Random

[stakebait]

A good cause doesn't make you a good poet. *cringe*

If you've been upset in the past when your political opponents take your polls? Don't announce the new poll to everyone that took the old ones. This announcement brought to you by the letter duh and the number d'oh.

Oddly for completely unrelated reasons I have a sudden intense desire for a song on the dangers of self-selected samples. Something catchy.

Study shows abstinence pledge no help in fighting STDs. Thanks to cyan_blue for the link.

Does anyone have a transcript of Joss' interview on NPR yesterday? And do you know if it's got spoilers?

flowery_twat has interesting thoughts on the morality of understanding and remembering evil. I can feel something inside stirring in response, but it hasn't actually made it to words yet.

Astronauts win.

Comments

Re: study

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

I think no help is accurate. The relevant bullet point for STDs is not how many people have sex, but how many people catch STDs. So the key sentence was But the two groups' STD rates were statistically similar.

The pledgers don't use condoms as often as non-pledgers do. (Because they're not planning for it, they're doing it in the heat of the moment). So even though they have fewer partners and fewer of them have sex, the ones that do have more unsafe sex and therefore as a group they get STDs just as often as their promiscuous but prepared compatriots.

And yeah, it means 88 percent of them break their promise. It's not about pre-existing STDs. Presumably the point is that 11 percent more people are not having sex, which is a win for those who think premarital sex is immoral. But if this study is reliable, the public health benefit is now shown to be nonexistant.

Mer

Re: study

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

"Presumably the point is that 11 percent more people are not having sex, which is a win for those who think premarital sex is immoral."

It didn't occur to me that 11% might count as a victory. Too many years of reading experimental papers?

Re: study

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Heh. Or you have too good a sense of proportion? I certainly would think that something which had an 88 percent failure rate was a failure, but I guess if they're comparing it to *not* doing it and that 99 percent, it is a comparative success for the forces of not getting laid. One hopes for the sake of their problem solving skills that they are at least busily planning alternative methods which might have more than 11 percent success, whether as a supplement or an alternative. Not that I *want* to promote abstinance. I am a big proponent of consensual sex. But I do want to believe that people are basically rational. :)

Of course, they're likely to have other issues with methods that are likely to have a better success rate, such as giving out vibrators and instructions on masturbation.

Mer