First Looks category archive
In Memoriam: Kent State 0
I remember how I learned the news.
I was sitting in the Campus Center at my school playing bridge.
Someone I knew came in and said, “They’re killing us now.”
Okay, So I Like Silly 1
But for once I think the local paper came up with a cute headline:
So you don’t have to follow the link: The story is a puff piece about how, since Joe Biden became vice-president, the response to “I’m from Delaware” is no longer,
“Oh, what state’s that in?”
(Yes, that’s one I got first-hand.)
Drink Liberally 0
Live charitably.
Drinking Liberally, Triumph Brewing Company, Chestnut between Letitia and Second (wonder if that’s the same Letitia I went to school with?), Philadelphia, Pa., Tuesday, 6 p.
I’ll be there to pick up my brownberry which I fell out of my coat four weeks ago and which they found on Thursday. (Hmmmm, wonder how often they sweep–never mind.)
Text Education (Updated) 0
Outfits offering information about sex via text messages are proliferating:
Sex education in the classroom, say many epidemiologists and public health experts, is often ineffective or just insufficient. In many areas of the country, rates of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases remain constant or are even rising. North Carolina — where schools must teach an abstinence-only curriculum — has the country’s ninth-highest teenage pregnancy rate. Since 2003, when the state’s pregnancy rate declined to a low of 61 per 1,000 girls ages 15 to 19, the rates have slowly been climbing. In 2007, that rate rose to 63 per 1,000 girls — 19,615 pregnancies.
The article goes on to point out that those who advocate ignorance abstinence-only sex education are bent out of shape because their little darlings might actually learn something.
They persist in denying that hormones, not knowledge, causes kids to explore sex.
Addendum, the Next Day:
The Guardian has more.
It’s a Wonder I Get Anything Done on This Computer 2
Yeah, I know it’s a little blurry. Best I could do with my cell.
Fool, Money, Health, Soon Parted, Supplement Dept. 0
It’s a lot easier and safer just to eat healthy.
Break Out the Champagne 0
It’s an anniversary!
I Have To Go Back to Delaware Today 0
My timing seems to be its usual wonderful self:
A small team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was set to arrive in the state Thursday night at the invitation of Gov. Jack Markell, who said he requested the team to assist a group from the Division of Public Health, Christiana Care and the university.
The Entitlement Society 0
In a small Swiss village, there was a conceited and overbearing banker. The villagers loathed and detested him for his dogmatic egotism, but they kowtowed to him because, well, he ran the only bank in the village and they all depended on his good will.
One day, a farmer came to the banker accompanied by his son, a bespectacled, furtive-looking little boy of about twelve.
“How may I help you,” boomed the banker.
“Well, sir, it’s my son. I don’t know what direction he will take in his life.”
“Easy,” said the banker. “Have him wait in the outer room.”
The farmer complied.
“Now,” said the banker, “here’s what we’ll do. We’ll put this loaf of bread, this Bible, and this bottle of wine on the desk. Then we shall hide in the closet. No doubt your son will get impatient and come into the office. We’ll observe what he does: if he picks up the loaf of bread, he will enter the trades; if he picks up the Bible, he will become a man of the cloth. If he picks up the wine–well, there’s trouble ahead . . . .”
The farmer nodded and the two of them hid in the closet and peered through the crack of the slightly-opened door.
After a short time, the office door opened slowly. The child looked stealthily around the room, then darted to the desk, where he stuck the loaf of bread under one arm, the Bible under the other one, then grabbed the bottle of wine and fled.
Before the banker could speak, these words escaped the farmer’s mouth: