Related to yesterday's post, Amanda Marcotte has a post about the ineffectiveness of the current round of abstinence-only education.  Check out the graphs.

...but it's fun to speculate.

My father sent me this graph the other day (probably from some project he's working on):



















The blue line represents the percent of all births to unmarried women, tallied by the vertical axis on the left.  It's interesting, but disregard it for the moment and look at the pink line and the vertical axis on the right.  The pink line represents the birth rate among 15 to 17 year olds - that is, the percent of all 15- to 17-year old girls who gave birth in a given year.  From 1960 to the early 80s, the line is a bit jerky (much like some of the lads these ladies might have been canoodling with, I'm sure), but has a downward-sloping trend overall.  Starting in the mid-1980s, though, there is a very clear spike in the teen pregnancy rate, followed by an equally clear and steady decline starting after 1992.

Why did the teen pregnancy rate go up under Reagan and Bush Sr. and decline under Clinton?  Well, it's tempting to say it's because federally-administered abstinence-only sex education made its debut under Reagan, and because Reagan and his disciples worked tirelessly to restrict access to abortion.  And the nonstop downturn during the Clinton years could be a coincidence.  But I've yet to come up with a better explanation, especially since the rate's steady decline starts slowing down the year that our current president was elected and looks ready to flatline.

Scratch that - there is one (relatively) nonpartisan explanation: heterosexual teenagers finally got wise to the AIDS crisis and started using condoms more regularly.  Condoms: a two-for-one deal!  Still, there does seem to be at least a correlational relationship between teen pregnancy and partisanship, according to this table I found via Daily Kos (in this case measuring births per 1000 girls ages 15-19):
































Striking.  But again, it's just a correlation.

Rebecca Traister writes on Broadsheet:

Yup, it's that time of the election cycle again, when candidates and pollsters remember that if chicks actually cast the ballots they've had the right to cast for 86 years, we'd have a whole different political landscape.

I know it's small, but I wish that sentence had read "...chicks actually cast the ballots they've been allowed to cast for 86 years."  It is common to say that women have had the right to vote since 1919 in this country.  Well, I say that's not true.  We've always had the right to vote.  We were just prevented from exercising that right until 1919.  It's a small distinction, yes, but I think it's an important one.

I may have left DC, but I can't seem to get away from DC blogs:

Taxi-Blog Confessionals: My mom sent me this hilarious blog out of Arlington, VA called The Blank Top Chronicles.  An anonymous cab dispatcher transcribes his calls with various crazies out there requesting cab service.  Relatedly, Customer Service Hell gives a view into the surreal world of Microsoft customer service.

Buy Back Your Missing Panties: The DC One Night Stand Yard Sale already happened, I gather, and I've heard no reports about how it went.  But what an awesome idea!

And in international news:

Count No Evil: Hooray!  There was a dramatic decrease in the number of murders in Baghdad last month, according to the military.  But only because they decided not to count "people killed by bombs, mortars, rockets or other mass attacks" in that number this month.  Uhhh....

A press release worth checking out:

Beginning next year Harvard College will eliminate its early admission program and move to a single application deadline of January 1, the University announced today (September 12). The change in policy, which builds on Harvard's efforts over the past several years to expand financial aid and increase openness in admissions, will take effect for students applying in the fall of 2007 for the freshman class entering in September 2008.

"The college admissions process has become too pressured, too complex, and too vulnerable to public cynicism," said Harvard interim President Derek Bok. "We hope that doing away with early admission will improve the process and make it simpler and fairer.

"Early admission programs tend to advantage the advantaged," Bok continued. "Students from more sophisticated backgrounds and affluent high schools often apply early to increase their chances of admission, while minority students and students from rural areas, other countries, and high schools with fewer resources miss out. Students needing financial aid are disadvantaged by binding early decision programs that prevent them from comparing aid packages. Others who apply early and gain admission to the college of their choice have less reason to work hard at their studies during their final year of high school."

