True Blue Texan: RTT- Banned books, sex ed and more

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

RTT- Banned books, sex ed and more

Hey! It's Tuesday. Grab the button and play along.

So, it's Banned Books Week. Mostly, these books that end up on the most challenged lists are worth reading. Grab the list and see how many you've read. And which ones you think should be banned. And then explain the whole idea to me. Cause I don't get it.

It's like the people who want certain television programming pulled. There's a simple solution to TV shows that you think are inappropriate for your kiddos - it's called being a parent and taking control of the remote. For Christ's sake, just turn the crap off. I mean, seriously folks. I think Survivor and all it's reality show spin offs are for crap. I'm in the minority, I know, but I'm not clamoring for their removal from the airwaves. I just don't watch.

Don't want your kids reading objectionable material? Pay attention to what they're reading. Ask for alternatives. But pushing to have a book removed from the library or not used in a reading list is infringing on my rights as a parent to let my kid read Fahrenheit 451 or And Tango Makes Three.

Moving on. A glimmer of good news in Texas. Apparently some school districts in Texas want to move away from abstinence-only sex ed. Seems they are a bit alarmed at the rise in STDs and pregnancies among teens. Take a gander at this graph:

click to embiggen

That's scary stuff. Texas has the third highest teen birth rate and leads the nation in teens with multiple children. Proving, once and for all, that abstinence-only education doesn't work.

Anyway, enough of the preaching. Youngest got her "new" Blackberry. She hates it. But for $60 we got a smartphone, a car charger, a wall charger, a USB cord and earbuds. Couldn't get a better deal. She already has plans to buy a new phone next semester with her grant money.

We got the Beast (also known as the puppy-from-hell) a new dog dish. Under the idea that one of the reasons she gets destructive in the late afternoon is because she's hungry, we purchased a plastic dish tub and added 6 cups of kibble plus the leftovers from breakfast. We'll see how well this works tonight. Maybe if she gets fat she won't be able to get to half the things she does now. On the plus side, she's going to force us to be neater. What we don't leave out she can't get to.

It's raining again here. We're still so far behind that water restrictions are still in force. Since we've been in the negative for a number of years now, I kind of think that it may become a permanent thing. I remember when studying Texas history learning about the "dry line"; a longitudinal line that demarcated where farming could be done in Texas with and without the need for irrigation. Everything to the west of the line required irrigation. To the east did not. That line used to sit just to the west of Austin and nearly split the state in half lengthwise. I firmly believe that it has shifted significantly to the east and Austin now lies on the other side. Climate change, anyone?

Well, my randomness has been a little on the serious side today and I apologize to those of you looking for something more light-hearted. Go check out the Unmom for more randomness. Someone's bound to be funnier than I today.