NBC edited video of knife attack in Columbus

I don't understand why some media sources deliberately mislead the people who trust them for information. NBC destroyed its credibility on the recent stabbing incident in Columbus that resulted in the police shooting to death a 16 year old girl attacking other young girls in a suburban neighborhood. Based on the Twitter lynch mob, including Valerie Jarrett, only some black lives matter, and the two girls being attacked didn't matter. It's clear on the various videos what was happening, yet NBC edited out the knife! NBC did a similar edit on the George Zimmerman case too. The day before the Columbus incident a 13 year old girl was killed by another 13 year old, also by knife, in Cincinnati. The media didn't care about that child because no one was killed by the police. But she's still dead! 

Knives are lethal weapons, and the fact that the assailants are still children doesn't change the danger to the victims. The media are after ratings, they ignore crimes if they do not have a racial angle they can blow up. I believe in capitalism is a good system, but I also believe there is ill gotten gain, So, actually, I do understand why NBC did it--profit.

Nolte: NBC News Caught Deceptively Editing Columbus Shooting Video and 911 Call (breitbart.com)

The Breitbart reporter had a more sinister view on why NBC did this.  

"So why would correspondent Kevin Tibbles, anchor Lester Holt, and NBC News broadcast something so transparently manipulative, inciting, and dishonest?

The answer is obvious: They want to start another wave of race riots; they want to see more Democrat-run neighborhoods burn to the ground.

There is no other rational answer."

Wildhood

I am offered a lot of books to review, and occasionally I accept. If you've been baffled by adolescent behavior--your pupils, your kids, your grandchildren, or even your own if you can remember that far back, this is the book that explains it, and why it's probably necessary. "Wildhood; the epic journey from adolescence to adulthood in humans and other animals," by Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and Kathryn Bowers (Scribner, 2019). I'm assuming that Barbara is the scientist and Kathryn the word magician, because it's both very learned, and easy to read.

Using the lives of four animals, Ursula the penguin, Shrink the hyena, Salt a humpback whale, and Slavc a wolf (plus dozens of examples of other animal species--salmon, bats, gazelles, seals, etc.) they provide a look at everything you see in teenagers from status, to anxiety, to bullying, to risk taking, to privilege to sexual coercion. Is your son living in your basement? If animal parents were that protective, the species wouldn't survive.

"Animals will suffer pain, forgo food, give up sex, and betray others just to ensure they've not left out or driven from a group. You might say that for social animals, status is like gravity. It's powerful and inescapable. It's invisible. It exerts an omnipresent force, and it molds how a creature moves through the world and behaves around others." p. 97

Now, doesn't that sound just like junior high school?

Right of passage—a driver’s license

This is our great-nephew, a star in academics and sports.  And now he has a driver’s license, and here’s the list that makes it possible to drive, talk on his phone, and get his allowance.  I can remember posting this sort of thing on the refrigerator, but had very little success.  I guess it depends on the kid. (from his mother’s Facebook wall)

Condoms. No one calls it safe sex anymore

Even with 100% condom use, your teen-agers aren't safe. That's one of the lies kids are told. Oral sex--no evidence it reduces chance of an STD; anal sex, no evidence; vaginal sex a condom can reduce HPV about 70%, herpes about the same; chlamydia and gonorrhea consistent and correct condom use reduce the chance to about 50%, HIV reduce about 85%. Who would fly with crash statistics like this? As males get older, they are even less likely to use condoms than male teens. These diseases can cause permanent infertility in women and cancer in both men and women. There's only one true protection, but society says that's too difficult. The same group telling you that biology doesn't matter and can be changed with surgery and hormones or just by saying its true, says it's too painful to control that sexuality in your natural state.