Today was my first day of classes at the Kennedy School, but the anniversary of 9/11 reminded me that five years ago was the day before I started classes as a Harvard freshman.  That day, I woke up around 11am (long after the towers had fallen) and while I was still half-asleep I opened up CNN.com.  At that point in the morning CNN.com was overwhelmed with hits and had been reduced to a shell site, proclaiming simply that America was under attack.  If you click here, they have screen captures of the information that was available at different points throughout the day.  No further information, just a photo of lower Manhattan enveloped in smoke.  What a surreal way to start life as an adult.

Today was the first day of orientation at the Kennedy School.  I can't believe the breadth of backgrounds people have.  It's really humbling.  There was a fair amount of irreverence, though:

"To quote the great Harvard chaplain Peter Gomes, 'At Harvard, it's not who you know, but whom you know.'"  - Dean McCarthy

"...And if you see a long line, get in it.  There's probably food at the end." - Our Class Advisors

I'm back in Cambridge, and I've already started to wear out my voice schmoozing with my new Kennedy School classmates.  Orientation starts on Tuesday officially, but pre-Orientation activities abound.  I think I'm going to learn as much from my fellow students as from my professors.

On the other hand, there are some great professors at the KSG as well.  The website's front page links to articles and reports from KSG professors, and a couple recent ones caught my eye.  Monica Duffy Toft addresses the global rise of religiosity in a broad, informative, and insightful article in the Baltimore Sun.  And Jessica Stern writes in the Boston Globe about the appeal of Jihad.  A piquant paragraph:

There is an appeal to an identity of victimhood: If I am a victim of someone else's bad actions, I have an excuse for not meeting expectations -- my own or others'. There is an appeal to righteous indignation. There is an appeal to avenging wrongs visited on the weak by the strong. The narrative will be more seductive if moral questions seem to have easy answers, if good and evil can be easily distinguished, if perpetrators and victims stand out in stark relief, and if they never trade places, as they often do in the real world.

I've generally had a domestic focus in my government studies, but I'm looking forward to learning more about the international political climate.  I only get one elective per semester this first year, but this course on insurgency in the Middle East is on the short list.

I'm in the wild, beautiful Pacific Northwest until next Friday.  It's good to be home.  Anyway, some assorted items from the week:

EC/BC: If you’re a feminist worth your salt, you already know that the FDA has now fully approved Plan B for over-the-counter use – at least, for adult women.  Younger women will still have to get a doctor’s permission, not because FDA scientists thought 18 was the appropriate cutoff, but because that was the compromise that could be reached politically.  Sigh.  It’s still generally a victory.  Less fortunate is the recent stratospheric price hike of regular birth control pills available to clinics serving low-income women.  Read about this underpublicized development on Slate.

Advice Columnists Gone Wild: I read Salon’s advice columnist Cary Tennis religiously, even though I often find his responses infuriatingly New Agey.  Turns out he’s not afraid of a little dirty talk.  Thursday’s letter writer complained about her partner’s vanilla attitude toward sex, which elicited quite a randy response from Cary.  Hilarious.

Out on DVD: Veronica Mars Season 2!  Eee!

On Tuesday night I had a totally wonderful send-off at Equinox with my posse of girlfriends.  I'm going to miss them so much, though it hasn't totally sunk in yet that I won't be able to pop on down to hang out with them.  Those friendships were the highlight of my year in DC.

I'm now in Provincetown, MA, having spent a couple days on Cape Cod with the Spinster, Mr. Simone Says, and a rowdy band of Montrealers.  When I take the ferry back this afternoon, I will resume setting up my room in my new apartment and becoming a decorating diva with my new roommate.  As mentioned previously, the apartment is not the most attractive space you've ever seen, but we'll make it pretty through creative use of Craigslist and the Crate & Barrel catalog.

