1. Parents and school districts alike are considering “absitnence plus” curriculums because despite recieving the most federal funding for abstinence-only programs, Texas has the highest percentage of teens who had more than one baby and the third highest teenage birth rate. But Marilyn Morris of Plano’s Aim for Success argues that teaching kids about contraceptives could be dangerous–kids might not understand that they can still get pregnant and/or diseases. “A majority of districts appear to respect that philosophy,” the DMN article states. “Aim for Success, which functions on private funding, is seeing no district pull out.”
2. Dallas City Council will vote on some ordinances this morning to make their zoning dealings look less shady in the wake of the Don Hill scandal. Seems like pretty straight forward stuff. Going forward, lobbyists could have to register–and that includes anyone who makes or spends $200 on influencing council members; people looking for subsidies could be prohibited from making campaign contributions during a certain time period; two council members would need to “second” a zoning case before coming in for a full vote; that sort of thing. Sorry, no funny quote here.
3. Listen, there’s no use crying over spilled skim milk, but I think we can agree that the matter of soy milk is a whole different business. Dallas-based Dean Foods makes White Wave Silk Vanilla Soymilk. People like it. They probably feel good about drinking it because it’s yummy and soy and organic. But wait! It’s not organic anymore. It may even have been made with beans grown with chemicals. And people are saying that Dean didn’t make that clear. But Dean has a form letter that they said they sent to their distributors when all this went down last January. And they also don’t call it “organic” on the container these days–just “natural.” See? This is why I don’t drink milk. At least with my 12 Diet Cokes a day, it’s not going to be a surprise when things don’t end well for me.
5 comments
Re #1, not pulling out is what leads to these types of problems. (Sorry — too easy?)
Yes, because withholding factual information about sex and replacing it with scolding will surely prevent teenagers from making bad decisions. Exactly what will it take for people to understand that abstinence-only doesn’t work?!?
1. Nothing on the launch of KXT?
2. Looking forward to Wick or Zac’s analysis of the ordinance. This was all Mayor Leppart’s idea, right?
Re:#1–As Groucho Marx famously replied to the mother of 9 children who’d said that her husband loves her very much, “I love my cigar, too, but I take it out every once in a while.”
There are certain segments of our society that want to have babies out of wedlock during their teen years and although they represent most of the statistics that are quoted, their desire to have babies is not reflected. To presume that they don’t know how this is happening is as dumb as the notion that the government is not wasting money on sex education.