In most American homes, it is the woman.
“Across all decision-making realms, it tilts to the woman,” noted Rich Morin, the Pew study’s lead author. “I was surprised by the percentage of men who made none of the decisions in any of the areas. A significant percentage were just bystanders.” Not surprisingly, one reason men say they are willing to acquiesce in their spouses’ wishes is that their wives usually have greater knowledge of the day-to-day activities and needs of the home than they do. They trust their wives’ choices the way they would any specialist’s. But what is rather unexpected is the deeper (and much sweeter) reason men have for giving in to their wives: They want them to be happy, or at least they don’t want to be responsible for making them unhappy.
The general consensus of sociologists is that, whereas a woman’s marital satisfaction is dependent on a combination of economic, emotional and psychological realities, a man’s marital satisfaction is most determined by one factor: how happy his wife is. When she is happy, he is. Working within this framework, most husbands are unwilling to dig in their heels on any issue unless they have a tremendous incentive to do so.
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Posted by blestou on October 10th, 2008 — News, Illustration, Science, Church Life, Daily Life, Politics, Culture, Doctrine
I am both amused and bothered when I catch “news” stories that make a causal connection between rising childhood/teen sexual conduct and “abstinence” education. There are no reliable studies that demonstrate that abstinence education is any less effective than other sex-ed options.
It also matters how you define “abstinence education.” Some programs are abstinence-only, others emphasize a preference for abstinence, others include honest discussions of abstinence with other sex-ed information. Often, reporters unquestioningly include anti-abstinence quotes with no context or definition.
Take a recent example from FOXNews: STDs Run Rampant at Pa. School District, CDC Steps In
It’s estimated that 10 percent of the 3,000 middle and high school students in the Delaware Valley School District in Milford, P.A., are infected with an STD — including one confirmed case of HIV, Times Herald Record reported Friday.
A non-profit health clinic in Milford said they estimate more than 300 students contracted a sexually transmitted disease in the past year. Officials also told the paper students as young as 12 years old reported being sexually active.
Kristen Bruce, a nurse practitioner with the Milford clinic, said most of the cases were the human papillomavirus (HPV).
Bruce told the paper she wasn’t surprised by the numbers, citing a recent CDC study that found at least one in four teenage girls nationwide, between the ages of 14 and 19, has a sexually transmitted disease.
First of all, some basic math. If 1 in 4 teen girls have an STD, then that is 25%. If only 10% of all Delaware Valley students (male and female) have an STD, then the school district is doing something very, very right in their sex-ed department.
But that is not the way Delaware Valley school officials see it:
The Board of Education is currently revising the health curriculum, which places heavy emphasis on abstinence.
Why change what is clearly working? Can we at least have a one-sentence explanation as to how the health curriculum emphasizes abstinence, and why it is relevant to the STD rates? Do the planned changes to the curriculum include eliminating the abstinence portion or will they strengthen the emphasis on abstinence? Aren’t reporters supposed to ask questions and determine facts?
One reason the DV Board of Ed is not patting themselves on the back for a job well done perhaps is because they know the CDC STD Study results are bogus. Seriously, is one out of four teenage girls you know suffering from an STD? In every homeroom of every grade in your local middle- and high-school, there are 5 girls with an STD. During every softball game at your local ballpark, six players are suffering from a sexually transmitted infection. Is this believable? Maybe so in some areas - but nation-wide? Wouldn’t you like some follow-up on how this statistic was calculated? Wouldn’t you like to know why the CDC identified this school district as high-risk at 10% if they really believed 26% of all female teenagers have an STD?
In a nutshell, researchers looked at the data of 600 girls from other sexual infection studies. They lumped everything they could under the category “STD” and did not differentiate between 14-year old freshmen and 19-year old barmaids. Viola! Every girl in junior high is in imminent danger. But there is no background or factual evaluation of the study cited. It is part of a “citation” by a health “official” and thus is simply allowed to stand as factual.
Speaking of officials qualified to dispense medical knowledge related to public policy - do no physicians work for the health clinic? Why is this nurse practitioner especially qualified to serve as a reliable source for questionable CDC information?
The reporter did find one physician who was willing to go on record:
Dr. Joseph Rahimian, an infectious disease specialist at St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York City…
[Rahimian said,] “There’s no study that abstinence is a highly effective form of prevention for any of these infections.”
(Interesting to note that there are no physicians in all of Pennsylvania. Perhaps that is why nurse practitioners carry so much authority there.)
Taking what we have, where did Dr. Rahimian go to medical school to learn that not having sex was anything other than a “highly effective form of prevention” for sexually transmitted diseases? I admit, I have not been to medical school, so perhaps there is a study that shows that people who don’t engage in sexual activity have equally high rates of sexually transmitted diseases as those people who do engage in sexual activity. For most of us laity, something about this claim just doesn’t add up. Does the reporter not understand the illogic of the good doctor’s statement?
The idea that STDs are rampant because there is just too much abstinence is madness to the Nth degree. This type of unquestioning, uncritical reporting is lunacy in print. Reprinting the unsupported claim that STDs are rampant because of “abstinence education” is shoddy, negligent reporting that (considering the ease with which our present report could have been clarified) borders on outright bias and advocacy journalism.
