to its back cover.

The parents of one ninth-grade student filed a police report on Oct. 1 with the Taylor County Sheriff’s Office. Before contacting law enforcement officials, they complained to the teacher and principal, said district Superintendent Kent LeFevre, who declined to reveal their discussions.

The superintendent placed Tierce on administrative leave on Oct. 9.

Sheriff’s Sgt. John Cummins said the case will be turned over to the district attorney once the investigation is complete. Distributing harmful material to a minor is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine.

 

middle school sex

Dear Mr. Friedberg,

When I was in middle school, I knew three girls who had babies before we graduated. One has had a second baby already. By the time we graduated in 8th grade, many of us were 14 and a few were already 15. Two of the kids I know turned 16 the summer after 8th grade. And a lot of people had been having oral sex. Some had been having intercourse.

Did you read this, which was also in the Huffington Post?

“One in eight youth are sexually experienced, having engaged in intercourse, oral sex or both before the age of 14,” the Journal of Adolescent Health reported in 2006. According to the Project Connect study, supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

* “9 percent reported ever having sexual intercourse…and 8 percent ever had oral sex (active or receptive).”

* “Of those who reported intercourse, 36 percent were age 11 or younger at first sex, 27 percent were 12, 28 percent were 13, and 9 percent were 14 or older.”

* “Alarmingly, 43 percent of sexually experienced participants reported multiple sex partners.”

Here in Texas, most of our sex education at school is abstinence-only. They teach us about the existence of condoms and other birth control, but they don’t teach us how to use anything safely or where to get it. I don’t know how much birth control will make kids decide to have sex that didn’t have sex before, but I do know that it will make a lot of kids who are already having sex safer. And it will mean fewer abortions and fewer teen pregnancies and less AIDS and less STD’s. Which is more important?

—-Freckles

Malcolm Friedberg: Sex, Condoms in Schools

from Huffington Post by Malcolm Friedberg

Eleven-year-olds shouldn’t be having sex.

A middle school in Maine is handing out condoms. Middle school children are as young as 11 years old. Is it just me, or is 11 just a tad shy of an appropriate age for intercourse? I don’t think I had even made it to second base by then. In fact, I don’t even think most 11-year-old girls had a second base.

According to an op-ed in the New York Times Republicans in Congress are attempting to add $28M to the State Children’s Health Insurance bill that was vetoed by the president. The money goes specifically to teaching abstinence. The editorial states that studies show that abstinence doesn’t work, and abstinence programs teach false information.

Clearly, if kids are getting bad information, that issue needs to be addressed.

But the fundamental point remains: Isn’t handing out condoms encouraging 11-year-old kids to have sex?

In the Maine article, a supporter of the handing-out-condoms program states that society can’t rely on parents to protect their children. So, does that mean its now the State of Maine’s job to make decisions on the behalf of parents? And, even assuming Maine has the ability to make the “right” decision to protects kids (although I’m unsure how one could determine that), under what rationale is handing out condoms the best decision?

The government should not be the forum for imposing personal values, but aren’t there some lines we don’t want to cross?

Malcolm Friedberg is the author of Why We’ll Win, a set of books that explain the law behind hot-button social issues to laypeople.

 

More on sex education

I am nearly 16 years old. (November 1st is the big day!) School wants me to not have sex, my family wants me to not have sex. But how old were my parents when they started having sex? Seems like it matters, at least in England!

The Beat Goes On: Kids Start Sex at Same Age as Parents, Grandparents

from Air America Radio |

Next time your parents tell you that you should wait to have sex, just show them this survey. According to a new report entitled Sexual Health in Canada, is that adolescent sexual practices have remained largely unchanged for decades. Linda Capperauld, executive director of the Canadian Federation for Sexual Health said that the survey shows that “Young people aren’t having sex any younger than their parents or grandparents.”

HEALTH: SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR

Youth start sex at same age as their parents, grandparents did

Practices unchanged in decades, report says

ANDRÉ PICARD

PUBLIC HEALTH REPORTER

October 15, 2007

The common media image of today’s youth is that they have, under a steady barrage of sexually charged images, become increasingly precocious – engaging in intercourse at a younger and younger age and with a dizzying array of partners.

But the reality, according to a new report entitled Sexual Health in Canada, is that adolescent sexual practices have remained largely unchanged for decades. “Young people aren’t having sex any younger than their parents or grandparents,” Linda Capperauld, executive director of the Canadian Federation for Sexual Health, said in an interview.

Nor – despite suggestive music videos, ready access to Internet porn and creeping hemlines – are more teens having sex.

Nationwide, only 28 per cent of adolescents age 15 to 17 report having had sex, a figure that rises to 65 per cent by age 18 to 19.

All told, the mean age for sexual intercourse is 16.5 years, about where it’s been since the sexual revolution that was launched by today’s baby boomers.

Despite the closing gender gap – equal numbers of boys and girls now say they have had sex – the primary reason for not having done so remains remarkably unchanged from previous generations: Most girls said they were not ready, while most boys reported a lack of opportunity. The No. 2 reason for both sexes is the same: “I haven’t met the right person.”

But when they do, teens are remarkably faithful. The number with a single sexual partner is on the rise.

more

 

About criticizing 12 yr old boys

I have heard a lot of liberal and progressive adults say that is is indecent and wrong to criticize 12-year-old boys. I disagree. There are a lot of reasons why you might criticize 12 year-old boys. Some of them don’t shower often enough and they have terrible table manners and their sense of humor can be really gross. In fact, GROSS is one of the nicest things you can say about them. But they are not cowards and nobody should criticize them for needing health care, for not being poor enough for medicaid, or for not saying their own opinions. Adults should not bully children.

. 

