Shootings at Virginia Tech

Students at Virginia Tech were stunned to find themselves in the midst of another shooting on campus.  In 2007 Virginia Tech was the site of the worst shooting in U.S. history when a student named Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 and wounded 25 others before committing suicide.  Initial reports on this shooting indicate that the campus alert system functioned well.  The campus has reopened and final exams will begin on Saturday.  Sadly a campus police office lost his life in the shooting.  The Virginia Tech website includes information about the memorial fund established in the name of Officer Crouse.

Stories like this are appalling.  Just how safe are college campuses?  Campus crime statistics are available from the U.S. Department of Education at the Campus Safety and Security Data Analysis Cutting Tool.   Despite its somewhat unfortunate name, the site provides information on alleged criminal offenses reported to campus security authorities and/or local law enforcement agencies at over 6000 postsecondary institutions.  The report on Virginia Tech indicates that there was one murder between 2008 and 2010.

Report Says Teenagers Are Having Less Sex. Unless They Aren't.

According to the Centers for Disease Control's new, catchy titled report -- "Teenagers in the United States: Sexual Activity, Contraceptive Use, and Childbearing, 2006-2010 National Survey of Family Growth" -- Teenagers -- those between the ages of 15 and 18 -- are having less sex.  Or at least they say they are having less sex when asked about it by the Centers for Disease Control, which isn't quite the same as telling your Dad, is it?  Teens wouldn't hide the truth from figures of authority would they? Parents? Relatives? Scientists in white lab coats holding clipboards and waiting impatiently for answers to their questions?  Of course they would.

18.7% of Teenagers say they are waiting to have sex because they "haven't found the right person yet."
Unless their boyfriend is a vampire. Then they do it, because what could go wrong?

 
Or at least that is what one recent editorial about the CDC report discusses.  In her piece at the New York Times' blog Motherlode (a coincidental title, that, but nonetheless here unfortunate) -- "Are Teenagers Really Having Less Sex?" --  author KJ DellAntonia (who only sounds like she's a character from Twilight) worries that a survey "administered by a C.D.C. interviewer but conducted largely on a laptop with headphones" is bound to be flawed.



(Click on the image above to see the excerpt writ large.)

She makes a valid point: self-reporting activity provided via an interview allows for a greater chance for mis-representation or omission of sexual activity than data collected anonymously over an electronic medium.  Because talking about sex isn't always something Americans do, or do well.

What teen would be intimidated by a friendly-sounding report like this one?
Click on that title for the full CDC report.  For the trailer to Breaking Dawn, click here.

The report itself provides all sorts of interesting data, some of which is perhaps too detailed for a family-friendly blog like this one.  For example, did you know that since 2002, the number of African American females who reported using birth control during their last sexual encounter stayed at 71%?  For Hispanic and Anglo populations of teenage women, those numbers increased by 8% and 4% respectively.

Click to embiggen.

Putting aside teenagers, the CDC also provides extensive data on Sexual Health and Activity for adults and for the LGBT community, though there is not yet a site speaking to the sexual issues of vampires or werewolves.  Or, for that matter, those impregnated by midichlorians.

In terms of more data, why not peruse this page-turner:  "Sexual Behavior and Selected Health Measures: Men and Women 15-44 Years of  Age, United States."  Trust me, it only sounds boring.  Within its pages we learn this: that 22% of Anglo males and 34% of African American males have had 15 or more opposite-sex sexual partners in their lifetimes.  We can only guess how many of those were in college.  Hispanic and African American women with more than 15 partners were fewer: 5% and 9% respectively.

If the CDC says so, it must be true.

According to another CDC Report, we learn that the majority of married persons (40%) first had sex between the ages of 15-17 -- and that majority holds for those widowed, separated, divorced, never married, or currently cohabitating.  Apparently, John Hughes was right.  That report, by the way, is "Drug Use and Sexual Behaviors reported by Adults: United States, 1999-2002."  Who knows why the two are linked, but this same document states that 13.1% of married individuals have at one time or another used cocaine or other "street drugs."  This might prove a useful statistic to toss out the next time the parents (or Centers for Disease Control) ask why the car was brought home late after Senior Prom.

FRUS turns 150--you say what???

