Girls Who Get HPV Vaccine Don’t Have More Sex. Why Withhold It?

October 15th, 2012 | Posted by jclifford in Science | Sex and Gender - (0 Comments)

The human papillomavirus is a sexually-transmitted disease known to cause a large number of cases of cervical cancers in women. There’s a vaccine that prevents infection with the virus, but many American parents refuse to have their girls take the shots. Almost half of American teenage girls never get the available HPV vaccination.

Why? Many parents have been afraid that if they agree to allow doctors to give their daughters the HPV vaccine, it will encourage their daughters to have sex.

A new study of teenage girls in Georgia0 suggests that these fears are groundless. In the study, girls who were given the HPV vaccine were no more likely to visit their doctors for health issues related to sexual activity than were girls who were not given the HPV vaccine.

Getting an HPV vaccine is a serious matter for boys too. There’s some evidence that head and neck cancers among men may be a result of generously giving oral sex to women who have HPV. That’s nasty.

Given that HPV vaccination doesn’t appear to encourage early sexual activity, what reason on earth would parents decide to prevent their children from receiving the HPV vaccine?

, , , , , , ,

A Large Pool of Subjects, but not very Tractable

July 18th, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Science - (0 Comments)

image

Notice the lack of takers.  I daresay scientists will never uncover the source behind moodiness in the teenage years; how will they ever get their irritable subjects to sign the necessary consent forms?

, , , , ,

A Very Different Presidential Primary In Illinois Going On Right Now

February 11th, 2012 | Posted by jclifford in Election 2012 | Greens | Politics | State and Local - (0 Comments)

Think fast: When is the next presidential primary?

It’s a trick question. The next presidential primary is happening right now.

The Illinois Green Party is holding an open presidential primary online. The online primary started on February 1 and ends on February 16.

To be eligible, voters need to be residents of Illinois, and above the age of 12. I did a bit of a doubletake myself when I saw that age requirement, but it’s true: The Illinois Green Party allows all teenagers to vote in its presidential primary.

A person does not have to be previously registered as Green to vote in the Illinois Green Party primary. Registrations are accepted at the same time as voting.

This means that eager teenage citizens in Illinois, jumping at the chance to vote before the rest of their cohort, could have a major impact on the selection of the Green Party’s presidential candidate.

Green Party caucuses are also being held across the state of Illinois, but these do not include a binding vote. They’re more like voter outreach events. One is being held in Wheaton this afternoon from between 3:00 and 5:00 at 213 South Wheaton Ave.

, , ,

More Kids Kept Captive In Guantanamo Prisons

June 8th, 2011 | Posted by jclifford in Barack Obama | Homeland Insecurity | Liberty - (1 Comments)

The people in the Guantanamo Bay prisons were the worst of the worst, Vice President Dick Cheney told us. Then, we learned that among the prisoners were teenage kids. There were seven kids under the age of 18, the Bush Administration reported to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. How could eight teenagers be honestly categorized among the worst of the worst?

Then, in 2008, the Guantanamo Testimonials Project conducted an investigation and discovered that, actually, there were twelve teenage prisoners put into the prisons of Guantanamo Bay. The Bush Administration, confronted with the evidence, admitted that it had lied, and agreed to the new number.

Now, the Guantanamo Testimonials Project has taken advantage of the Wikileaks document release, and searched for more information about juveniles kept prisoner at Guantanamo. In that search, they have found evidence that there are, or were, three more underage Guantanamo prisoners.

That’s a total of 15 kids locked away in Guantanamo prisons, when the government admitted to just 8.

Of course, there could be yet more kids kept imprisoned in Guantanamo – or in other prisons, even more secret, around the world. Our own government has established the practice of keeping large numbers of people prisoner without telling anyone about it.

That’s a plain violation of habeas corpus, the requirement that our government tell who it holds as prisoner, and where, and why. There may have been some temporary rationale for the suspension of habeas corpus in the few days after September 11, 2001. The Constitution allows the temporary suspension of habeas corpus rights in the event of the invasion of the United States. On September 11, 2001, it momentarily appeared that the United States just might be under invasion.

Before too long, though, it became clear that there was no general invasion – just one massive, violent criminal act. The attacks of that one day were not repeated. There was no constitutional basis for the continuation of the suspension of habeas corpus.

Yet, the work of Wikileaks and the Guantanamo Testimonials Project has revealed that, to this day, ten years after 2001, under Barack Obama, our federal government is continuing a de facto suspension of habeas corpus. They’re keeping people prisoner and not telling us about it.

The result of this long-term is the removal of trust. We can’t trust a government that locks people up without following the rules. We can’t know, if we don’t know who is imprisoned, that American citizens aren’t among the captives. We can’t know, aren’t told who is in prison, that imprisonment is being conducted in accordance with the law, and with the Constitution.

