Jonathan's blog

From a story by Elizabeth Mehren in the LA Times:

Virginity pledges, in which young people vow to abstain from sex until marriage, have little staying power among those who take them, a Harvard study has found. More than half of the adolescents who make the signed public promises give up on their pledges within a year, according to the study released last week... "The Harvard report is wrong," said Janice Crouse, a fellow at a Concerned Women for America think tank. "This study is in direct contradiction with trends we have been seeing in recent years," Crouse said. "Those who make virginity pledges have shown greater resolve to save sex for marriage." [The Harvard study also found that]...of those who had sex after telling the first interviewers they had taken the pledge, 73% denied in the second interview having made the pledge.

From a press release from the British Medical Journal:

The idea that 'puppy fat' in children disappears as they progress to adolescence is a myth which may put the future health of children at risk... Previous studies have shown that adolescence is a key time, since excess weight during teenage years pre-disposes adults to continued weight problems - with all the associated health risks. But today's study, tracking 5863 children as they developed into young adults, shows that the problems are established before teenage years - since those with excess weight by the age of 11 continued with it during adolescence. ...overall, girls had higher rates of excess weight problems than boys. Black girls had particularly high levels, with an average of 38% being overweight or obese over the study period, compared to 28% for white girls or 20% for Asian girls. For boys, however, ethnicity made little difference to excess weight levels. The findings were less clear cut for economic status. 35% of the most deprived girls were overweight or obese compared with 28% of other girls, but other economic categories showed less consistency. "Children who are obese when they enter secondary school will very likely leave it obese," say the authors. More monitoring is crucial if rising tides of obesity are to be tackled effectively, they conclude.

From a Washington Post article of the same title by Marc Kaufman:

Poor women in America are increasingly likely to have unwanted pregnancies, whereas relatively affluent women are succeeding more and more in getting pregnant only when they want to, according to a study analyzing federal statistics. As a result of the growing disparity, women living in poverty are now almost four times more likely to become pregnant unintentionally than women of greater means, the study found. Based on nationwide data collected by the National Center for Health Statistics and other sources, the researchers found that from 1994 through 2001, the rate of unplanned pregnancies increased by almost 30 percent for women below the federal poverty line -- now defined as $16,000 annually for a family of three. For women in families comfortably above poverty, the rate of unplanned pregnancies fell by 20 percent during the same period. The abortion rate also rose among poor women while declining among the more affluent... Asked what was driving the trends, the authors noted that some state and federal reproductive health programs have been cut or made more restrictive in recent years. State and federal programs have increasingly focused on abstinence rather than contraception, and some analysts have argued that the shift is leading to less use of contraceptives and more unintended pregnancies. Many social conservatives say, however, that contraceptives have limitations and that the only way a woman can ensure she will not have an unintended pregnancy is to refrain from sexual intercourse until she is ready to have a child.

Via my favorite magazine, The Week: from an article by Brian Tracey on MSNBC.com:

...a Reno, Nev. company has come up with a truly innovative solution: The Beerbelly -- a stealthy strap-on beer holder that disguises itself as a bulging stomach. According to the Ananova Web portal, the Beerbelly was the creation of three middle-aged men who wanted a way of sneaking beer into movies and ball games. The Beerbelly holds 80 ounces of your favorite brew, and at $34.95, the gizmo pays for itself when compared to consuming six ballpark beverages at $7 a pop, the inventors claim.

From an article on ESPN.com:

NFL defensive back Ricky Manning Jr. was arrested on suspicion of assault Sunday after a fight at a restaurant near the UCLA campus. Manning, a 25-year-old restricted free agent who signed a five-year, $21 million offer sheet with the Chicago Bears on Friday after three seasons with Carolina, was arrested at about 3 a.m. after he allegedly hit a man in the face along with four or five companions at a Denny's restaurant in the Westwood section of Los Angeles, said officer Mike Lopez, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department... According to a report in the Chicago Sun-Times, Los Angeles Police Department detective Robert Lewis said a group of people -- including Manning -- attacked a man in a Denny's after teasing him for working on a laptop computer. "The group began by making comments that the victim looked like a geek or a nerd," Lewis said, according to the Sun-Times. The newspaper quoted Lewis saying the victim complained to a Denny's manager. He was then punched in the face, then punched and kicked by multiple attackers until losing consciousness... "I was pretty down this morning because of the situation," Manning said."But when I found out I was a Chicago Bear, it kind of brought a little light to the day. ... I can't let something like this let me have a bad start to my football career in Chicago."

Yes, Ricky, after being arrested for beating someone, the important thing is to make sure it doesn't cause you to have a bad day.