Only one item in today's edition of Casual Friday, but it's solid gold:

When Bad Dates go Viral: Apparently this has been passed around a lot, so perhaps you've already read the tale of the creep who demanded $50 from a woman after their date and threatened to take her to court unless she coughed it up.  She had offered to pay half and he had refused to let her pay at the time.  Cut to an unspecified time after the date...  Though she never actually turned him down for a second date, he decided she didn't like him so he asked for $50 to cover the cost of the original date.  Check out the link, which contains .wav files of all the calm-yet-crazy voice messages he left her.

Restaurant Week is fast approaching here in DC.  With Congress in recess, August is the perfect time for this fabulous institution.  I am leaving DC a week from today, sadly, but that gives me Monday and Tuesday to splurge on fabulous Restaurant Week food.  I am going to a last supper at my favorite chi-chi restaurant Equinox with my girlfriends on Tuesday night, before I leave.  This is the menu.  My dear friend Ben has already correctly guessed which course options I will select.  Can you?

In the coming days over on Simone Says, I will be delving into the myriad points of awesomeness found in Katha Pollitt's book, Virginity or Death!  But one, ahem, tidbit from the Sex and the Stepford Wife chapter caught my eye.  Apparently having small breasts is now considered a certifiable disease.  Micromastia, according to Wikipedia, "is the medical term for a condition commonly known as small breasts in women."  Who came up with this diagnosis?  Why, the plastic surgery industry, of course!  Barbara Ehrenreich gave a speech referencing this terrible affliction during a breast cancer benefit:

Actually cancer was not my first run-in with a breast-related disease. About 20 years ago, the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons announced that small-breastedness is itself a disease: "There is a substantial and enlarging body of medical information and opinion to the effect that these deformities [small breasts] are really a disease." They even gave this disease a name—micromastia.

I was myself a sufferer from micromastia. It wasn’t easy. Oh, I managed to hobble around, raise my kids and get my work done, but I knew how ill I really was.

Then just 3 years ago, a doctor told me that I didn’t have to worry about breast cancer too much, because my breasts were small.

Now there’s a doctor who doesn’t have to worry about brain cancer too much…

The Wikipedia entry notes that, in its strictest sense, the term refers to an almost complete lack of breast tissue, but somehow I doubt this is how the plastic surgery industry spins it.  I myself prefer the more optimistic bra-cup-is-half-full message of Shakira, who famously trilled "Lucky that my breasts are small and humble / So you don't confuse them with mountains."   They're confusion-reducers, Dr. McSilicone, not deformities!  Hmph!

In a final bit of breast-related news (I don't know why that's a recent theme on this blog), you can now support breast cancer research and indulge in delightfully immature tee-shirtery at www.savethetatas.com.  It's even Veronica Mars-approved!

Bits and pieces:

BlogWatch: Lori Adelman, who I am assuming is an undergraduate and not a sad alumni CampusTap interloper like I am, has a thoughtful and serious blog mostly on the themes of human rights, women's rights, and abortion in connection with her summer job at Human Rights Watch.  The blog is called SummerWatch, and it's excellent.  Go read it.

Attack of the Giant Boobs: And by boobs, I mean the people who are throwing hissyfits about the recent cover of Babytalk - a free magazine primarily read by mothers with babies and young children.  The cover features a baby suckling on a mostly-off-camera breast.  As Broadsheet notes, the issue's main article is about why women are typically not breastfeeding their infants for longer than a few months, and one of the reasons cited is "negative public attitudes."  Indeed!  The magazine has raised ire from people who, according to the AP, think the cover is shocking and "gross."   "One mother who didn't like the cover explains she was concerned about her 13-year-old son seeing it.  'I shredded it,' said Gayle Ash, of Belton, Texas, in a telephone interview. 'A breast is a breast -- it's a sexual thing. He didn't need to see that.'" The article adds that Gayle Ash breastfed all three of her children, failing to note that by her own logic, she is a SERIAL CHILD MOLESTER thrusting her sexual parts in her own children's faces.  All this despite the almost draconian measures of the Department of Health and Human Services to promote breastfeeding.