We have no reason to trust, when we have been lied to so thoroughly about Guantanamo, that there aren’t yet more lies, and yet more serious breaches of the Constitution taking place.

I remember, when Barack Obama became President, that we would finally get some truth from the federal government about what had been taking place under the War On Terror. What a disappointment Obama has been.

, , , , , ,

Should 16 Year Old Americans Vote?

May 12th, 2011 | Posted by jclifford in Election 2012 | Politics | Questions | Republicans - (10 Comments)

I’m not inclined to give much support to Republican presidential candidate Fred Karger, given the years that he spent supporting the Republican Party machine before stepping out to criticize it. However, I will give this recognition to Karger: He is willing to offer interesting proposals that other presidential candidates don’t seem ready to think about.

How about this one: A 28th amendment to the Constitution that would lower the age at which Americans can vote. “I feel that we should immediately begin discussion and planning to lower the legal voting age in the United States to either 16 or 17 years old,” Karger says.

I feel comfortable with 18 year olds voting. Most people graduate high school before or soon after they turn 18. But are high school sophomores equipped with the knowledge and wisdom required to be fully active as voting citizens?

I’m not sure what I think about that. What’s your opinion? Where should voting begin? Age 12? Kindergarten?

, , ,

Playground Predators

July 22nd, 2010 | Posted by jclifford in Religion - (16 Comments)

There’s a friendly music festival just up the road from where I live this weekend, so I wasn’t surprised to see a group of teenage girls under a tent at a nearby state park this afternoon, holding a sign that read, “Free face painting”. I also took it for granted that I could trust them when a couple of the girls approached me and asked me if they could tell my 5 year-old daughter, who was over on the playground, a story. She was within my line of sight, and an easy 5 seconds away if she started to look uncomfortable. But, why would she feel uncomfortable? I figured that the girls just wanted to tell a story about a bunch of friendly barnyard animals, or something like that.

I hate to think about how naive I was in that assumption.

5 minutes later, the story was done, and my daughter walked over to where I had been sitting under a tree, watching her.

“Hi daddy,” she said.

“Did you have a good time with those girls?”

“Yes, daddy.”

“What kind of story did they tell you?”

“It was a story about God?”

“What kind of story about God?”

“It was a story about how God is my real father.”

My daughter and I then had a short talk about stories. We talked about how there are all kinds of stories that talk about a lot of fanciful things, silly things, but that we don’t really believe what those stories say. “It’s like with Not The Hippopotamus,” I told her. “There aren’t really hippopotamuses who go to restaurants to drink juice, but we tell stories that pretend that they do, because it’s fun.”

My daughter understood what I was getting at, and she looked disappointed. I didn’t like to disappoint my daughter, but then, I didn’t really feel that I had a choice, after these strangers told her a story in which I wasn’t her real father. The thought came into my mind, though I didn’t speak it to my daughter, that if there really is a supernatural being that’s her real father, he ought to come over to our house sometime, because there are a lot of bills that need to be paid, and he needs to start pulling his weight.

After I was done talking with my daughter, I took a keener interest in what was going on near the playground. It turns out that there was a pretty slick operation going on. Some of the girls would stay at the facepainting tent, and proselytize the children they had lured there. At the same time, other girls were scouring the playground, looking for new prospects, and waiting for the chance to spread their religious message about God the “real father” to other small children. They were cultural hunters, using little kids as prey in order to fulfill their mission.

The worst part of it was the coordination. There was a man who looked to be about 50 years old, hanging around the tent, taking photographs of the children with the girls. The girls would report back to him every few minutes, and he would give them new directions.

I’ve heard a lot of Christians complaining about how they feel excluded from the public sphere. Today’s experience confirms to me that, in fact, the public sphere is swarming with Christians. Often, these Christians in the public sphere aren’t just practicing their religion for themselves. They’re out there, pushing their religion on other people who are just trying to use the public sphere in peace.

I’m all for freedom of speech, and freedom of religion. We adults simply have to learn to deal with people that we find to be annoying. It’s not against the law to be annoying, after all. There’s a line that’s crossed when it comes to dealing with other people’s children, however. Walking up to other people’s children and telling them that their fathers aren’t really their fathers isn’t freedom of religion. It’s fraud. It’s a violation of the trust that we have in creating public spaces where we’re supposed to bring our children to play.

Go ahead and believe whatever crazy stuff you want to believe about spirits with super powers. Just keep it away from my kids.

, , , , , , ,

Teens, Beware the ASVAB Military Recruiter Scam

May 15th, 2010 | Posted by jclifford in Ethics - (54 Comments)

Look at the teenagers here. They’re leaping and jumping for joy. They’re free and wild, and nobody is going to be able to hold them back, right!

asvab military recruiting scamThink again. Taking the ASVAB could very well hold them back – or cause them to wind up dead.

Life’s a journey. Discover your possibilities… holding a gun, and then get shot in the head.

