Watercooler Sensation

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Abstinence-Only Still Doesn’t Work

• Almost every week, there’s a new study showing that abstinence only sex education doesn’t give teens the information they need to protect themselves against sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. [MicCheck]
• This week, health groups went to Capital Hill to tell the suits what the rest of us already know. [Yahoo]
• “Vast sums of federal monies continue to be directed toward these programs. And, in fact, there is evidence to suggest that some of these programs are even harmful and have negative consequences by not providing adequate information for those teens who do become sexually active,” Dr. Margaret Blythe of the American Academy of Pediatrics told the committee.
• Negative consequences? You mean like those teens in Florida who think that drinking Mountain Dew or smoking marijuana will prevent pregnancy and that swallowing a capful of bleach will prevent HIV/AIDS? [AP]
• Or maybe you meant that one in four U.S. teenage girls has a sexually transmitted disease and 30 percent of U.S. girls become pregnant before the age of 20. [ABC]
• Experts from the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Public Health Association and U.S. Institute of Medicine, American Psychological Association and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists all cited statistics showing harmful side effects like the ones listed above.
• But wait? Are we being elitist by educating our children?
• Rep. John Duncan, a Tennessee Republican, said that it seems “rather elitist” that people with academic degrees in health think they know better than parents what type of sex education is appropriate. “I don’t think it’s something we should abandon,” he said of abstinence-only funding. [Yahoo]

Lets hope Rep. Duncan doesn’t have any children.

Students Use Emoticons In Homework And Teachers Are...>:-O

• Teachers beware, the emoticons are coming.
• To all you luddites out there, emoticons are those little digital smiley faces you see by tilting your head to the left. :-)
• And, apparently, the kids love ‘em so much they’re using them off line too.
• According to a survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a quarter of teens have used emoticons in school assignments.
• And that’s not the only trait of casual online & text messaging style that’s making the jump to formal writing: “half of the teens surveyed say they sometimes fail to use proper capitalization and punctuation in assignments, while 38 percent have carried over the shortcuts typical in instant messaging or e-mail messages, such as LOL for ‘laughing out loud.’”
• Teachers are understandably skeptical, but the folks at Pew say not to worry.
• “It’s a teachable moment,” said Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist at Pew. “If you find that in a child’s or student’s writing, that’s an opportunity to address the differences between formal and informal writing. They learn to make the distinction ... just as they learn not to use slang terms in formal writing.”

:-P

You Almost Weren’t

• Researchers at Stanford University have discovered the entire human race was nearly wiped out 70,000 years ago. [AP]
• At one point, the total population of humans dwindled to only 2,000. Total. (Need a comparison? The new baseball stadium in DC has seating for 41,888. And 85,000 have applied to be Paris Hilton’s new best friend in her upcoming reality show.) [AP]
• What happened? Climate change and serious drought. (Gulp.)
• Using genetics, scientists have traced us all back to “Eve,” a woman who lived in Africa 200,000 years ago. And 60,000 years ago humans began to migrate out of Africa and populate the rest of the Earth. Until now, however, little was known about human life between Eve and that migration.
• Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer: “Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA.”

Heck, we know people with more than 2,000 friends on Facebook. Scary!

By the Numbers

Attention: Globe Warming NOW

Listen up. Global warming is just getting worse...it’s getting worse faster than ever before. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that “atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, the principal heat-trapping gas, are continuing to rise at an accelerating rate.” And it’s not just carbon dioxide, “after a decade of stability, levels of an even more potent heat-trapper, methane, rose as well.” Here are the numbers: [NY Times]

280

The level of CO2 in the atmosphere (in parts per million) in 1850

385

The level in 2007

73%

That’s an increase of 73% (we did the math, so you don’t have to)

2.6

The increase in the level since 2006

Celebrities: Unfiltered

“It wasn’t ‘A-listy’ enough.”

— Creepy Spencer Pratt, boyfriend of The Hills bimbette Heidi Montag, on why the couple was backing out of this weekend’s fancy White House Correspondents gala. (MSNBC, which had invited Heidi, says that Spencer wasn’t actually invited and threw a fit when the company wouldn’t pony up first-class tickets for him.) Oh, BTW, some of the so-called non-A-Listy celebs who will be in attendance: Ben Affleck. Jennifer Garner. Tracey Ullman. Rob Lowe. Claire Danes. John Cusack. Hayden Panettierre. [Page Six]

Speed Round

REBEL CHILD

Despite parents’ support for McCain, Jenna Bush told Larry King she’s open to learning about all the candidates- even the Democrats.

VIOLIN

Meet Mohamed Khalil, he found a $4 million violin in his cab and returned it to its owner. He’s what we call a hero...but he doesn’t think so.

[Contact Music]

IT’S ALIVE

Jello shut down multiple lanes of traffic in Souther Florida yesterday after a semi carrying snack packs of the jiggling snack overturned after hitting the truck in front of it. The driver of the semi was both injured and hungry when taken away from the scene. [CBS]

PARTY ANIMAL

A zebra was spotted at Emory University in Georgia as it wandered around a campus building. Unfortunately for the zebra, school officials discovered the student prank before the zebra could go to its first frat party. [CNN]

WHO WANTS TO BE PARIS’S BFF?

We’re surprised that anyone would, but hey, you gotta get your 15 minutes of fame somehow. More than 85,000 candidates have auditioned for Paris’s MTV quest to find a BFF. [ABC]

J.LO’S TAKING OVER THE WORLD

Not to be outdone by Paris, J.Lo has signed on for a docu-series with TLC to follow her fabulous life with Marc Anthony, twin boys, and the launch of her new fragrance. This is, of course, in addition to being a singer, actress, and diva. [LA Times]

SMOKE-FREE JACKPOT

Atlantic City voted this week to ban smoking from the floors of their casinos. Gosh, hope people can find another vice to take its place. [CBS News]

AMERICA’S ROAST BEEF, YES SIR!

In the 12th sign of the impending apocalypse, Arby’s just bought Wendy’s (for a whopping $2.34 billion). [MSNBC]

211 DAYS

How long it took for the gay couple to kiss on “As The World Turns.” (Their smooch-less streak was finally ended this week.) [After Elton]

WHEN WOODY SPEAKS

Woody Harrelson, in a character-witness letter sent to the judge in the Wesley Snipes tax-fraud case: “My first movie was also his first movie, Wildcats with Goldie Hawn. Both of us were 23 and our birthdays are only one week apart. I was, along with Goldie’s character, the only Caucasian associated with the team. A few of the folks on the production were followers of Louis Farrakhan. It was the first time I experienced racism towards me.” [TMZ]

BLADE: TAX HUNTER

Speaking of Wesley Snipes, he just got sentenced to 3 years for tax evasion. [NY Times]

SAVE THE SEA LIONS!

That sound you hear was a sigh of relief from the 85 sea lions set to be executed this week to help boost the salmon population between Washington and Oregon. A federal court pointed out the sea lions only at 4.4% of the salmon, plus maybe we should check out some zoos before killing them. [Reuters]

TROUBLE ON THE GROUND

It’s not the air that aviation safety experts worry about most: it’s runway collisions when the planes are on the ground. [NY Times]

BIRDASAURUS

” Protein retrieved from a 68-millon-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex bone closely resembles the main protein in chicken and ostrich bones and is only distantly related to lizard protein, strengthening the popular idea that birds, and not reptiles, are the closest living descendants of dinosaurs.” [Washington Post]