aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Challenging Assumptions on Teen Sex & Delinquency
Researchers at Ohio State University garnered little attention in February when they found that youngsters who lose their virginity earlier than their peers are more likely to become juvenile delinquents. So obvious and well established was the contribution of early sex to later delinquency that the idea was already part of the required curriculum for federal “abstinence only” programs.
There was just one problem: It is probably not true. Other things being equal, a more probing study has found, youngsters who have consensual sex in their early-teen or even preteen years are, if anything, less likely to engage in delinquent behavior later on.
That new analysis, a reworking of the same data the Ohio team used, is one of several recent instances in which a more precise parsing of data has begun to turn long-standing societal presumptions on their head. [...]
The new study “really calls into question the usefulness of abstinence education for preventing behavior problems,” Harden said, “and questions the bigger underlying assumption that all adolescent sex is always bad.”
Google to buy Sprint?
Having at long last left Sprint, I’ve spent a good part of today setting up my new AT&T phone.*
We went with AT&T because there is an iPhone in our future, but now I read that rumor has it Google may buy Sprint:
On the surface it seems like this would be a bad move for Google but in reality the world’s leading search engine has become so much more than just a website to go to when you want to find a trinket of information… The company now needs a wireless network to allow it to grow in the mobile search and related spaces such as watching YouTube videos on the subway.
Google doesn’t really need the messy wireless phone business you say?
What they really need is platforms which will allow them to display ads embedded in their services such as maps, videos, etc.
Google could buy Sprint Nextel and in a complicated maneuver spin it back out as a different company (perhaps a nonprofit) which agrees to work more closely with Google to display ads and distribute its applications. This would allow Google to stay somewhat independent and work with other service providers worldwide.
Another more drastic move would be to buy the beleaguered wireless phone company and start giving all service away for free. In addition the company could reinitiate the ClearWire talks and work with this company and others to blanket the world with a free (or at least ad-subsidized) WiMax network.
This sort of move is logical from a local search perspective. Imagine Google being able to light up your phone with information relative to where you happen to be. Think about the phone as a virtual tour guide. When you get a phone call from someone, the phone could pull up a MySpace or orkut page before the phone even rings. If the caller ID is blocked when receiving a call, you could see the results of a web search of the phone number as the phone rings. When you are walking past a coffee shop a coupon for 10% off any drink with a European sounding name could be displayed on your phone.
It gets better… McDonalds could flash ads for $2-off any meal with more than 1,000 calories in total. Of course I am kind of kidding about this last point but we should all realize the web is beginning to have more of our preferences stored in it somewhere and Google could indeed ferret out our likes and dislikes and match them up with ads from relevant companies in a way we never thought imaginable.
In the end he gives the chances of a Google acquisition only a “maybe” but if so, “I would see them rapidly rolling out free service or at least heavily-subsidized service and making life extremely difficult for the likes of AT&T and Verizon Wireless.”
* The phone was free. But only on the second trip. I said to Doug, “buying a cellular phone today is like buying a used car - you have no clue about pricing or what you’re going to get!”