  

The tragedy in Marysville

The school shooting Wednesday near Seattle, Washington  is looking less like a school shooting and more like a teen love triangle with the school just a convenient place to get them all in one place. So sad. The shooter and male victims were friends, cousins and members of the same Native American group. The name of the female killed hasn’t been released.  Pray for the families.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/marysville-school-shooting/marysville-shooting-families-victims-grieve-bedsides-n233806

Two male victims, who were identified Saturday as Nate Hatch, 14, and Andrew Fryberg, 15, are being treated at Harborview Medical Center Seattle. Hatch's grandfather said the boys are cousins of the shooter, Jaylen Ray Fryberg, a freshman football player at Marysville Pilchuck High School — the chaotic scene of Friday morning's violence. “They’re just three complete buddies, and they couldn't be closer than three brothers,” Don Hatch told TODAY, referring to the gunman, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and the two injured boys, who remain in intensive care.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/25/cafeteria-worker-washington-shooting_n_6046812.html

Fryberg's Twitter feed suggested he was struggling with an unidentified problem. On Wednesday, a posting read: "It won't last ... It'll never last." On Monday, another said: "I should have listened. ... You were right ... The whole time you were right."
Marysville-Pilchuck High School has a number of students from the Tulalip Indian tribes.

Update: Father of shooter Jaylen was sentenced to 2 years for illegally purchasing guns.  http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2016/01/23/tulalip-school-shooter-father-gets-two-years-prison-163164

STDs infect one in four teen girls

A CDC study released in March 2008 estimates that one in four (26 percent) young women between the ages of 14 and 19 in the United States – or 3.2 million teenage girls – is infected with at least one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases (human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, herpes simplex virus, and trichomoniasis).

Even though most of the young women had either received information/services on STDs or contraception, the recommendation was for more counseling, testing and treatment.  No mention of the obvious—chastity and celibacy to save their lives or fertility.

So I moved ahead to the 2012 study presented at the same conference. For some odd reason, the researchers were encouraged that there was more testing among African American women, those who had multiple sex partners, and those who received public insurance or were uninsured.  But all that showed them was there is a problem. I’m not sure why annual screenings are recommended as a solution when the retesting rates remain low.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/Newsroom/stdconference2012pressrelease.html

AmeriCorps to help classroom teachers teach service

This seems odd to me. I saw an article in the local paper that an AmeriCorps staffer trained by "Partnerships make a difference" is working with our local teachers to incorporate service activities into lesson plans. Hmmm. We have tax supported colleges to train taxpayer paid teachers to work in tax supported schools. Our public school teachers with years of training and experience need additional tax supported college kids still finding their own career path to teach the teachers about "service?"

Service to our community and neighbor is a component of most religions, and if we can't let the Bible, which teaches the importance of service as a result of faith, into the classroom, isn't this just backdoor religious instruction?

So I looked up "Partnerships make a difference" and it turned out to be an OSU 501(c)3, a "non-profit" that gets government and private grants to exist. Locally, service projects are required in order to graduate, and they are important on college applications.

Here's an idea--one I've had for a decade. The teen-agers in Upper Arlington park on Northwest Blvd and walk 2-3 blocks to the highschool. This makes it impossible for the older people who live in those four-family units to shovel the snow in the winter, especially if the plows have been by and buried their sidewalks and driveways. Have each teen keep a shovel in his/her car, and before rushing off at the last minute, they could shovel 5 or 10 ft of sidewalk and driveway for the families they are blocking.

There is no Gay Teen Suicide Epidemic

This morning in a class at church a retired teacher commented on the gay teen suicide epidemic. I told her there were no statistics to back up this claim that gay teens are bullied and then commit suicide. "Oh yes," she said, "I've attended workshops on this." Now that I believe. However, the so called statistics are urban legends and are from a jumble of bad information. This was disproved 8 or 9 years ago. Ritch Savin-Williams says gay teens are just as psychologically healthy as other teens and just as resilient.

Just like the phony "death by abortion" statistics we got in the 1960s, these are politically based and biased for a different agenda. Even one suicide, for what ever reason, is too many, but there is no gay teen suicide epidemic. As a demographic, gay men and women are very successful, the best educated and highest paid group in our society. I suspect that as teens they were rather resilient, smart and brave. . . maybe more so than other groups. Also, they do their share of bullying, of each other, and straight teens.

