When I was a kid, I used to love Archie Comics. They sold the digests at the grocery store and I bought them religiously and would spend hours upon hours reading them. I remember really hating it when they’d take a strip from one digest and include it in another. I’d be like, “I already read this! Blast it!”
Anyway, so come Sunday’s comic section in The Baltimore Sun.
So it seems Archie and the “gang” got — or, are “getting” — a face-lift. Good shit. I’m sure it’s intentionally ironic that the Sally Forth character are discussing this face lift. After all, I seem to remember that Sally Forth got a face lift of its own a few years ago when the strip changed creative hands. I think there was some talk about a change of the drawing technique, too, but I’m not a comic historian and Wikipedia is strangely quiet on the topic.
Actually, I think Ted’s got a point on redesigning shit to appeal to a younger generation. Were the Star Wars special editions George Lucas “finishing” his vision … or appealing to a new and younger audience? Hmmm.
Tell me this isn’t the most addictive web-thingy ever. For real fun, go for “manic” mode …
With the provision that you also provide education so that young people know how to make responsible decisions about their health if they choose to engage in pre-marital sex.
The BBC:
Participants in special programmes were just as likely to have sex a few years later as those who did not attend.
In the past few years of Republican Party control of Congress, the spending on no-sex-before-marriage education has risen from $10m to $176m a year.
Critics have repeatedly said the programmes are not working.
They say the money would be better off spent on a comprehensive sex education that would include abstinence.
Social conservatives have long believed that teaching adolescents about sexuality and contraception could encourage them to have sex.
They would rather promote abstinence until marriage.
There’s this story I heard, and it was presented as being truthful, and maybe it was, but it’s been years and years and years since I heard it, and I don’t remember where I was when I was told it, why I was told it, or who told me.
So, there was this group of scientists trying to lower the birth-rate in some third world village in South America or Africa, so they flew out there in their planes and they took a bunch of condoms, and they used brooksticks to demonstrate how the condoms were to be used and they left and a few years later they looked at the data and said, collectively, “Huh, the birthrate is the same.” So they went back down, and the village chief said: “Yeah, WTF? We put the condoms on the broomsticks and we have sex and our women still get pregnant!”
And the point is: you can’t assume people know how to use condoms. Witness my overheard earlier in the week. And also, while it might be reasonable to assume that adults know how to use condoms, the primary focus on sex ed is younger folk — middle and high school age. How old were you when you lost your virginity? I was 17. If you have them, how old are your kids? Do they know how to protect themselves and their partners?
When I’m a dad — assuming I find someone to marry and have kids with, I mean — I’m going to practice the best birth-control I can: when my daughter brings her dates over to meet me (and she will be until she’s 30), I’m going to show them my shotgun and explain how painful it’ll be when I shoot ‘em in the crotch if I find out he’s so much as lightly stroking my daughter’s arm (much less her breast!). And my son is going out on dates, I’ll remind him that if I find out he’s engaging in any activity that might result in me becoming a granddad before he’s out of college, that he can indeed become one of the few and the proud. And of course, that’ll just be posturing, and of course I won’t want ‘em having sex before they can make a responsible decision about it, but I’ll do my best to make sure they’ve got that information waaaay ahead of time, y’know?