Foreign Relations of the United States, a title often abbreviated to "FRUS", turned 150 on December 3.  You know that you are a government publications afficianado when that gets you excited.  Here at CU Boulder it's one of our favorite tools when a student needs "primary sources" on on a topic related to U.S. foreign policy.


FRUS volumes contain documents from Presidential libraries, Departments of State and Defense, National Security Council, Central Intelligence Agency, Agency for International Development, and other foreign affairs agencies as well as the private papers of individuals involved in formulating U.S. foreign policy.  The series is edited by a group of historians at the Department of State.  The editors "choose documentation that illuminates policy formulation and major aspects and repercussions of its execution."

The volumes are arranged by the name of the president in office and the world region or issue. Rather than being lumped in with other content, serious national and international issues are sometimes covered in separate volumes.  The Cuban Missile Crisis (Kennedy) gets a volume of its very own. So does the Arab-Israeli War that occured during Nixon's presidency. 

You can find links to freely-available versions of FRUS on our page on the department's page on Foreign Relations and International Aid.  A subscription-based version is available on campus through HeinOnline. 

Enjoy!

What Did that Turkey Do to Need a Pardon, Anyway?

Last week, on November 23rd, President Obama participated in the National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation, a traditional White House event dating back to at least 1873 with President Ulysses S. Grant, wherein the Commander-In-Chief is presented with a bird for the White House Thanksgiving Dinner.  A newer tradition -- and seemingly now an annual event -- is the Annual Pardoning of the Thanksgiving Turkey, in which the gifted turkeys are released by the President to live the remainder of theirs lives free from the threat of being eaten by the leader of the free world.

President Gerald Ford, in 1975, pardons another turkey.

The affair is light-hearted (and gravy-free), and often provides the President an opportunity to get in a few digs at the media, as President Obama did in his presentation last week.  A video of the 2011 Pardoning is embedded below.

This year the White House Blog also provided its own brief on the history of Presidential Turkey Pardons.

But crafty readers may wonder what these innocent-looking turkeys may have done to need a pardon in the first place.  For the answer to this question, they may wish to turn to Crime in the United States, an annual publication from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting Program that organizes crime statistics into several (un)appetizing categories such as Property Crimes, Homicides, and even by number of persons arrested.  There is sadly no compilation of statistics specifically for crimes committed during a Walmart Black Friday sale. But perhaps soon.
More hard-hitting statistics are available through the Department of Agriculture, such as this year 2000 report, ominously titled "Structural Change in U.S. Chicken and Turkey Slaughter," in which we learn of America's insatiable appetite for bird meat.

Chilling.  Like unheated cranberry-sauce chilling.  But still no definitive numbers exist for crimes committed by turkeys, or how the crimes of pardoned turkeys might break down by category.  Nevertheless, the archives of the Annual Pardoning ceremonies and the FBI's Crime in the United States publication are just two of the many kinds of Government Documents available on the issues that matter to YOU. 

Also, the government prints cookbooks.  An anti-bird conspiracy if there ever was one.

Appeals Court Upholds Roadless Areas

On October 21 a federal appeals court upheld a rule barring construction of roads in designated areas in national forests and grasslands managed by the U.S. Forest Service.   The rule, which was enacted near the end of Clinton's presidency, has been tied up in the courts ever since.  Environmentalists are elated.  The mining industry is not.  To qualify as roadless areas, the lands should have: high quality or undisturbed soil, water, or air; sources of public drinking water; diversity of plant and animal communities; habitat for threatened, endangered, proposed, candidate, and sensitive species, and for those species dependent on large, undisturbed areas of land; primitive, semi-primitive motorized, and semi-primitive non-motorized classes of dispersed recreation; reference landscapes; natural-appearing landscapes with high scenic quality; traditional cultural properties and sacred sites; and, other locally identified unique characteristics.

Pole Creek near the headwaters of the Rio Grande River in Rio Grande National Forest

Because of concerns expressed by the mining, timber, and ski industries, the State of Colorado would like to have a specific rule that applies to Colorado only.  To learn more about the proposed Colorado Roadless Areas (CRAs) visit the Colorado Rule area of the Roadless Area Conservation website hosted by the Forest Service. 

The Government Information website also has pages on Parks, Forests, Grasslands, Wildlife Refuges, and Historic Places