Do you know what is killing and maiming teen-agers at an alarming rate? Automobile accidents and sports injuries. Each Year over 5,000 teens ages 16 to 20 die due to fatal injuries caused by car accidents. About 400,000 drivers age 16 to 20 will be seriously injured. These are not urban legends--these are reportable, verifiable statistics, plus they are deaths that in many cases could be prevented if we had the collective guts to raise the driving age to 18! Snowmobiling, with speeds of 90 miles per hour and vehicle weights of more than 600 lbs., causes 200 deaths and 14,000 accidents yearly. And school buses? In 2002, 26 children ages 14 and under were killed, and in 2001 an estimated 4,500 were injured in school bus-related incidents. More than 40 percent of these deaths were child pedestrians.

What about dog bites? From 1979 to 1996, 304 people in the USA died from dog attacks and 30 in 2009 alone. How does that compare to deaths by suicide caused by bullying--a statistic that just doesn't exist?

How do you know a gay teen doesn't commit suicide from unrequited love--just like straight teens--he is madly in love with someone who rejects him. Because of his youth and inexperience, life seems without value and meaning. If he was teased or bullied on Tuesday and commits suicide on Thursday after a text message from his boyfriend who is dumping him, is it the bullying, the boyfriend, or his own insecurities?

Is There a Gay Teen Suicide Epidemic? | Homosexuality, Lesbian & Gay Teen Suicide, Sexual Orientation | LiveScience

Drunk driving accidents down

In Ohio in 2007 there were 1,255 traffic fatalities, 389 (31%) were alcohol related. We made headway in 2008--that dropped to 1,190, 356 fatalities, or 30%. A change in one year of 8.5%. Of course, if it was your wife, daughter, son, or dad killed or injured by a drunk driver feeling invincible, that figure runs about 100% doesn't it? Even worse and more dangerous than drunk driving, is allowing teen-agers to drive before age 18. Even riding with a teen makes life more dangerous for the passengers, whether or not he's driving!

Per mile travelled, you're safer in urban areas than rural. In fact, the worst stats are for those states with the wide open spaces--except Utah, bless their tea totalling, Mormon livers.

"State impaired-driving laws have been enacted in all 50 States and the District of Columbia that make it illegal for a driver or a motorcycle rider with a BAC of .08 or above to drive a vehicle. In 2008, the alcohol-impaired-driving fatality rate declined from 0.43 fatalities per 100 million VMT in 2007 to 0.40 in 2008. In 2008, Montana had the highest alcohol-impaired fatality rate in the Nation – 0.84 fatalities per 100 million VMT while Vermont had the low-est rate in the Nation – 0.16 per 100 million VMT. In 2007, Montana had the highest alcohol-impaired fatality rates in the Nation – 0.93 – and Utah had the lowest alcohol-impaired driving fatality rate – 0.21 fatalities per 100 million VMT. Traffic safety facts"

And the man who probably saved more Americans from death by car crash was Robert McNamara of Kennedy/Vietnam fame and "inventor" of the seat belt. He was both safety and fuel conscious when not many others were.

"Soon after taking over at the Ford Division in 1955, McNamara had gone way out on a limb by adding several safety devices to the 1956 model and then making them the focal point of the marketing campaign. By today’s standards it was a modest effort. The 1956 Ford’s five-part Lifeguard System included two standard features, a deep-dish steering wheel that gave way in a crash and safety latches that kept doors from springing open on impact. Three options also were offered: front seat belts anchored to a steel plate; a padded instrument panel and padded sun visors; and rearview mirrors with backing that reduced glass fallout when shattered. Also, the front and back seat supports were redesigned to reduce the possibility of their coming loose in a crash." American Heritage

I used a seat belt for the first time in the mid-50s when I worked for a feed company and the owner had a sporty Ford.