THE DAILY BLADE: Even The Onion Can’t Make This Stuff Up
One or more students at the nation’s most prestigious and priciest (tuition is $43,500 a year) graduate school of journalism may have cheated on the final exam in the mandatory ethics course, "Critical Issues in Journalism."
It was an open-book, take-home exam in a pass-fail course. Students had 48-hours to log onto a Columbia J-school Web site, and then had to answer two essay questions in 90 minutes.
According to The New York Times – which has considerable experience with ethics scandals - "at least one student who had taken the exam reportedly offered to tell at least one other student who had not yet taken it what the essay questions were, which would give the second student extra time to prepare before the clock started ticking."
One might argue that "journalistic ethics" is an oxymoron. This is a profession, after all, that attracts people who think it’s a matter of debate whether a reporter should pluck someone from the jaws of death or keep scribbling in his notebook as the fatal event unfolds.
Pediatricians: Viagra Ads Harming America's Children
The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a new policy statement urging limits on children’s exposure to "inappropriate advertising" that contributes to obesity, anorexia, experimenting with alcohol and underage sex.
The statement, published in the December issue of the academy's journal Pediatrics, notes that the average American child is bombarded by more than 40,000 ads per year on TV alone, plus more ads on the Internet, in magazines and even in school. The pediatrics group is calling for commercial advertising to be cut back from 12 minutes per hour to 6 minutes, as well as:
† Junk-food ads banned during kiddie shows;
† Alcohol ads showing only the product, not cartoon characters or sexy women in skimpy bikinis; and
† Ads for erectile dysfunction drugs aired only after 10 p.m. when fewer children are watching TV and not during sports games.
"We'd like to see more birth control ads," pediatrician Victor Strasburger tells Reuters, and "and less ads for erectile dysfunction drugs because it makes sex seem like a recreational activity."
Strasburger, a pediatrician at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque who chaired the committee that issued the statement, said there was no evidence that advertising birth control products would increase promiscuity.
The Stiletto begs to differ. Before birth control became widely available an incontrovertible fact of biology was that sex is procreational, because recreational sex often resulted in pregnancy. Once procreation became optional, sex became recreational – even when a couple neglects to use birth control.
An editorial in The Christian Science Monitor, "Single Moms With No ‘I Do’ In Sight," includes the evidence that somehow escaped Strasburger’s notice: "In 2005, a record 37 percent of US births were to single women. Is there hope they will ever marry?" The editorial notes:
Among women ages 20 to 24, more than half of their births in 2005 were outside marriage. For women 25-29, the figure was nearly a third, while mothers 30-39, the out-of-wedlock birthrate was more than 15 percent, or twice the rate of three decades ago.
The out-of-wedlock birthrate for teens has actually dropped – this, even before the APA’s recommendation to air birth control advertising has been implemented (hey, maybe those crazy faith-based groups pushing abstinence programs might actually be on to something).
Once, the threat of pregnancy scared the bejezzus out of enough unmarried couples that the out-of-wedlock birthrate was not the crisis it has now become. The Stiletto thinks it’s time to re-introduce the concept that sex has consequences. Rather than showing ads for erectile dysfunction drugs and birth control products back-to-back, The Stiletto recommends that every time a Viagra ad is shown, it is immediately followed by one for Valtrex.
How Much Is That Doggie In The Window? Priceless.
Childless couple Denis and Sarah Scheele, currently residing in Annapolis, MD, doted over their two dogs, feeding them the same food they ate, brushing their teeth and dressing them in raincoats when the weather was inclement. One of them, Shadow, a shepherd-chow-spaniel mix, was fatally shot in 2003 by their neighbor, Lewis Dustin, after wandering onto his property.
Dustin had fired a BB pellet at Shadow's haunch to scare him off, but the shot instead pierced the dog's chest and severed an aorta. Dustin pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of animal cruelty and was ordered to pay $4,000 in restitution to the Scheeles. The couple filed a civil suit against Dustin arguing that "their little boy" wasn’t mere property, he was a member of their family and his life was worth more than what they paid to acquire him.
Superior Court Judge Matthew Katz turned the Scheeles down on the grounds that Vermont law did not allow damages for the loss of Shadow's companionship or for emotional distress. The couple plans an appeal to the state Supreme Court.
They might prevail this time. Since their initial lawsuit, an appellate court in Washington state created a new tort in May – "malicious injury to a pet" – that allows a plaintiff to collect emotional distress damages.
Even if they win on appeal, the Scheeles won’t stop there. They will dedicate themselves to getting national legislation that recognizes pets as companions, not possessions.
The Scheles certainly won’t get an argument from Eve Fertig and her husband, Norman. The 81-year old couple who live near Buffalo, NY, was in their back yard when an intense snowstorm suddenly hit the area, trapping them under falling trees that the weight of the snow made impossible to move.
Their seven year old, 160-pound German shepherd-timberwolf mix, Shana, dug a 1-food wide tunnel 20 feet long under the trees and through the snow all the way to the back door of the Fertig’s home. Then Shana grabbed Eve’s jacket in her mouth and pulled her through the tunnel, while Norman crawled on his hands and knees. They all made it to the warmth and safety of their home.
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March 16, 2007
The Stiletto wrote:
A WaPo op-ed, "Give Us Back Our Gun Law" argues that restricting gun ownership by adults prevents guns from getting into the hands of juveniles, who borrow them from friends and family members or buy them on the black market, according to a DOJ study. Cathy Lanier acting chief of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, and Vincent Schiraldi, of the D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, cite gun control laws enacted during 1995 and 1997 in states surrounding D.C. that "choked off black-market sales, while the D.C. ban on guns in the home reduced ...
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