From T to A: According to Slate, my current movie star crush Luke Wilson uses a butt double, as does his ne'er-do-well brother Owen.  I feel betrayed.  Apparently this is a common practice.  How dare you deceive us, Hollywood!

From Ridiculous to Serious: I have a new post up on Simone Says about my new feminist idol, Katha Pollitt.  I'm fairly certain she never uses a double for anything!

Have a lovely weekend, everyone!

Okay, I'll try not to get too depressed.  Aaargh.  Read the opinion.  It's so dumb I'm going to barf.

I promise to stop obsessing about my plants so much on this blog, but they just make me so dang happy!  There are about twenty fat cherry tomatoes nearing optimum ripeness right now, plus three adorable green bell peppers, an ever-abudant supply of basil, and resurgent growth on the chives and parsley.  All of which will go into some pasta primavera or similar dish very soon - possibly in conjunction with an entire jar of artichoke hearts that is sitting in my cupboard right now.  Marcel, I'm gonna make you proud.

More photos are available in the "More plant pictures" album in the right-hand sidebar or by clicking here.  Also, note the new blog link to The Inadvertent Gardener, a gardening-themed blog I happened onto while searching for the cause of my zuchinni and squash plants' utter failure to produce fruit (which apparently has something to do with the male and female flowers not being open at the same time - evidently, my plants are having a gender identity crisis).

This Daily Show clip, though a few months old, is too good not to share: 

...and so now, as I've established, I shall eat them.  A simple Caprese salad, with fresh cherry tomatoes right from the plant, fresh basil right from the bush, and fresh mozarella right from the hippie organic market down the street.  A little salt, a little pepper, some olive oil, and some white balsamic vinegar.  Oh delicious.

The New York Times can barely contain itself:

It reads like a tally of terrorist targets that achild might have written: Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory, the Mule Day Parade, the Sweetwater Flea Market and an unspecified “Beach at End of a Street.”

But the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, in a report released Tuesday, found that the list was not child’s play: all these “unusual or out-of-place” sites “whose criticality is not readily apparent” are inexplicably included in the federal antiterrorism database.

This is an internal investigation of DHS's rationale for its annoucement last month that it would be slashing the anti-terrorism budgets for New York and Washington.  Frankly, I'm just baffled.  As CNN notes:

The report noted that Indiana has 8,591 assets listed in the database -- more than any other state and 50 percent more than New York.

New York had 5,687 listed. It did not detail which ones, but the Homeland Security assessment of New York this year failed to include Times Square, the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge or the Statue of Liberty as a national icon or monument.

I sure hope they remembered to include the White House on the list, because boy would THAT be an embarassing cabinet meeting for Michael Chertoff!  (I work three blocks from the White House, so I am also particularly keen on having it remain in its unbombed state).

I can't even really come up with a good Republican-blaming explanation for this, that's how baffling this is. I understand wanting to scare Security Moms in rural locations into continuing to vote Republican, and I understand wanting to funnel money to red states, but I also think Republicans are smart enough to not leave themselves so open to ridicule as this.  So yeah, totally baffled.

I took advantage of a summer promotion and joined the gym across Connecticut Avenue a couple weeks ago.  Aside from the obvious health benefits, the gym has given me access to a variety of celebrity and fashion magazines to read while on the cardio machines.  I can get exercise AND avoid feeling the pang of guilt about plunking down $3 for gossip rag!  Thanks, City Fitness!  But my favorite sections are by far the pictures of absurdly dressed celebrities and the snarky commentary that often accompanies them.  I've also gotten hopelessly addicted to Go Fug Yourself, which I refresh several times a day.  Is celebrity idolspizing an inevitable product of our culture?

And more importantly, are Jennifer Aniston and Cameron Diaz seriously considering marrying guys who give them CANARY DIAMOND engagement rings?  According to Life & Style magazine, Vince and Justin have shelled out a few hundred thousand dollars apiece for these atrocities:

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the other hand, the rumors may be false and Life & Style may be shilling for producers of ugly-but-expensive diamonds.  Wouldn't THAT be a relief.