TV

The episode of King of the Hill from a couple weeks back featured the Hills going church shopping after their favorite pew at the Arlen First Methodist Church was taken by a new family. Among the churches they tried before settling on a megachurch were a fundamentalist/revivalist type meeting under a tent, a Spanish Roman Catholic church, and new age/progressive type (where they didn't even get in the door before turning around to leave upon hearing "Day by Day" strummed on a guitar). They eventually got burned out at the megachurch with the endless string of activities occurring virtually every night of the week. The frequent calls asking them to take surveys to find out how they felt about this or that activity got old too. They return to Arlen First Methodist and get their favorite pew back by encouraging the new family to try the megachurch.

I watched the first two episodes of God or the Girl series on A&E. I was afraid it would be silly or cheesy or a joke or a soap opera or something, but it's not. It's actually a serious show. It almost seems more like old-school documentary instead of new-school reality TV. Four interesting, dedicated, and like-able young guys are trying to make the agonizing decision of whether or not it's God's will for them to choose seminary and celibacy. Set your vcrs or Tivos for 1 to 5 PM and 10 to 11 PM this Sunday (April 23) to see the five episodes.

From an article on abcnews.com:

The more sexual content in television and magazines that teens are exposed to, the more likely they are to have sexual intercourse at an early age, a new study says. The University of North Carolina study, published in today's issue of the journal Pediatrics, concludes that white adolescents who view more sexual content than their peers are 2.2 times more likely to have sexual intercourse by the time they are 14 to 16 years old. "Some, especially those who have fewer alternative sources of sexual norms, such as parents or friends, may use the media as a kind of sexual superpeer that encourages them to be sexually active," the study authors state. And, as similar past studies have noted, "one of the strongest protective factors against early sexual behavior was clear parental communication about sex."

The article goes to discuss various limitations of the study, chicken-or-egg arguments, etc.

Click here to watch The Daily Show's take on the study (see previous blog posts here and here) that showed prayer didn't help the recovery of heart patients.

Jon Stewart: "So, a stunning result that shows no matter what anybody does, over half the people that go in for heart surgery in this country develop significant complications. Hey, know what we should be praying for: Better heart surgeons."

and

Jon Stewart: "But a study that shows prayer actually does more harm than good. Come on! I'm hard pressed to imagine that's got any real world application. Or wait." [Bush speaking January 23, 2006, at Kansas State University] "I am, uh, sustained mightily by the fact that, uh, million of citizens, for whom I'll never get to thank personally, pray for me." Jon Stewart: "So that's what went wrong!"

Check out Stephen Colbert's interview with representative Darlene Hooley from Oregon's 5th district as part of The Colbert Report's series "Better Know a District." Maybe I was just in the mood for it, but I thought it was hilarious.