Graeme Frost is a kid with a lot of courage and I hope he shows the Fox Noise creeps that he is not a tool for the democrats. (Graeme, brush your teeth, take a shower WITH soap, don’t eat spaghetti tomorrow, and you will be fine.) Watch Graeme on MSNBC Monday night.

Swiftboating 12 year old Graeme Frost; Frost on Countdown Monday

from TalkLeft by Last Night in Little Rock

 

Graeme Frost two weeks ago gave the Democrat’s response to the President’s radio address. You will remember that his family is middle class, and he had public health insurance that saved his family from financial ruin after he and his sister were grievously injured in a car wreck, both needing physical therapy. But, the Neo-con attack dogs immediately and shamelessly Swiftboated him. I cannot say it better than Paul Krugman did in Sliming Graeme Frost in the NY Times. Countdown has video here.

On Monday evening, Master Frost will be on Countdown.

More… Yesterday, I had a flashback to the film (yes, before video) of the Army-McCarthy hearings with the now legendary Joseph Welch, the Army’s private counsel from Boston, taking on the bombastic Sen. Joseph McCarthy. I pondered that analogy over night. I don’t have to see the film again, because it is burned into my memory.

We have all seen that piece, as quoted on Wikipedia:

“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness[…]” When McCarthy resumed his attack, Welch interrupted him: “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” He then left the room to loud applause from the spectators, and a recess was called.

The full transcript is on History Matters.

American Neo-cons are so invested in perpetuating frauds on the American people in the name of Republican-politics-as-usual that they cannot admit that one person with a contrary view might have a point. To quote one legendary Neo-con:

As soon as by one’s own propaganda even a glimpse of right on the other side is admitted, the cause for doubting one’s own right is laid.

(Hint: It is not Ronald Reagan.)

Now, they have stooped so low as to attack a 12 year old boy, too, and that is as utterly and gutterly low as they can get.

For those who would attack a 12 year old boy, “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

Ah, but that’s the rub: For a Neo-con to have a “sense of decency” is an absolute contradiction.

Watch this 12 year old boy call out the Neo-cons tomorrow night on Countdown.

 

REAL Sex Ed

Daisy, in the post below, seems surprised at how religiously biased and anti-scientific sex education has become. I live in Texas and I am still in HS, so it doesn’t surprise me at all. “Say no until you are married” is about half of what they tell us in school. But —– neither school nor the ad Daisy linked to mention religion as the reason.

My family tells me to wait, and I think it is important to wait —- not because God says it is wrong, but because the adults I trust tell me that I should learn to have a good relationship for a while before complicating things with sex.

Where the ad is wrong is in NOT telling kids (or parents) what we really need to know. Teach us the difference between love and pressure. Teach us how to protect our bodies if we do have sex. Teach us about diseases and how to prevent them. Teach us why we shouldn’t have 22 year old boyfriends when we’re 14. Teach us why we are not ready to have a baby at 15 or 16. Because there’s a chance, a pretty good chance that just telling us to wait won’t work for all that long.

If you have sex outside of a heterosexual Christian marriage, you will ruin your chances at education, family, and happiness.

from Our Descent Into Madness by Daisy

 

Video from Feministing. Made for you by the federal government.

You know what this world needs more of, folks?

More disconnect between people and their bodies. We need more people alienated from their sexualities.

What do your kids need to hear?

Not, “Your body belongs to you.” Not, “Do what you want to do when you’re ready, safely.”

Oh no.

They need to hear what you want for them. What you want for their sex lives.

Because who is sex about? Is sex about you and your parter?

Christ no! Sex is about what the authorities dictate! Hello!

…Seriously, what the fuck kind of message is that? I am all for families communicating about sex; I am not for anyone trying to control what anyone else (minors included) does (consensually) with their own sex organs. It is psychic rape. And it doesn’t work. And it’s bullshit.

 

The “phony soldiers” react to Rush

Who’s the phony one here? Rush or the soldiers from Vote Vets?

 

Are people in Houston crazy???

Don’t these people know that nuclear plants can have accidents? Why don’t they invite alternate energy companies to set up there instead? Is the economy so bad that they have to say yes to THIS? Egads!!!! 

Neighbors welcome Texas nuke plant’s growth

from HoustonChronicle

HOUSTON — Despite objections from nuclear energy opponents, the proposed expansion of a Southeast Texas nuclear power plant has gotten the thumbs up from many locals, who say the project will be an economic boon.

Richard Knapik, the mayor of Bay City, about 75 miles southwest of Houston, said Tuesday’s announcement that the owners of a nearby nuclear power plant want to double its size could pump as much as $6 billion into the local economy.

“Many of our citizens already work out there,” Knapik said. “It’s been extremely positive for this area.”

It takes 14 paragraphs before the Chronicle mentions any possible negative aspects.

But not everyone is as enthusiastic.

The Sierra Club has consistently opposed the licensing, construction and operation of new nuclear reactors, in part because of concerns about industry oversight and the disposal of spent nuclear fuel.

Nuclear power is produced when neutrons split the nucleus of uranium atoms, releasing heat that’s used to boil water and produce steam that drives a plant’s turbines. For now, spent fuel — which is radioactive waste — is contained inside the plants.

Watchdog group Public Citizen called the plan to build two new reactors in Texas “deja vu all over again.”

“The U.S. has been down the nuclear power path — and it has proven to be expensive, polluting, dangerous and a security risk,” Tyson Slocum, the director of Public Citizen’s energy program said in a statement.

The organization said companies like NRG and others expected to file applications with the NRC are destined to take advantage of federal loan guarantees and other subsidies at taxpayer expense.

“Public Citizen will fight these proposed reactors every step of the way,” Slocum said. “The flaws of nuclear power — excessive cost, security threats and long-lived radioactive waste — have not been solved.”