The real sadness is that so many readers uncritically accept it all as somehow true.
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Posted by blestou on June 30th, 2008 — Review, Science, Illustration, News, Culture, Politics
We most often think of the ancient world as a completely barbaric place - strictly speaking, it was of course - what with the freedom with which the Romans labeled everyone else, but that is beside the point here. People were not different people back then. They were the same types of people we have now, just in a different cultural and technological situation. It does not surprise me that the ancients had many “advanced” activities, constrained only by their relative technology.
Case in point, Roman doctors performed cataract surgery:
“Interestingly the Roman author Celsus described cataract extraction surgery using a specially pointed needle - and possible cataract needles (specilla) have been found in Britain as well as elsewhere in the Roman Empire.”
If you are one of those people who stay up at night stressing over what exactly the apostle Paul’s thorn in the side was, perhaps now you can rule out cataracts, since there was apparently a remedy for that. Just trying to be helpful…
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Posted by blestou on February 14th, 2008 — Illustration, Science, News, Culture, Doctrine, Tech, Uncategorized
Bush may not be closed-minded idiot after all
Here is another post - adult-derived -pluripotent-stem-cells consideration of the balanced approach President Bush took to the “stem-cell issue.” Written by Jay Lefkowitz, former Bush domestic-policy advisor responsible for primary White House research on the subject, the article offers a behind-the-scenes look at how the principle was reached and the decision was made.
We do not know enough yet to say whether, or to what degree, Bush’s refusal to allow federal funding to create new embryonic stem-cell lines played a role in compelling scientists to find a different approach to the issue. We do know that, in the aftermath of last November’s announcement, several leading scientists have suddenly testified in public to having harbored the very same moral doubts that led Bush to his 2001 decision. James Thomson, the foremost stem-cell researcher in the United States, put it plainly: “If human embryonic stem-cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.”
This was not, to put it mildly, a view openly expressed by the scientific community in the years between Bush’s decision and the discovery of the new method. But remarks like Thomson’s, and the fact that a scientific advance unthinkable in 2001 has rendered one of the ugliest controversies of the decade all but moot, suggest that it is time to revisit Bush’s decision to see what lessons can be drawn from it.
Other articles reviewing Bush’s decision are referenced here. Lefkowitz’s article gives some background information regarding the political status of stem-cell research prior to Bush’s decision that, if had been known and more widely reported, would have altered the knee-jerk-self-righteous opinion of many.
It is en vogue these days to hate President Bush and point out all of his perceived flaws and bad decisions. I do not claim to have a comprehensive grasp of all that he has done, but as more information about more decisions during his tenure come to light it is clear that in many ways for many issues Bush was the right man at the right time for the job.
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Posted by blestou on January 11th, 2008 — Science, News, Culture, Politics
For the past 17 years, the Italian government has funded the excavation of a Roman doctor’s house - the Domus del Chirurgo (House of the Surgeon). An interesting read for a student of the Bible if you first consider that Luke (who wrote the Gospel) is widely considered to have been a physician during this time.
From the article:
An ancient doctor’s surgery unearthed by Italian archaeologists has cast new light on what a trip to the doctor would have been like in Roman times. Far from crude, the medical implements discovered show that doctors, their surgeries and the ailments they treated have changed surprisingly little in 1,800 years.
Sore joints were common, patients were often told to change their diets, and the good doctor of the seaside town of Rimini even performed house calls.
“This is the largest find of surgical instruments anywhere,” said Dr Ralph Jackson, the curator of the Romano-British collection at the British Museum and an expert in ancient medicine.
Are the tools found similar to the tools Luke carried with him while he traveled on missionary journeys with the apostle Paul? Did the physician follower of Jesus attempt some of these methods to help Paul with his famous unknown ailment? Fascinating.
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Posted by blestou on December 13th, 2007 — Science, Illustration, News, Tech
Pro-life ethicists have been riding the wave of success lately with the proof of pluripotency from adult (not embryonic) stem-cells. In spite of several Hollywood types’ vigorous endorsements of destroying embryonic human life in a hoped-for attempt to save other full-grown human lives, researchers have found a more immediately useful and ethically better potential for medical solutions in these adult stem cells.
These discoveries should serve as an abrupt warning and highly visible illustration that ethical does not equal anti-science. Ryan T. Anderson writes a Weekly Standard opinion piece commending the bravery and vision of President Bush on this issue. Discovery News also reports that sickle-cell mice have already been cured by this technology using stem-cells derived from their own tails. Not a single therapeutic method has been developed or is in trial from embryonic stem cells.
Bioethics is a frightening field in an age of such advanced technology. We are beyond making better tomato plants - we are now discussing making “better” people. It is time more of those who consider themselves the cultural elite begin listening to the cautious voices who, while not trying to impede progress, nonetheless caution, “Just because we can do something, does not mean that we should do something.” The result of the “stem-cell wars” demonstrates that we can still conduct ethical scientific inquiry. We can both enjoy progress and honor the dignity of all human life.
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Posted by blestou on December 12th, 2007 — Illustration, Science, News, Culture, Tech, Politics, Doctrine
