COURIC ON PALIN • "I think she should keep her head down, work really hard and learn about governing."
'SEX' CAUSES PREGNANCY? "Teenagers who watch Sex in the City, Friends and other TV shows featuring sex scenes and discussions of sex are far more likely to get pregnant or get someone else pregnant than their peers, a new study has found. The study, which tracked more than 700 sexually active teenagers aged between 12 and 17 for three years, discovered that those who viewed the most sexual content were almost twice as likely to get pregnant or get their girlfriend pregnant as those who saw the least explicit TV."
Here, in 136 words, is all that's wrong with America:
Tired of struggling to find enough teachers to staff its classrooms on the Friday before the annual Georgia-Florida football game, the Clarke County (Ga.) School District — which includes Athens, home of the University of Georgia — decided to cancel school altogether. According to area media reports, 137 teachers last year called in sick the day before the big game, and the district was able to find only 113 substitutes. School administrators studied the absences over the years and found a pattern — almost twice as many teachers call in sick the Friday before the annual game in Jacksonville, Fla., about 360 miles away, than on an average school day. So the district decided to call off school the Friday before the game. And Clarke County is not alone; the schools in nearby Madison and Oglethorpe counties also are taking the day off.
Time for some real talk: if you are ever in a situation where you need to perform emergency chest compressions as CPR, make sure you have the Bee Gee's on your iPod. The number of chest compressions necessary while administering CPR is difficult to gauge while in the heat of the moment, because it's actually a much higher number than people think —around 100 beats per minute— and a new study at Illinois found that medical students had a much higher success rate at achieving the correct amount of pushes to restart a heart if they were listening to a particular song from the 70s disco group:
A story in today's Telegraph about plans for the Pride Campus of Social Justice High School, what would be a "gay-friendly" high school in Chicago, is interesting, but not as interesting as the photograph chosen to accompany it. Click through for that.
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An 11-year-old in [Colorado] says his first amendment rights are being trampled after he was suspended for wearing a homemade shirt that reads "Obama is a terrorist's best friend."
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The boy's father Dann Dalton describes himself as a "proud conservative" who has taken part in some controversial anti-abortion protests. Dalton says the school made a major mistake by suspending his son for wearing the shirt."It's the public school system," Dalton says. "Let's be honest, it's full of liberal loons."
[Source]
Well, this explains quite a lot.
Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration's prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation — the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003. Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration's claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse.
A similar "backfire effect" also influenced conservatives told about Bush administration assertions that tax cuts increase federal revenue. One group was offered a refutation by prominent economists that included current and former Bush administration officials. About 35 percent of conservatives told about the Bush claim believed it; 67 percent of those provided with both assertion and refutation believed that tax cuts increase revenue.
That's right, show a conservative evidence explaining that what he formerly believed to be truth is actually a lie, he'll then hold on to the lie even tighter. This effect existed only among conservatives in the study.
Draw your own conclusions here, because when we draw ours, people have a tendency to lose their shit. We will tell you our friend's reaction to the information: "There's a disdain for education, like the fucking dark ages."
Howard Stern is helping a 22-year-old San Diego woman, who goes by the alias "Natalie Dylan," auction off her viriginity. Natalie says she will not necessarily sell herself to the highest bidder: "I want someone with chemistry. We'll take bids until I find a suitor I'm happy with." But why is she doing it in the first place? To pay for her college education, of course.
According to Dylan, she and her sister were forced into the skin trade partly because their stepfather allegedly took out student loans in their names without their permission, leaving them unable to finance their education.
She says she's already earned her bachelor's degree in women's studies at Sacramento State and that in January she'll start her master's work in marriage and family therapy there. She hopes to get a doctorate.
Look, we get that it's tough for some people to make enough money to educate themselves, but something about this whole story just feels really, really wrong.
Photo of Miss Dylan, after the jump. CONTINUED »
James Franco, on his plans to attend graduate school at NYU:
I love being around people who are interested in what I'm interested in. That is the best way to learn. For me, being able to act in movies is not having it all. I am interested in other things, and I take my interests seriously.
[Source]
Like any do-gooding multi-hundred-millionaire movie star, Hancock's Will Smith is involved in the philanthropy scene. He's also, as prying eyes have woefully pointed out, been involving himself with the Tom Cruise scene, which means of course that he's basically a raving Scientologist trying to hold in his inner homo, because that's what the cult is about, right? Back in 2004, Smith donated $20k to something called "HOPE: The Hollywood Education and Literacy Program," which is the church's "literary program," where children get homeschooled and, we're guessing, brainwashed in their formative years. Now, he and Jada have been plugging a way at their New Village Academy, a private school they're funding that will open in December, which got the LAT treatment over the weekend. Naturally, the first word out of the school's mouth is that it is not a Scientology facility. (Even Will and Jada still insist they aren't of the church.) But a certain anti-Scientology crusader is casting his eye of suspicion on this educational institution, mostly because of a … goat.
Heard about Aliza Shvarts, the Yalie senior who, over the course of nine months, induced multiple miscarriages in the name of art? Check it: " … she will showcase the stomach-turning display next week — complete with her own blood samples and videos from the terminated possible pregnancies." My goodness, can you imagine what kind of spoiled, pretentious, ignorant kid would do such a thing? Perhaps you can, but don't, because after the jump we've posted video footage of this Shvarts simpleton. And get this: she's literally atop a soapbox saying things like, "So, empowerment: it's important." Ha!
According to a survey of members of the UK's Association of Teachers and Lecturers, a third of England's teachers have pupils who consider Paris Hilton to be a role model. Two thirds said they teach children who aspire to be pop stars or professional athletes. Many teachers said they have charges who hope to be famous for nothing at all, and one reported a female student who said she would be content with her life if she could marry a professional "footballer."
Elizabeth Farrar, who teaches in a primary school, said: "Too many of the pupils believe that academic success is unnecessary, because they will be able to access fame and fortune quite easily through a reality TV show." And why wouldn't they when even our "journalists" have no problem with the untamed growth of celebrity culture as long as it's "giving the viewers what they want"? Great point, that one. You know what else people want? Handguns everywhere, no speed limits and crack, all of which are as safe as little girls looking up to Paris Hilton. Do what you like, though. I'll be in my room, avoiding the kids these days.
Addendum: My unyielding confusion to the first person to get illogical and flippant and say, "Fancy hearing this from YOU on a GOSSIP BLOG!!!!"
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