Last Week Around the -ISTs
Schieffer's Out of Gov Race
- Watch a recently found full-color film detailing the brutal aftermath of the May 11, 1953 Waco tornado. (If you've ever wondered why half of downtown Waco is a parking lot, here's your answer. It wasn't like that until the tornado.)
- Be careful about jaywalking in front of any cop near UT!
- Finals week: Don’t forget to have your brain blessed!
- Gail Collins of The New York Times Op-Ed page calls Texas “a teen pregnancy disaster zone.” (Expert opinion claims abstinence-only education makes Texas a baby-makin’ factory!)
- Aggie cemetery opens in College Station. If Asher Roth’s tune “I Love College” is your mantra--and you have Aggie ties-- this might be the perfect eternal resting place for you!
- Legendary Texas writer Bud Shrake had a fantastic life, and wound up with this great obit. He was even part of history: years ago, he told us that Jack Ruby was sitting on his newsroom desk when JFK was shot. Read his book "Strange Peaches" if you aren't going to his service tomorrow.
- Students sprinting in skivvies at UT! (SFW)
Death, Sex and College [Extra Extra]
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where's the public outcry over the condition of waterloo park?
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What many newcomers don't know is that Waco was one of Texas' largest cities in 1953. It had a strong economy and impressive downtown skyline.
Sadly, as with Galveston after the 1900 "storm," Waco never really recovered. Most of its big employers (like Dr Pepper) moved north to Dallas or south to Austin. Like you say, downtown Waco today is mostly a parking lot with few cars.
"Brain blessings"--what a great story! I think I could use one right now...
How about "don't jaywalk so you don't die". It happens fairly regularly in this town. I applaud the police for enforcing this more.
Views that abstinence-only works as sex-ed curriculum is such a joke. We are "a teen pregnancy disaster zone", and getting worse. We were #5 in teen pregnancy rate in 2004, now we are #3. Keep this up, and the top spot isn't that far out of reach. Unless things change, this trend will continue to go into the Red State^H^H^H^H^H ... er, Zone.
Abstinance-only education, while misguided, has little to do with Texas' position as a leader in teen pregnancy. Texas has high teen pregency rates because of its large Hispanic population. Go ahead and give teens condoms, birth control pills, depo shots, whatever... birth control won't change much because it won't change the culture.
Wes, you couldn't be more wrong. Statistics show that states that have comprehensive sex education fare much better than those that do not. The Texas Freedom Network did an excellent report on the status of sex ed in TX. I recommend reading it if you're truly interested in having an informed opinion on this subject:
http://www.justsaydontknow.com
Also, your logic is ridiculous. That'd be like saying high crime rates only exist because of black people, high aids infection rates because of gay people, and so on
The data is dated (2000) but it illustrates my point nicely. You may not be comfortable with what the data are telling you but burying your head in the sand won't make facts go away.
Texas pregnancies among women aged 15 - 19
White (non-hispanic) 24k
Black 13k
Hispanic 42k!
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/09/12/USTPstats.pdf
There've been several car-jaywalker impacts on Guadalupe over the years. Seems like at least one or two people are seriously injured every year. And not just students either, staff and professors who assume that the driver will see them and slow down or avoid... dumb.
Jaywalking talks care of the problem itself.
If you jaywalk and get hit, then you have gotten your punishment by getting hit.
I'd rather see the jaywalkers get hit than have a big government monitoring us all the time.
What's next? Police giving me a ticket for touching a hot stove?
That's the same exact bullshit 'reasoning' used to defend red-light runners, which is why I was not surprised to see your most recent comment on that thread.
Most drivers would actually try to avoid hitting somebody, even if they were jaywalking, because most of us would rather not kill somebody. In the process, they're quite likely to cause damage to other people or property. Likewise, when you run a red light and make a car swerve to avoid you, they may end up wrecking their car, somebody else's car, and/or causing injury to truly innocent parties.
Even if they're unable to avoid smacking into you, they likely face significant damage to themselves and their property. While you yourself are unlikely to be able to be self-aware enough to imagine it, maybe the readers here can do so: think about how you'd feel right after running over somebody who jumped out in front of your car, even if they were completely, 1000%, in the wrong.