I found out about the ASVAB scam this week from a friend who has a teenage son. It must be a rotten time to have teenage kids, or to be a teenager, for that matter. Career opportunities are at a generation-long low. It’s frightening to have a high school child facing the looming need for employment at a time when there are so few jobs worth having.

In the face of these economic difficulties, some career guidance sure would come in handy, right? Enter the ASVAB.

My friend’s son goes to the Ithaca High School, which recently sent home the letter you see down below (click it to read it for yourself). It describes a ASVAB Career Exploration Program by the “Syracuse MEPS”. What’s a Syracuse MEP? The letter doesn’t say.

Ithaca High Schoo ASVAB LetterSyracuse MEPS is a Military Entrance Processing Station in Syracuse, New York, working under the Military Entrance Processing Command.

The letter from the Ithaca High School Student Services Department doesn’t offer a clue about that. It says that the ASVAB is a program that “consists of an aptitude test, an interest inventory, and a Career Exploration package which allows students to compare their current abilities, interests, and personal work values with over 400 real life jobs.”

Those 400 real life jobs are all in the military. ASVAB stands for Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. It’s a military entrance exam, the first step in becoming a professional soldier.

The letter my friend and her son received said nothing about that. Neither did the brochure that was sent home along with the letter. Both the Ithaca High School’s letter and the accompanying brochure created by the military are designed to trick students and their parents. The web site that the letter and brochure refer to, asvabprogram.com, is the same way, with only a tiny statement at the very bottom of the screen that reads The ASVAB Career Exploration Program is sponsored by the Department of Defense. The idea is to deceive high school kids and their parents into thinking that they’re receiving helpful civilian career counseling, while using the ASVAB test to obtain data that can be used by military recruiters.

It was only during the test that my friend’s son realized what he had gotten himself into. As he was getting ready to take the tests, he realized that the administrators of the test kept on talking about career opportunities in the military.

The ASVAB is being used all across America to seduce kids into joining the military. Deception and coercion are common. High school administrators often tell students that they’re required by federal law to take the military entrance test. That’s untrue – but since when has the truth ever bothered military recruiters trying to meet their quotas?

The Ithaca High School could have chosen not to go along with the ASVAB scam. The Ithaca City Schools is required by law to allow access to military recruiters, but it is not at all required to be silent in the face of deceptive practices military recruiters. The Ithaca High School Student Services Department could have chosen to send a separate message home to students along with the ASVAB promotional materials, making it clear that the ASVAB is a tool for military recruitment only.

Instead, the Ithaca High School chose not to inform their students, which is why I’m writing this article. The children and parents of Ithaca, New York deserve to know the truth about ASVAB, so that they can learn an important lesson: You can’t trust authority. With the military, that’s doubly true.

, , , , , , ,

US Military Scamming Its Own Soldiers

February 22nd, 2009 | Posted by Peregrin Wood in Economy | Ethics | War and Peace - (9 Comments)

Tis the season for military recruiting. Huge numbers of teenagers will be graduating from high school in just a few months, and those who aren’t going to college are especially busy trying to figure out what they’re going to do with themselves.

US military recruiters try to take advantage of their uncertainty, and their fear about the future. Given privileged access to high school students, the recruiters sweep into classrooms and school auditoriums, making big promises about the supposed adventure of military life, minimizing the downsides of a life lived under orders from surrogate parents, violence, lifelong injury and death.

Don’t worry, the recruiters say. If anything bad happens to you, the military will be there to take care of you, and your family. We take care of our own, they say.

Today, we’ve learned that these promises are lies. The Associated Press reports that the Army has been pressuring active duty soldiers to donate their hard-earned money to something called Army Emergency Relief. Army Emergency Relief is a charity controlled by the Army that’s supposed to help soldiers returning from war.

What’s really happened is that Army Emergency Relief has taken soldiers’ money and hoarded it, using only a small fraction of the money to help soldiers trying to return to civilian life. While huge numbers of soldiers are having to try to make ends meet in a rotten economy in which jobs are scarce, Army Emergency Relief has been denying soldiers the kind of assistance they’ve been promised, even though it has plenty of money to spend.

I can understand that graduating high school seniors have good reason to fear that they won’t be able to support themselves in this economy, but that’s no reason for them to throw themselves into the clutches of a system designed to cheat them of their money, if not their lives. Those military recruiters will lie to you, promising the world, but they send inexperienced young Americans off into harm’s way on unnecessary missions. Then, when those young Americans been shot up or shellshocked so that they’re not of use to the military anymore, they’re kicked to the curb.

There are better options. Get a roommate. Stay with your parents for an extra six months if you have to. Just please don’t fall for the lies of a military recruiter who’s rewarded for bringing in as many suckers as he can. Don’t let the premature last chapter of your young life be: He was lied to.

, , , , , , ,